That’s the title of Tom Kilcer’s June 2025 monthly newsletter, available at advancedagsys.com. Kilcer is a Certified Crop Advisor who served for 28 years as a field crops agent working for the Extension service in Columbia County, NY. He then managed the Cornell agronomy research farm in Valatie, NY.

Kilcer often borrows an old farmer’s quote: “A drought will scare a man to death; a flood will starve him.” Kilcer noted the wet and cool/cold has held on until quite recently, delaying a lot of planting, so that a lot of fields originally slated for corn this spring remain unplanted.

Many corn grain farmers have struggled with the wet weather. Based on previous years like this one, cloudy conditions are expected to decrease projected yields. If hayfields are not harvested, first cut alfalfa is way past its optimum. If the stand has not significantly lodged, Kilcer recommends this idea: most alfalfa is at peak quality at about 32 inches. At 40 inches, raising the cutter-bar to harvest only the top 32 inches significantly increases feed quality and digestibility. The eight-inch stubble left behind is about as digestible as pencils.

After harvesting these iffy perennial first-cut forages, give serious thought to planting a short season corn variety at a slightly higher population. From my own Extension days, I recall that planting a short season corn up till July 15 often proved to be the lesser of several evils – assuming you can find such varieties for sale.

Let’s address some traditional “all is not lost” crop options. These are the various sorghum, sorghum-sudan, sudangrass and millet varieties – hot climate summer annuals (HCSAs). These are not desperation measures but are viable alternatives every year for producing high-energy forage to support both dairy and beef. Kilcer only recommends brown midrib (BMR) varieties: they supply the highest fiber digestibility, thus the most usable nutrients.

The first and most promising replacement for corn is the BMR male sterile forage sorghum. Agronomists, working on this crop for several years, praise its success as a primary forage for dairy cows. In dry conditions last year, it left corn silage in its dust, yield-wise. In a carefully replicated study, replacing corn silage with properly grown and harvested BMR male sterile forage sorghum increased milk per cow, as well as components, due to the high sugar content – cheaper and more effective than adding molasses. Wait five to six weeks after heading before harvest to raise stored sugar levels.

More growers need to reconsider the population they’re planting as well as the row width used. He said there are many erroneous recommendations out there. The old farmer’s tale is to plant it at 15 – 20 lbs. of seed/acre, which at the average pounds of seed/acre results in 225,000 seeds/acre, or less than one inch between plants on a 30-inch row. Proponents for this practice swore that it would increase yield, since (they said) smaller stems are more digestible. Kilcer says this belief is bogus.

What did happen was a crop that fell over before harvest. The smaller stems had a huge increase in percent rind – outside rim of the stem with high lignin – significantly decreasing forage digestibility. So he recommends that seed drop be lowered significantly to 60,000 seeds/acre. Higher rates predispose to lodging. Make sure that your drill can plant that low.

Sorghum flour (from ground-up seeds) won’t grow. If it can’t plant the 4 lbs./acre of whole seed, plug every other hole to allow the star drive to open wide enough to let the whole seed through. Researchers found that increased spacing within the row let sorghum stalks get as big as corn stalks and that lodging issues basically vanished. Yield and digestible fiber were still maintained.

Kilcer stresses that at 7.5-inch row spacing, 60,000 – 70,000 seeds/acre is optimum. He refers to seed count per acre, just like corn – not pounds per acre. Quoting Kilcer: “You need smooth, not accordion-type drop tubes or you will have uneven dumped planting that lodges. If you don’t have a drill, or yours cannot plant correctly, you can use a 15-inch spacing corn planter with sorghum plates. You still need that in-the-row spacing to prevent thin, lodging stalks; that is achieved at 60,000 seeds/acre. With GPS and a 15-inch corn planter, you can plant a 15-inch row and with a 7.5-inch drawbar offset at 30,000 seeds/acre; double back, splitting the rows to get very accurately planted 7.5-inch results in 60,000/acre. If you don’t have a 15-inch corn planter you can use the normal 30-inch row planter at 30,000/acre and offset the drawbar 15 inches to get 15-inch rows when you double back. The 15-inch yielded less than the 7.5-inch but still had very respectable high 20-ton silage yields. We do not suggest you plant sorghum in 30-inch rows, as in my replicated trials it yielded much less than the narrow 7.5-inch drilled rows.”

He says that growers still insisting on using this older 30-inch row width spacing should adopt the same 30,000 – 34,000 seeds/acre (like corn) to keep the crop standing and have stalks that maximize digestible content.

“The alternative is to use the higher old suggested seed rates and have the entire crop on the ground at harvest. In my research, I have had an intense storm (hurricane) hit after the plants headed out. Because it was planted at the correct population, in two weeks it was three-quarters back to standing upright,” he said. “At harvest, it was nearly all upright. This will not happen at too high a population. It goes down and stays down, as it did in Hurricane Helene last year [2024].”

Today’s June 23 temperatures are in the 90s. June 24 was expected to hit 100º-plus in some places in the Northeast. Degree days past 85º are useless to corn, but sorghum, sudangrass and their hybrids utilize the extra warmth up to 105º, since HCSAs originated in sub-Saharan Africa.