Most seasoned canola growers know a staggering amount of canola seed never becomes a viable plant, and it’s not due to disease or poor germ. An unfortunate side effect of running an air drill is, well, air, or rather the damage that air can do to tiny canola seed as it pushes it through the… Read More
Category: Agronomy
The ideal set up for winter wheat is plating in mid-September at about half an inch deep with starter fertilizer. Then it rains and the crop grows to three leaves plus one tiller, then gets covered in a cozy blanket of snow, where it stays until it warms up in the spring. Reality, however, often… Read More
The first few days of May brought a surprise! The Twitterverse lit up with reports of cutworms in southern Alberta. The first report came in on a new alfalfa stand. In alfalfa we normally expect that the cutworms will be redbacked but in this case they were army cutworm. The second field was a winter… Read More
Do you consider a top hat and monocle essential dress for seeding season? Do you carry one of those little dogs in a handbag inside your tractor cab with you? If so, it makes sense that you would be driving around your field throwing canola seed all over the place through broken hoses and missing… Read More
Inoculating soybeans properly and with the appropriate product is one of the top two important decisions that factor into the success of the crop (variety selection for your region is the first). A 40-bushel an acre crop will require roughly 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre — properly inoculated soybeans will fix the lion’s share… Read More
The advent of glyphosate resistant weeds has and will continue to complicate pre-plant weed removal. Farmers need to match herbicide resistance management and control options with targeted weed species to ensure not only an effective kill, but also to avoid limiting control options later. Glyphosate-resistant giant ragweed has been confirmed in Ontario, and farmers set… Read More
Canada Fleabane can be the menace of menaces in your soybean crop IF you don’t hammer it down early. The truth is that the weed is so hearty — between its resistant characteristics and its ability to firmly root itself down — if you don’t deal with it while it’s young, you’ve got a problem… Read More
Well, winter won’t end and seeding won’t start, so Shaun Haney and Lyndsey Smith decided it was time to do something to shake things up a bit. Which, for many other media types, could mean writing a witty and intelligent editorial, but not for this RealAg team, no way. Instead, Haney and Smith zip through… Read More
For some farmers, including wheat in rotation comes with a second decision — what type of wheat to grow? There are good options from hard red spring, winter wheat, CPS and even soft wheat. Depending on your area and marketing opportunities, each can be a profitable alternative to hard red spring. CPS wheat can be… Read More
Getting your corn crop off to a good start sets the tone for yield potential down the line. In our last episode, we talked about getting your seed down in the right conditions. This episode we’ll look at providing your crop with the right elements to get it firmly established in the field. When you’re… Read More
As a farm writer, it’s my job to track down the expert on a long list of topics and interview them. These interviews are sometimes very routine — researchers are most certainly always knowledgeable, but not all of them effectively share the heart and soul of their work. That’s perhaps a bit harsh, but it’s… Read More
It’s the last day of April, and precious few farmers have turned a wheel in Western Canada. It’s currently cool and wet in Manitoba with snow in the western part of the province. Parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan had snow just yesterday (and still more have woken up to a winter wonderland). While some in… Read More
Canola volunteers can be tricky to control in the most “average” of years. But we all remember last year when 100km/h winds came and blew around canola, leaving bushels laying in fields, ready to germinate this spring. But just how much canola is in one of your fields? Here is some math to get an… Read More
Recently I have seen several different press releases on competitive companies deciding to share corn traits. Most farmers look at these kinds of announcements and just flip the page to the next article without a second look. Really you should take that second look and think about the impact on your farm in the future…. Read More
Remember this feeling, it happens every year. It’s that edgy, ready-to-go feeling that shows up every year around early April. The later it gets, the more the feeling gets amplified. Then you read stories (sorry) about the guy down the road that hit the perfect window in early April and absolutely nailed it at harvest…. Read More