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Corn tar spot concerns moving through June

Corn growers in southeast Minnesota are beginning to scout for tar spot.

Ryan Buck farms in Goodhue County and says the plant disease was prevalent last year.

“And that started to show up late June, so it was a lot earlier than we’ve normally seen it and it ended up being quite a problem up here. But we’ll be looking for that really hard this year just to make sure we can stay ahead of it.”

He tells Brownfield fungicides have been effective against tar spot.

“Last year, we sprayed fungicide on all our acres and even did a second application four weeks later on some that still hadn’t really gotten tar spot under control.”

Buck says this growing season is off to a promising start with timely planting and rains.