Farming

Chad's contest corn took a beating this week as a freak wind storm came through his northern Alabama farm and took it down in a matter of minutes. Now we see if it decides to stand back up over the next few days.

Farming in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, Kevin is no stranger to high temperatures (and high humidity, high water, high winds, and whatever else Mother Nature decides to throw at him), so he is prepping his crop with a treatment of Heat Shield from Hefty Naturals. Don't judge Heat Shield by its size, this stuff spreads like a fungus, and that's because it is a fungus...a beneficial fungus that lives and works inside the plant to increase its ability to withstand difficult growing environments.

Matt is out early this morning to talk about the phenomenon of atmospheric inversions and his method for making sure the conditions are right for spray applications.

Lee looks at some frost damage in his wheat crop and the difference between the damage in low and high moisture areas of his field. Lee talks about the recipe that he is using in his sprayer to alleviate the damage. He is using a mix of immune elicitors, PGRs and a few other additives to drive increased cell division and growth. Lee talks about his approach and the reasons why he is using the products he is using.

On December 9th, hoping to get a jump start on his spring beans, Kelly Garrett planted 30 acres of soybeans on his western Iowa farm. It was a long shot, but success was not totally out of the realm of possibility. After a long cold winter and a wet spring, Kelly reveals the outcome in this video.

Mark Coots has seen a lot of things in his career at the helm of his family business, TEVA Corporation, but he hasn't seen everything. Mark gets the full story behind Kelly's December bean planting idea.

With temperatures out of the sub-zero range and back to normal, what better time to check the soybeans that Kelly planted in December. Mike, Kelly and Connor head out to dig in and see for themselves.

Kevin ran 14 varieties of soybeans on his Cooleemee farm site this season. All were on Netafim subsurface drip irrigation. He planted on April 30th, but should have been planted earlier, at a population of 130,000. Kevin shares the yield data, solar radiation and precipitation data across growth stages.

Everyone is telling Kelly that his idea to plant soybeans in December is a bad one, but he doesn't care. So, he's got a few bags of beans and he's putting in 30 acres before winter sets in.