Corn is Greening Up After Frost in Southern Minnesota

It sure is nice to drive by a corn field and see green leaves instead dead brown ones. It looks nice from a distance but a closer look walking a field you can see some corn plants may not survive, even if they are green right now. Notice the deal leaf next to the ground in the photo above. Then the ends of the second and third leaf are stuck together. The new leaf was trying to push through the dead plant tissue from the frost and it got "stuck" together. When you would pull on the leaf it will separate but I was surprised at how tight they were.

I called my agronomist and explained what I was seeing and offed to text a picture. He said he had been scouting fields and taking to farmers all day long about corn looking like this. I thought the next leaf would come from the whorl (center of the corn plant) and it would be fine. He said maybe, but in some of the plants the next leaf would bend over and grow right to the point where the leaves are stuck together. Unless the leaves separate soon, the plant will die.

Fortunately not all the plants look like this. I asked my agronomist if there was anything we could do and he said be patient. It is supposed to be windy Sunday and that may help break some free. Rain is also in the forecast and that might soften the dead tissue so the leaf can break free. So, we still may not know for a while how much damage was done by the frost a week ago.