Over the Thanksgiving long weekend, the province of Manitoba was blanketed with snow in amounts unimaginable for the third week of fall. As of Sunday morning, 50 to 60 millimetres of precipitation had fallen, mainly in the form of snow in the southwestern and southeastern parts of the province, while the central and Interlake regions… Read More
Farmers across the Prairies have had to deal with some wacky weather this year. From little to virtually no moisture during seeding to a full on snow storm near the beginning of fall — Mother Nature has not been kind. This past week in Manitoba, was a struggle for many as the snow came down… Read More
A lot of crazy things can happen when it comes to weather, but a record snowfall in September takes the cake for most this year. Last week meteorologists stunned people in Alberta with their predictions of huge amounts of snow just a week into fall. When the weekend finally arrived, sure enough, so did the… Read More
Soybean harvest is underway in Ontario as the crop matures rapidly. It’s good news for winter wheat growers looking to get the crop planted on soybean ground, says RealAgriculture agronomist Peter Johnson, but there are still plenty of late-planted green soybeans that are a long way from the bin. The prospect of another year of… Read More
Weather has always been an external uncontrollable factor for farmers across the world. Besides having plants in a greenhouse, weather impacts all of us in terms of agronomy, the markets, and the food we buy at the store. Lately, all of this unpredictable weather has reminded some of us that we can be the victims;… Read More
Many corn growers across Ontario continue to hold their breath as the late-planted, slow-developing crop continues its march to maturity. In early September, many growers wondered whether the crop would make it, but after a stretch of good weather and an extended forecast that promises more warm days and good nighttime temperatures, the finish line… Read More
After being at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show this week, it’s very clear that the fate of farmers’ profitability rests firmly in the hands of Mother Nature. Starting in 2018, Mother Nature has not exactly been on friendly terms with farmers. The August rains brought significant DON issues to the corn crop, fall and winter conditions… Read More
The 2019 growing season will go down in the memories of most farmers as one of weather challenge after weather challenge — too dry, too wet, too cool, too cloudy. From Western Canada, across Ontario, and even as far as the east coast, this growing season has swung from one weather extreme to the other,… Read More
Ontario’s challenging 2019 spring weather left almost 200,000 acres unplanted in the province, but those acres now present a tremendous opportunity to plant a high-yielding wheat crop. That’s the message agronomist Peter Johnson shares with growers on this edition of the RealAgriculture Wheat School. “Planting early is the number one way to make great yields,”… Read More
August rains make soybeans — it’s more than just a cliche, it’s a crop management fact that rings true whenever timely moisture finds soybean fields during a pivotal growing month for the oilseed crop. On the episode of the RealAgriculture Soybean School, AGRIS Co-operative senior agronomist Dale Cowan tells us why and how August rains… Read More
Testing for DON in Ontario’s 2018 corn crop was an incredibly frustrating process for growers. With gibberella ear rot infecting a wide swath of corn in the province, many growers were exasperated when samples from the same load of corn taken from a field would show wide variation in DON levels — sometimes from 3… Read More
Could 2019 be another ‘gibb’ year for corn growers? That’s a question RealAgriculture agronomist Peter Johnson encounters almost daily. When asked, he says there’s “not a chance” of the widespread gibberella outbreak Ontario growers experienced in 2018. However, he notes that “in isolated areas, we do have a high risk of gibberella ear rot infection… Read More
As if Alberta’s northern region hadn’t had enough adversity this growing season, social media filled with reports of frost over the weekend. Christi Friesen, a farmer in the province’s Peace Country, tweeted a picture confirming the frost early Saturday morning, writing that the barley and wheat (early milk to early dough stage) were officially hit…. Read More
When it comes to corn production, is 2019 a year to forget or a year to remember? For RealAgriculture’s Peter Johnson, it’s a year to learn. On this episode of RealAgriculture Corn School we catch up with Johnson at Diagnostic Days at Ridgetown College, University of Guelph, where our resident agronomist is busy digging up… Read More
Part of the attraction of strip till corn is the ability to cultivate strips in the fall and place fertilizer. It makes for less work in the spring when the field work window is compressed. Those fall strips in heavier soil also help warm the planting zone. But what about fertility — how does corn… Read More