Unless it’s too late and you’ve already found clubroot symptoms in your canola, you won’t know whether you have it without getting tested. This Canola School episode focuses on testing for clubroot and how to go about determining whether clubroot spores are present in the soil. Finding the nasty soil-borne disease when spore loads are still low… Read More
Category: Soil
Soil conditions in the heart of the soybean growing area on the eastern prairies have been dry this spring, leading to questions about planting deeper than normal to ensure the seed has access to moisture. This Soybean School West episode takes us to the middle of a windy field near Portage, Man., where Dieter Schwarz of Pride… Read More
Soil moisture conditions across Western Canada are “in reasonably good shape” heading into the 2015 growing season, but there are areas where farmers who might not be accustomed to farming in dry conditions are preparing for a dry start to the year. As Bruce Burnett, weather and crops specialist with CWB, explains in the audio interview… Read More
Phosphorus is essential for growing crops, but it becomes a pollutant when too much of it moves into waterways, including major water bodies like Lake Erie. How climate and management practices, such as tile drainage and tillage, impact the movement of nutrients from farm fields into the water system is the focus of much of… Read More
A&L Biologicals Inc. will receive funding of nearly $1.2 million to help develop a diagnostic test aimed at providing corn producers information to “increase their productivity through improved plant and soil health,” says an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada press release. A&L Biologicals will use molecular technologies to detect and diagnose microorganisms that impact corn output…. Read More
Farmers who bought a new planter with a dust deflector, retro-fitted an after market one or fabricated their own since last spring may be eligible for cost-share funding through the Great Lakes Agriculture Stewardship Initiative program. Margaret May, regional coordinator with the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association, is reminding farmers that the deadline to… Read More
Testing for clubroot falls into an interesting classification — it’s a disease, yes, but it’s in soil. Do you send samples to a soil lab or a seed lab? In this edition of Under the Microscope, Holly Gelech, business development manager with Biovision Seed Labs, walks us through how labs test for clubroot and while… Read More
Farmers in the Lake Erie and Southeast Shores of Lake Huron (GLASI) watersheds may be eligible for two new funding programs administered by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA). The first initiative provides financial support to those who have installed or would like to install dust deflectors on pneumatic seeding equipment, with a… Read More
You’ve likely heard it said that we’ve got to stop treating soil like dirt. To take it a step further, Ray Archuleta wants farmers to start thinking about soil as much more than a growing medium and instead consider it a living partner of the farm. Archuleta, a soil-focused agronomist, presented at this year’s SoilSmart… Read More
How can a producer make their farm more resilient and less vulnerable to both economic and climatic stresses? Focus on the health of the soil, says Ray Archuleta, a conservation agronomist with USDA-NRCS in North Carolina (and also known as the “The Soil Guy.”) Archuleta spoke about the “journey to soil health” during his keynote presentation… Read More
Soil moisture observations collected by a new NASA satellite will be used for a number of agricultural applications in Canada. The space agency launched the SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) satellite on Saturday, January 31st — it’s the first satellite dedicated to monitoring soil moisture levels around the globe. Jarrett Powers, manager of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Knowledge… Read More
Not only are there environmental benefits to improved soil biology, but there are economic incentives as well, says a farmer from Ohio who spoke about cover crops and a systems approach to microbiology at the SoilSmart conference in Waterloo, Ont., in late January. Jeff Rasawehr joined Bernard Tobin to discuss six steps for establishing healthy soil, which… Read More
A joint federal-provincial funding announcement has pledged $250,000 in research funding and $969,000 for equipment for a Manitoba lab aimed at identifying and addressing problems caused by canola diseases and pests. Research funding is provided under Growing Forward 2 – Growing Actions and will be used to take samples from across the province to determine… Read More
The Saskatchewan Forage Council (SFC) recently completed a study to investigate the status of trace mineral across the province. Pastures were sampled in 2012 and 2013, looking at four soil zones and various forage species in spring and fall. In general, the study found copper and zinc decreased from spring to fall, while iron, manganese… Read More
Concerned about soil compaction? You’re not alone. Soil structure and health is increasingly on farmers’ radars for very good reason — the more researchers uncover about soil, the more links we have connecting soil quality to everything from crop yield, to nutrient run-off risks and erosion problems. The unfortunate thing about compaction, says Jodi DeJong-Hughes,… Read More