Wheat Pete’s Word, Jan 7: Installing Tile Drainage, and (Not) Farming Last Year’s Weather

In this week’s Word, Peter Johnson, resident agronomist for RealAgriculture and host of this weekly podcast, gives us the highlights of the SouthWest Ag Conference, and manages to squeeze in a few questions around cover crops, fungicides and soil sampling.

Have a question for Wheat Pete? Call 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet (@wheatpete), or email him at [email protected].

Highlights:

• 

  The Guide to Weed Control is available now.

• SouthWest Ag Conference highlights.
• Dave Hooker on nitrogen and fungicides interacting the same way in corn as they do in wheat. Synergy where 1+1 does not equal just 2.
• Residual fertility makes a huge difference.
• New research with glyphosate tolerant crops shows critical weed free period might be much earlier than we thought on corn.
• Marketing – Big, big crops, big, big carryovers.
• It looks like 2016 spring residue will be decomposed much more than 2015.
• Don’t farm last year’s weather!
• Tile drainage – seems to have a good impact on dry years as well as wet.
• If you rent or own in Ontario, tile.
• Is there any research that says the yield benefit from other cover crops is as good as red clover?
• We have to be much better at understanding when nitrogen releases out of cover crops.
• Roots Not Iron project – tried cover crop in corn. More work needs to be done on this.
• Soil sampling – in high yield zones, really low fertility. In low yields, incredibly high fertility. Makes sense, right?
• Buctril M + fungicide +20 gallons water = burn in wheat. What do I do?

Related:

• SouthWest Agricultural Conference (Jan 5-6, 2016)
• Farm Start – Digging into the Business of Farming Course

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