Head-High After the 4th of July?
Jul 07, 2026
“Knee-high by the Fourth of July.”
You know the old saying about early summer corn evaluation. Well, with our mix of heat and rain so far this season, we’ve left that outdated metric in the dust, at least according to our discovery plot evaluations.
“Head high is more like it,” said Federated agronomy sales manager Kevin Carlson. “Corn’s a little dynamic right now, but we might need to update that old saying.”
As of July 1, we were looking at 875-900 growing degree units (GDUs), which is slightly ahead of normal. 95-day corn will tassel at about 1250 GDU. Judging by where our discovery plots were at the beginning of the month, tassel could be less than 10 days away at the time of publication.
“Corn is moving along quite nicely,” agrees Sam Johnson, Federated ag sales rep in Albertville. “It looks even better than last year. We should be tassling in 10-12 days from now, depending on when you planted. We could easily be applying fungicide on corn the week of the 13th.”
With tassel quickly approaching, it’s important to have your fungicide applications scheduled. Tassel is the best time to do it, as opposed to after.
“Scouting for tar spot at tassel and waiting for the disease to develop after tassel is not what we recommend,” said Carlson. “You make the application at tassel for the protection. We don’t wait. Make the application.”
When evaluating our soybean discovery plot, we’re also seeing healthy progress.
“In Buffalo, we planted on May 2, and we’re right around R2 by now,” Johnson said. “If you haven’t done your fungicide application by now, you should get it done.”
“We had flowering plants on July 1,” said Carlson. “We’re very quickly approaching R2 in soybeans, so it's time to get the weeds cleaned up and the fungicides on.”
Soybeans are in growth stage R1 (Flower.)
Many herbicide labels stop at R1 or R2, so be sure to look at the product instructions. You don’t want to miss your window. If you have any questions about when to apply your fungicides (or anything else!), reach out to your Federated Agronomist.
“We’re pretty happy with how things look overall,” Johnson said. “Let’s keep it rolling by getting our applications done!”