Wheat Pete’s Word, April 27: Pre-Seed Burns, Living Roots and Tiny Tractors

Will tiny tractors solve our compaction issues? Are you re-thinking your typical tillage plans? In this week’s Word, Peter Johnson, resident agronomist for RealAgriculture, covers everything from tillage to herbicide and compaction to crop insurance.

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Last Week’s Word: Manure Spreader Out, Corn Planter In

Highlights

- (00:56) Where did everyone go? Please leave questions/messages!
- (01:20) One grower finished planting corn and in the field spraying wheat, and “he’s not nuts at all.”
  - Spread out the workload.
  - As we go into the season, be safe. Take the time you need.
- (03:08) Western Canada already seeing some amazing cereal crops coming up.
  - Early seeding on cereals pays.
- (04:00) Organic farmer who was worried about frost-seeded oats earlier in the season says it’s looking good and healthy now.
- (04:20) Management
  - There’s a huge difference in options in the province.
  - From a tillage perspective, we have to manage soil moisture.
- (05:44) Red Clover
  - Growers convinced it got taken out by frost.
  - The deadline to insure clover with Agricorp is coming up.
  - Re-seeding clover now can work, but it’s a high risk situation.
  - Give it some time to grow after harvesting winter wheat.
- (06:45) Wheat
  - Most growers put more nitrogen on wheat crop this year than most because it looks so good.
  - BUT, now we have a crop that’s even more likely to lodge.
  - Less than 30% of the wheat crop is getting split-nitrogen.
  - You won’t try split-N, but try early fungicide, would ya?
  - Kansas already has tremendous stripe-rust. It could be coming to Ontario
- (08:42) Soil Fertility
  - One agronomist seeing only 1ppm of soil sulphur in most of the soil samples he’s seeing. Normally around 5ppm.
  - We’re not getting the sulphur release out of organic matter, so we might have a year where we see more response from sulphur application than usual.
- (10:00) Weed Control
  - Time to burn down soybeans.
  - European Union has not given formal approval of Xtend soybeans. Read More…
  - We need to kill fleabane immediately.
  - Discussing IP soybeans and herbicide programs. Be very careful if you’re going to use two Group 14, soil-applied herbicides, certain soybean varieties can get significantly damaged (up to 38% yield loss!).
  - Ask your buyer if the herbicides you plan to use on IP soybeans will be accepted.
  - Planting soybeans into green, living cereal rye. Watch: Soybean School: Starting Clean More Critical Than Ever
- (14:10) Final questions!
  - (14:10) Faller and Prosper.
  - (14:40) Compaction – dry manure, deep ripping, living roots…