Alabama corn farmers eager for rain

XtremeAg’s Chad Henderson gets ready to make fungicide application on corn, while Kelly Garrett looks forward to an early wheat harvest.

Kelly Garrett — Arion, Iowa

Kelly Garrett is a fifth-generation farmer in western Iowa. Garrett farms 4,000 acres of corn, over 1,800 acres of soybeans, and 170 acres of winter wheat.

Currently on the farm, we’re finishing our postchemical application. We feel that the crop as a whole looks pretty good. We do have some uneven spots in some of the corn-on-corn fields, so we’re trying to identify what the problem is. Is it a typical residue management problem, or is there a disease present in some of the damper areas? We are not sure, but we are working on figuring it out to fix the problem. 

The winter wheat looks to have a lot of great yield potential. We’re excited to get into that. It seems like it might be a couple of weeks ahead. Instead of typically combining it July 20th, maybe we’ll be combining it July 5th. 

As for our rotational grazing project, we have now drilled almost all of the warm-season species that are out there, following the cows around in the rotation. Thankfully, Mother Nature has provided us with some moisture, so we feel like those will all grow very nice. The rain is always a blessing after what we’ve dealt with the last couple of years.

The most exciting thing that happened this past week was that my oldest son, Connor, got married! I am very happy and proud about that. I think his wife, Erin, is perfect. 

I would also like to say thank you to all of the attendees to my field day. It was a great day. The weather cooperated, and I feel it was a really successful event.

Chad Henderson — Madison, Alabama

Chad Henderson is a fifth-generation farmer in Madison, Alabama. Henderson Farms includes over 8,000 acres of dryland and irrigated corn, dryland soybeans, wheat, and dryland and irrigated double-crop soybeans. When not farming, Chad can be found carrying on another proud family tradition, as a drag racer for Henderson Racing.

The corn looks really good, but we’re getting to the level where we need rain pretty bad. One inch of rain would be a godsend right now. It hasn’t been really hot, like it usually is around this time of year. All things considered, the corn is holding on well. 

We’re approaching brown silk with some of the corn, but for the most part it’s in full pollination. We’ll be ready to make a fungicide pass on the brown silk application if we can get a rain. 

The early soybeans are approaching R3. We’re ready to make a PGR application and a fungicide application on those. [For] the double-crop soybeans, we were able to plant in some decent moisture when we cut the wheat. Now, we are completely finished planting soybeans. All of our soybeans have emerged. We have a good stand and we’re off to the races. 

The wheat turned out pretty good overall. We were able to get our wheat out in a timely manner and didn’t have any problems. All in all, it was good. 

I am looking forward to attending Matt Miles’ field day this week on Thursday at his farm in Arkansas.

Learn more