How healthy is your soil? If you want to know all you have to do is bury your underwear, says Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) soil management specialist Adam Hayes. Last summer, Hayes helped members of the Renfrew County Soil and Crop Improvement Association bury underwear in their fields to determine... Read More
Category: Agronomy
When you're on the hunt for that new seed drill one of the major consideration is row width configurations. There continues to be an influx of European thought on cereal production with the push to run sub-7.5 inch row widths. Some would argue that Ontario growers have gone narrower at a faster rate than Western... Read More
Are you tired of planting wheat every year? What if you only had to plant the crop every four years? If those questions spark your interest, you won’t want to miss this episode of Real Agriculture's Wheat School featuring Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research scientist Jamie Larsen. He’s working to develop perennial wheat that would... Read More
Corn plants do indeed yield less when they emerge one day after their neighbour. What's more, the yield gap widens even further for later emergers. That’s the bottom line on the 2016 Real Agriculture flag test research,conducted by resident agronomist Peter Johnson. In this episode of Corn School, Johnson tells co-host Bernard Tobin that, based... Read More
We're kicking off February with a correction — no, that wasn't Greg Stewart in the production guide you saw last week, it really was your Wheat Pete's Word host Peter Johnson. This week, Johnson covers a whole lot of ground, including a reminder to check on your tiled fields to help identify broken tiles, a... Read More
Researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the University of Guelph say they've found a new midge species causing damage to canola in northeastern Saskatchewan and east-central Alberta. This new species is similar to the swede midge, and belongs to the same Contarinia genus, but has yet to be named and scientifically described, according to... Read More
Ontario’s extremely dry 2016 growing conditions provided ample evidence of the benefits of growing cover crops and lengthening rotation to improve soil health and moisture-holding capacity. University of Guelph soil scientist Dr. Bill Deen shared some of that proof with agronomists attending the recent Ontario Certified Crop Advisor Association conference in London. For example, at... Read More
The marriage of agronomy and data really can deliver better profits for growers wedded to precision planting technology. That was the message from the A-Team – Pride Seeds agronomist Aaron Stevanus and Veritas agronomist Aaron Breimer – earlier this month when they spoke to growers at the Southwest Agricultural Conference at the University of Guelph’s... Read More
Will bare fields and warm weather cause wheat to break dormancy? And if so, could we be looking at a wheat price rally for 2017? That's where we start with Wheat Pete's Word, and from there Peter Johnson takes us on a wild agronomy ride that covers strip-tilling dry beans into hay ground, what to... Read More
Does it make sense to grow more bushels per acre of wheat? Only if it’s more profitable, says agronomist David Shortall. In this episode of Wheat School, Real Agriculture agronomist Peter Johnson talks with Shortall, a native of Ireland, who now works for Cargill in Ontario. They discuss the results of a recent case study... Read More