Curiosities: Should corn really be ‘knee high by the Fourth of July’?

A: Maybe if you?re standing on your head. “Nowadays, if corn is knee-high by the Fourth of July, it?s way behind,” said Joe Lauer, agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin?Madison. The last time the old adage was a useful gauge of corn crop development was maybe two generations of farmers ago. “The technologies we have now for growing corn ? from the equipment we have to the plant hybrids we develop to the treatments we put on the seeds and in the fields ? have shifted things,” Lauer said. “With all that working for us, corn should be chest- or even neck-high by the Fourth of July.”