Early waterhemp emergence triggers spraying activity

ASHTON, Ill. — Sidedressing anhydrous ammonia and herbicide applications are the focus for the Henert family now that they are almost done with planting.

“We finished planting our commercial corn in April and started right on planting the seed corn during the last week of April,” said William Henert, who farms together with his wife, Lea, and his parents, Nolan and Linda Henert.

The family grows seed corn for Wyffels Hybrids.

“We work together with Wyffels for planting the seed corn and it depends on the germ of the corn,” William explained. “We have one field of seed corn left to plant and hopefully it will be done this week.”

“It’s a non-GMO hybrid so we wait for everything else to be planted around it before we plant the corn,” Lea added.

The order of planting the male and female rows of the seed corn varies by hybrid.

“Some are male first, some are both at the same time and some are female first,” William said.

A flamer is used is some situations.

“Instead of planting the male rows twice with the planter, we put all the male rows in at once,” William said. “Then we come back with a flamer and flame half of the rows to get the pollination delay they want.”

So far this spring, William said, rainfall has been adequate for his crops, although he did rotary hoe some of the corn he planted first.

“I did that right before the rain, just to make it rain,” he said. “All that early heat really moved things along nicely and so far with the seed corn we haven’t had any emergence issues.”

In most years, there are typical wet spots in their fields that don’t usually get planted.

“We might put some soybeans in there for ground cover in June,” William said. “But this year we have nice stands even in those spots, which is really rare.”

The Henerts sidedress the commercial and seed corn with anhydrous ammonia.

“We have all the commercial corn done and now we started on the seed corn sidedressing,” William said.

Spraying herbicides will start now since William is already finding waterhemp in his fields.

“I’m surprised to see the waterhemp so early, but with the early heat, that pushed it,” he said. “Three days of 80 degrees and the waterhemp will germinate so it was expected.”

The Henerts have started teaching their two sons, Wilson and Roy, weed identification.

“The boys know the difference between a couple of different major weeds,” Lea said. “So, they think that’s pretty fun and they will be good help this summer as we’re chasing waterhemp.”

The kids are excited to start their summer break from school.

“It’s really hard for them when the weather is nice and we get in the fields,” Lea said. “Because they feel like they’re missing out on all the things, so next week it will be all hands on deck.”

Mowing road ditches and waterways was completed on the Lee County farm in May.

“That’s something we like to get done before Memorial Day weekend,” Lea said.

Spring is a busy time for Lea as the technology applications specialist at GRAINCO FS.

“It’s been full this time of the year making sure our tablets are talking to our dispatching system,” she said. “Also keeping the internet up at all locations and the mixing systems running which for the most part has been fine.”

Lea is on-call to assist her coworkers whenever something breaks or somebody needs help with technology issues.

“Most of our people have laptops,” she said. “So, if the internet is out at one location, they can take their laptop to another location which works out pretty nicely.”