Category: Soil School

This episode of Soil School is an interview with Jodi DeJong-Hughes, of the University of Minnesota, discussing how best to adopt strip tillage and avoid some of the common pitfalls farmers face when changing practices.DeJong-Hughes examines optimum season of application, controlled traffic farming, crop type, and trafficability when it comes to strip tillage.Listen on for… Read More

Cover cropping — and then planting into that green cover crop in spring — has become more common in pockets of the U.S. and Canada over the past decade, but the adoption rate has tended to be slower in more northern areas with short or dry fall seasons. These also happen to be areas where… Read More

Warren Schneckenburger is a big proponent of no-till and optimizing soil health, but he also has a disc cultivator that he turns to in times of need.The Morrisburg, Ont. farmer likes to say he farms in reality — he and his family have been focusing on soil health for a decade, but the clay loam… Read More

For those who love soil, there’s nothing quite so painful as driving along a country road in winter, and seeing topsoil smeared along the snow banks.“Snirt” or “snoil”, depending on who you ask, is valuable top soil that’s been picked up by wind and shifted in to ditches, approaches, or even neighbouring fields.In this episode… Read More

Boron is one of the essential micronutrients needed to grow a high-yielding crop of canola.When looked at in the plant and how it is used, boron doesn’t move about all that quickly.As Erika Dowling, technical sales manager with Mosaic Company, explains in this Soil School episode, due to the slow mobility of boron in the… Read More

Whether you’re talking to financial advisors or agronomists, having knowledge and data about your farming operation is key. Digging a soil pit is a great way to see what exactly you’re dealing with below the surface.On this episode of the Soil School, we are joined by Ken Wall, a grow team advisor with Federated Co-operatives Ltd…. Read More

Building organic matter, soil health, 4R nutrient management, and profitability are all part of the crop production puzzle Bill Ungar and the team at Sandy Shore Farms is piecing together on the sandy north shore of Lake Erie.On this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soil School, Ungar, Sandy Shore’s agronomy manager, shares how the family-owned farm and vegetable producer… Read More

Soil health has certainly gained more attention and become a higher priority when it comes to farming practices, but it remains a very personal idea, depending on who you talk to and where you are.While the results and practices may look similar, the definition of success when it comes to soil health can differ from… Read More

Andy Kieraszewicz never thought the sandy soils on the former tobacco land he farms at Rodney, Ont., could ever average more than 200 bushels of corn per acre. But a fervent commitment to rebuilding organic matter in the drought-prone areas across the 1,000-acre operation has the farmer now consistently producing eye-popping yields he didn’t think… Read More

How do you measure soil heath?On this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soil School, OMAFRA soil scientist and land use specialist Dan Saurette joins Bernard Tobin to look at some of the assessment tools available to farmers and the type of insights they provide.One of the most well known soil health tests is Cornell’s Comprehensive Assessment of… Read More