For a lot of farmers across the west, figuring out when to swath their canola fields may be as stressful as trying to get it in the ground was. The overabundance of moisture and the cool temperatures that producers had to deal with at the beginning of the season have caused varied staging in areas… Read More
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When you consider the temperatures across the prairies even a month ago, it’s hard to believe we’d be here now talking about the effects of high temperature on canola. That’s the nature of life on the prairies though. While prolonged periods of high heat may not be in the cards for most of the prairies,… Read More
We debut our new agronomy-themed Monday show on RealAg Radio this week. Bern Tobin endures a Christmas baking hangover to join co-host Kelvin Heppner, highlighting the newly-crowned Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2016 and previewing plans and themes for the upcoming busy agronomic conference season. Topics and guests on today’s show include Sheri Strydhorst on variety-specific… Read More
Update: The Canola Council of Canada has developed online calculators to determine your target plant density based on your individual field conditions, abilities and appetite for risk, as well as optimum seeding rate. You can find them at CanolaCalculator.ca. While the official industry recommendation for an optimal canola plant stand remains 7 to 10 plants per square… Read More
As canola seed prices have risen, farmers across the prairies have cut back on the amount of seed they’re putting in the ground. The Canola Council of Canada still recommends aiming for 7 to 10 plants per square foot with uniform emergence and spacing, but many farms have been targeting lower plant stands — in the… Read More
Sponsored Post: Alberta Canola is hosting eleven Powering Your Profits events at locations across Alberta from November 15 to December 1, 2017. Powering Your Profits events bring you the agronomy, marketing and farm management information growers need to increase their farming operations profitability. There is no charge to attend a Powering Your Profits event. Everyone… Read More
With maps of moisture extremes popping up across the prairies, and predictions of another dry year, it’s hard to know what to make of seeding. But, as Murray Hartman, oilseed specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry points out in this episode of the Canola School, there isn’t much sense in panicking. Not yet. Moisture Extremes… Read More
The Alberta Wheat Commission was formally created on August 1st, 2012, the same day the Canadian Wheat Board was stripped of its single desk selling authority for wheat and barley in Western Canada. Since then, AWC has become heavily involved in funding wheat research and market development, as well as serving as a voice for… Read More
We’ve focused a lot of attention on the site over this year’s unusual growing conditions, and we’ve heard a lot of producers comment on surprising yields at harvest. “We went through May and June with record drought in many parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan,” says Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Murray Hartman in the following video,… Read More
Crop rotation remains the most powerful tool in the fight against clubroot disease in Western Canadian canola fields, even with new resistant varieties being brought to market. As part of this episode of the Agronomy Geeks West podcast, host Lyndsey Smith caught up with Dr. Stephen Strelkov of the University of Alberta. His work documenting… Read More
A couple weeks ago there was a good discussion on Twitter discussing the varying thousand kernel weights (TKW) of canola coming from suppliers this season. I hear this discussion pop up every spring, it seems like, and no wonder. Average TKWs on seed fluctuate from year to year, yes, but there’s been a trend to… Read More
Are you seeding your canola at 5lb/ac? Unless your seed rate was calculated based on that seed lot’s thousand kernel weight (TKW), you may be losing yield potential, as plant numbers decline with increasing seed size. Angela Brackenreed, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, suggests re-calibrating when the TKW of a seed lot… Read More
Canola seed size has climbed in recent years from a once-common 4 grams per 1,000 kernel weight to north of 7 grams per 1,000 seeds. What does that mean to you, the farmer? It means that if you’ve stuck with your typical four pounds per acre seeding rate (and there are good reasons to do… Read More
Alberta’s CanoLAB kicked off this week in Olds, Alberta. The event was jam-packed with hands-on sessions involving disease, frost, insects, inputs and Olympics coverage — oh, that last bit was over lunch: totally legit. If you missed CanoLAB this year, following are some photos for your perusal (plus Saskatchewan and Manitoba have yet to host… Read More
Abiotic — or “nonliving” — stresses can cause significant yield loss in canola. And, unfortunately, symptoms like sterile and distorted pods, flower blast and pale petals are not unique to one stressor, making misdiagnosis very common. For example, extreme heat, nutrient deficiency and herbicide injury can all result in very similar damage in canola plants…. Read More