Soybeans or corn? Which seed makes the most sense to plant first next spring? Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs soybean specialist Horst Bohner says good arguments can be made for planting either crop first. The best solution might be to buy a second planter and start rolling with both crops at the… Read More
Category: Agronomy
Happy holidays, one and all, and gather ’round as it’s time for the last episode of Wheat Pete’s Word for 2023! For this episode, host Peter Johnson is coming to you from the city of London — the British one — where he’s spending time with family, but also touring some farms and research plots… Read More
Spraying enthusiasts visiting Agritechnica 23 had plenty of good things to say when visiting the Agrotop location to check out the company’s easyFlow M self-cleaning chemical transfer system. All the chatter prompted RealAgriculture’s Shaun Haney to ask Agrotop’s export manager Joachim Herfort for a hands-on demonstration of how the closed, contamination-avoiding and self-cleaning transfer system… Read More
The application of sulphur fertilizer involves a key question: when does the crop need the sulphur? Sulphur application might not be a common one, but for both the east and the west, it’s one that requires long-term planning as some products require weathering and microbial breakdown to release the nutrient. There are a few options… Read More
It’s time to wrap up this season of The Agronomists, tackling the top agronomy lessons of the year. From extreme dryness in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, to a mixed season in Manitoba, and a dry-to-very-wet season in Ontario, we’ve got three agronomists to unpack the worst and the wins of 2023. For this episode… Read More
Healthy soils can be a crops’s best friend when the weather turns extreme. If it’s too dry, a healthy soil with high water-holding capacity can capture, store, and deliver critical moisture to growing plants; if it’s too wet that same soil will play a key role in transporting excess water down through the soil profile… Read More
It won’t be long before final decisions on seeding rate, seeding date, and pre-seed burndown are made. Every year holds a certain level of unknown, but a few key pests are proving to be a likely issue for the coming growing season. For this episode of the Canola School, Lyndsey Smith is joined by editor… Read More
There’s a possible yield benefit for peas following wheat in a crop rotation rather than canola, according to research done through the University of Manitoba. This Pulse School episode features Brodie Erb, MSc student and field technician at the U of M, who has spent the past three years looking at how preceding crop, residue… Read More
Precision Planting is changing the process of testing soil with a new Radical Agronomics program that relies on an automated soil analysis laboratory. Mike Easter, Precision Planting’s commercial lead for Radical Agronomics, says the program is designed to address some challenges with current laboratory systems and soil testing’s manual process. “What we’ve done is we’ve… Read More
Putting cover crops to work on Randy Tkachyk’s farm means keeping soil covered, growing winter feed for cattle, and providing grazing opportunities for those cattle well in to the fall. Tkachyk grows a diverse cover crop mix on his farm near Sundown, Man., as a means to manage risk against the growing season. A 15-way… Read More
Corn growers often apply nitrogen later in the season to gain more control of the crop. At the V10 or V11 development stage, growers typically have a better understanding of how the crop is developing, its yield potential, the growing environment and what the market is willing to pay. There’s also logistics to consider —… Read More
It turns out that even Peter “Wheat Pete” Johnson is mortal, and in this week’s podcast you’ll likely end up feeling a little sorry for Mr. Johnson, as his voice has fallen victim to the winter woes. Nonetheless, our intrepid host of Wheat Pete’s Word still has managed to record this episode and in it… Read More
Dealing with herbicide resistant weeds or trying to control weeds without access to certain herbicides really equates to the same thing — finding alternative means to control weeds. For attendees at Agritechnica, that meant a focus on iron, from inter-row and around the plant cultivation, to precision tillage, but also into the spot-spray realm. To… Read More
It’s bad news for weeds. Travelling at speeds of up to 18 km per hour, Garford says its Robocrop guided hoes will either pull out the pests or cut them down. In this report from Agritechnica 23, host Shaun Haney and Garford’s technical sales and marketing manager Allan Knight discuss how the U.K.-based company uses… Read More
Farmdroid, the autonomous seeding and weeding robot, began working Canadian soils in 2022. The solar-powered robots first landed in Canada with the ability to seed 30 different crops, including sugar beets and a range of vegetables. In this report from Agritechnica 23 at Hanover, Germany, FarmDroid’s Eddie Pederson notes that the evolving robot will now… Read More