Ontario ministry of agriculture weed specialist Mike Cowbrough says it’s easy to pick on a herbicide when it doesn’t meet your weed control expectations. Unfortunately, he says, most growers don’t often have an opportunity to compare herbicide programs in their own field using check strips or unsprayed areas to test performance. But Cowbrough does have… Read more »
Category: Crop Schools
Corn School: Managing vomitoxin in the field and the silo
Agronomist Peter Johnson has been visiting cornfields and elevators to get a handle on the extent of vomitoxin levels in the Ontario corn crop. In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Corn School, Johnson discusses Ontario’s recent Grain Corn Ear Mould and Vomitoxin (DON) Survey, and notes that some samples coming off the combine have tested as… Read more »
Wheat School: Keep planting… it’s not too late
With a little luck, RealAgriculture agronomist Peter Johnson believesOntario farmers could still plant one million acres of winter wheat this fall. In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Wheat School, Johnson says it’s not too late to plant wheat in most of the province. Late-planted wheat can still deliver strong yields, but growers have to pay strict… Read more »
Wheat School: Search continues for weapons in battle against wheat midge
Wheat midge is still a significant threat to wheat in Western Canada. While the threat has subsided a bit because of the discovery and use of the SM1 resistance gene, it’s important to remember that there is only one bullet in the chamber, and if it gets spent wheat crops will be, once again, at… Read more »
Resistance Management School: Seeding rates to the rescue
Highly competitive crops that make it difficult for weeds to gain a foothold in fields play a key role in effective herbicide resistance management. One way to make your crop more competitive is to increase seeding rates to produce higher plant populations. In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Resistance Management School, University of Manitoba weed scientist… Read more »
Soybean School: Helping varieties ‘flex’ for higher yield
The concept of ‘flex’ corn hybrids has been talked about in seed circles for several years. The idea is quite simple: these corn hybrids have the ability to flex and create larger ears with more girth at lower populations. They produce higher yields when planted in the 28,000 seeds per acre range. The idea of… Read more »
Corn School: Plant deeper for higher yields
It might seem counter-intuitive, but slowing down corn emergence may actually boost yields. Plot results are in, and it would seem that optimum distance between corn plants matters far less than uniform emergence. And achieving perfectly uniform emergence takes planting deep. We already know that even emergence is key to top yields, but the mechanism… Read more »
Canola School: Harvest decisions and bin management for green or tough canola
Harvest started strong in most parts of the Prairies and then has either came to a complete halt or fallen into a slow grind of doing a few acres, checking moisture levels, changing fields, waiting, and getting frustrated. RealAgriculture’s Saskatchewan field editor Dale Leftwich went out to a couple of fields with Canola Council of… Read more »
Wheat School: Tips for dealing with tough grain in a cold, wet harvest
The phone is ringing off the hook at PAMI. Some very difficult questions are being asked by farmers as a result of the late harvest and the cool, damp weather. There are no easy answers, of course, but luckily PAMI has done a lot of research over the years and although they can’t change the… Read more »
Canola School: Comparing Canada versus the rest of the world
Canadian canola producers are among the most efficient when it comes to cost-of-production — with the exception of seed costs— but Canadian growers also receive slightly lower on-farm prices than canola and rapeseed producers in other parts of the world. “We’re basically leading, together with Ukrainian producers, in cost-of-production,” explains Joerg Zimmermann in the Canola… Read more »
Canola School: Introduce yourself, start a conversation
Your thirty second elevator pitch: We are often told we should have one. For many of us it is hard for us to even stammer out who we are in 30 seconds, let alone talk about something intelligently. Afterwards, we often think we should have said more, but with fewer words. In this episode of… Read more »
Wheat School: Increasing yield and protein with dissolved urea
Can dissolved urea increase your wheat yield? If it burns the crop will it still put more bushels in the bin? In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Wheat School we catch up with our resident agronomist Peter Johnson as he inspects a field of winter wheat that received 15 gallons per acre of dissolved urea with… Read more »
Corn School: Would variable rate planting fit your farm?
It’s time for corn growers to take a hard look at variable rate planting. That was agronomist Pat Lynch’s message to growers as they watched variable rate planters in action at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show (COFS) in Woodstock, Ontario. In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Corn School, Lynch says the ability to adjust seed population while… Read more »
Soybean School: What can you do about green soybeans?
Soybeans are most often grown places that get abundant rain, particularly in August. This usually happens in southern Manitoba, so an unusual problem is emerging there: soybeans are drying down, but staying green. In this episode of the Soybean School, RealAgriculture’s Dale Leftwich talks to Glenda Clezy, regional grow team advisor with Federated Co-op, about soybeans… Read more »
Canola School: PAMI publishes guidebook on straight-cutting canola
There is more and more and more demand for information about straight-cutting canola. In response to this demand, the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) continues to conduct research, quantify assumptions, and provide knowledge to farmers. Recently, PAMI put all that work together into a straight-cutting guidebook for canola. In this episode of the Canola School, RealAgriculture’s… Read more »