Episode 29 of Battle for the Belt is now available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVtINj7LDdY
In Episode 29, we summarize the growing season and give our yield predictions. This is the final video of the 2024 growing season. However, stay-tuned, yield and other agronomic results for Battle for the Belt will be presented at Extension meetings over the winter months. Please continue to follow the CORN newsletter for winter meeting announcements!
The growing season in 2024 has given most of Ohio difficulty either at planting or at harvest. At the Western Agricultural Research Station, we achieved the soybean lab’s earliest planting date on March 25th. The planting season for this location went smoothly and each target planting date was achieved. However, toward the end of the season when the drought hit, this location was the most vulnerable causing some issues with shattering in early planted soybeans and early maturation in late planted corn. Hurricane Helene also caused damage in late planted corn (lodging) and early planted soybeans (sprouting).
The Northwest Agricultural Research station could not plant until May 16 due to wet weather. Northwest also experienced dry conditions later in the growing season but was not as severe as the western location.
At the Wooster location, planting began on April 21st and was overall smooth and each planting date target was timely. This location did not experience heavy rains preventing planting like Northwest or the severe drought like the Western location. Therefore, Wooster likely had the mildest weather throughout the season.
Harvest is underway for all three locations with the Western location having harvested four out of five of the planting dates for both crops (Figure 1). The Northwest and Wooster locations have three out of five planting dates for the soybeans harvested and corn harvest has not begun yet.
The summary of locations, last week’s weather, planting dates, GDDs and stages is presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Weekly weather conditions for each planting date at the Western Agricultural Research Station, Northwest Agricultural Research Station, and Wooster Campus, with the day of planting, soil, air temperature averages, and Growing Degree Days (GDDs) from October 7th to October 13th. Information from CFAES Weather System (https://weather.cfaes.osu.edu/).
Keep following the ‘Battle for the Belt’ this winter season to learn more and get further updates!
You can find the full video playlist of Battle for the Belt – Season 2 on the Ohio State Agronomy YouTube channel.
You can access a summary of results for Battle for the Belt – Season 1 – 2023!