How much corn yield potential are you losing as the rain continues to fall across Ontario? As of May 5, you haven’t lost anything yet, but yield potential does start to diminish around May 10, says Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) corn specialist Ben Rosser. In this episode of RealAgriculture Corn… Read More
Category: Weather
Weeds are thriving in Ontario winter wheat fields and in many cases are beyond the size for optimum weed control. In this episode of Real Agriculture Wheat School, Deb Campbell from Agronomy Advantage explains that winter annuals are seven to 10 days ahead of normal and that means growers will have to shift their mindset… Read More
Will you be splitting your wheat nitrogen application this spring? Agronomist Peter Johnson thinks you should. In this episode of Real Agriculture Wheat School, Johnson reviews the split N strategy and why growers should take a hard look at making it part of their management plan. “First of all, it simply buys you insurance against… Read More
How important is organic matter and how can you add more to your soil? Soil organic matter is farming’s Holy Grail and every farmer should want more, says Peter Johnson, RealAgriculture’s resident agronomist. In this video, Johnson shares some simple strategies on how farmers can pump up organic matter levels to hold more water and… Read More
With the calendar flipping to 2017, Ontario growers begin to pay a little closer attention to the spring weather forecasts. There is still time but January is the time when the spring itch can start. In 2016, growers were reminded that average rainfall is not as important as timely rain as growers pushed yields above… Read More
The 2016 harvest seems difficult to forget but it’s time to forget and focus on the spring that lies ahead. It’s bitterly cold across the west this week so it’s hard to think about spring weather, but for anyone that has crop left out in the field you are definitely hoping for an open, dry… Read More
Growing soybeans in Ontario in 2016 was a real nail biter. Even Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs soybean specialist Horst Bohner admits to being pretty nervous as the soybean crop struggled through a dry July. Many farmers were lucky when rains arrived in August, but a good portion of the province –… Read More
If your wheat stand looks more like a golf green than a cereal crop, should you still put down clover early in the spring? And why the push for longer season varieties? Yes, it’s time for Wheat Pete’s Word here at RealAgriculture, and Peter Johnson has a fact-ion (see what we did there?) packed podcast… Read More
Everything old is new again. That’s certainly the case when it comes to interseeding cover crops into corn. In this episode of Real Agriculture’s Corn School, University of Guelph-Ridgetown College researcher David Hooker unearths some historic evidence of Ontario farmers’ and researchers’ fascination with cover crops and their efforts to interseed them in growing cornfields…. Read More
It might only be the middle of October, but it looks and feels like winter in parts of Western Canada, especially as you move north and west in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Snow and freezing rain have left many canola growers with a helpless feeling as crop that was ready to be harvested is now under… Read More
Crop hail insurance claims in Western Canada were up around 50 percent in 2016 versus last year. The number of claims rose from 13,222 in 2015 to 19,854 in 2016, according to the Canadian Crop Hail Association’s final report for the season. It’s estimated payouts to farmers will total just over $256 million — well… Read More
Ontario’s corn crop is showing high vomitoxin levels and growers are being urged to harvest as quickly as possible to preserve corn quality. Last week, the OMAFRA Field Crops team revealed that 26% of the samples taken in its annual vomitoxin survey had DON concentrations of 2.0 ppm or greater. At these levels, vomitoxin produced… Read More
Just east of Westlock, Alberta, whole fields of standing canola are encased in ice. This latest storm that rolled through late Saturday night was insult added to the injury of five to ten inches of snow that fell Friday, October 14, 2016. These scenes at Westlock aren’t rare right now: huge areas of central and northern… Read More
It’s been dry, to very dry, to a full-on drought in Ontario this year, and that dry trend doesn’t look to be letting up substantially heading into the harvest season. That’s according to Bryce Anderson, senior agriculture meteorologist with DTN, who spoke with Shaun Haney, to recap what weather farmers can anticipate for the #harvest16 season. From… Read More
Could the great dry up finally be on for Western Canada? Will we stay frost-free to Thanksgiving? Real Agriculture’s Shaun Haney is joined by senior agriculture meteorologist for DTN Bryce Anderson to talk current weather trends for Western Canada — including what’s behind the cool, wet weather trend most farmers have been grappling with for… Read More