Canola School: When Should I Swath My Canola? - Murray Hartman, Alberta Agriculture & Rural Development

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

Canola School: The Impact of Heat Stress on Canola - Murray Hartman

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

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

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

 

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