Knee-high By The Fourth Applies To This Year’s Corn Crop

By Gil Gullickson

In recent years, farmers who have waded into their cornfields on Independence Day have often encountered waist- or shoulder-high corn. This year? Not so much.

“It’s been a long time since we used the term ‘knee-high by the Fourth of July,’” says Tom Hoverstad, a scientist at the University of Minnesota’s (U of M) Southern Research and Outreach Center near Waseca, Minnesota. “But that might be the case this year.”

Much corn in the southern Minnesota area surrounding Waseca was struggling when the SROC held its field day on June 18.

We were fine until the middle of May, but not much fieldwork was done from mid- to late-May,” he says. Some corn wasn’t planted until June 1, and that can make a difference in accumulating growing degree units, he says.