Wasn’t that a snowstorm? Well, depending on where you are in Ontario, it was either the most snow in one storm in years, or hardly a flake fell. The onset of winter is the onset of learning season, but it’s always the learning season here on Wheat Pete’s Word.
In this week’s podcast, settle in for a brain exercise on phosphorus — application type and timing, availability over time, and background fertility. Plus, hear about winter canola being perhaps too large going in to winter, why row spacing may not matter for wheat as much as you think, and what temp is needed to kill cover crop oats.
Have a question you’d like Wheat Pete to address or some field results to send in? Agree/disagree with something he’s said? Leave him a message at 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet (@wheatpete), or email him at [email protected].
- Pete talked about plowing. Did he hit his head?
- Do as little tillage as you can, move on
- Ag conferences are coming up! Get signed up to learn, y’all
- Southwestern Ontario got absolutely smacked by major snow fall this past weekend and early this week
- Ottawa and down along Lake Erie didn’t get any, though
- Mental health is a journey, not a destination
- Wheat Pete’s 15. Pick up the phone, reach out, check in, say hello
- Monday night’s episode of The Agronomists (check it out here). Quote of the show goes to Mark S, an agronomist down in the Delmarva area.
- “The most important person/customer is the one standing in front of me right now”
- If I only have 250 acres of cropland, it’s the most important thing to me
- The Canadian Association of Ag Retailers (CAAR) has a new resource out and quotes that 90 per cent of people trust farmers, but only 20 per cent of people trust modern farming
- Greg from North Dakota wanted to prove the safety of using glyphosate pre-harvest and tested his own crop to give him peace of mind
- You need to have some level of confidence that you’re doing good work
- Megan Moran shared a video on the BIG canola we have out there in southern Ontario. The tile-run effect is huge. See photo above
- What does too-big canola mean for winter survival?
- Didn’t hit record acres of wheat in the ground in Ontario but it’s in good shape
- Trees, tree line effect and wheat (see a video on tree impacts on corn here)
- Let’s talk phosphorus! And stick with us here, it gets a little complicated
- You need four times the broadcast fertility (P) to get the same response compared to seed-placed on wheat. What about broadcasting ahead of the wheat crop, in the beans?
- You’ll get less starter effect, because the longer the phosphorus is in the soil, the more it’s going to be able to react with the things in the soil that make it unavailable
- At high pH, it ties up with calcium. At low pH, it ties up with iron and aluminum. The longer it’s in the soil, the more likely it is to get tied up and unavailable
- However, broadcast in the spring, dose build base fertility
- Wait a tick. What about “more available” forms of P? Can you apply less?
- The availability of the phosphorus and the year of application matters, yes
- Remember that it’s about crop need, crop removal AND building soil reserves
- When we say phosphorus isn’t available in the soil, it’s in flux, and as the plant takes some up, the soil releases some more, otherwise we’d never get 250 or 200 bushel wheat crops
- Broadcast wheat, red clover went on last week
- What temperature kills oats? Minus nine at the crown, so -15 degrees C air temp for a fair piece of time
- At five inch rows, can I use less wheat seed. Short answer, no. Yield is made in heads per meter squared, driven by seeding date not row width
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