What's your nitrogen management system for maximum corn yields? Do you plan on two applications? More? How do you decide how much and when? There are several great reasons to split applications of nitrogen — it's good risk management both to your pocketbook and the environment and a great way to capitalize on a crop... Read More
Category: Crop Schools
OK, you missed your window for that all important pre-seed burn. Things may have been a little soggy, you may have been a little busy...whatever the reason. The good news is you've still got a shot to get those beans poking up in a clean environment. It's crunch-time though, so in this episode of the... Read More
What's the toughest part of trying out a new crop? Once you get the equipment set up sorted out at seeding and harvest, it's on to crop diagnostics. Mother Nature tends to give farmers a bit of a break when it comes to disease and insect pressure in the first years of growing a crop,... Read More
Ensuring adequate nodulation starts with choosing the correct inoculant, keeping it alive prior to seeding and getting good coverage or placement. But what happens if, for any number of reasons, your pulse crop ends up with less than great nodules? What if you've got nodules that never pink up or seem to die off? In... Read More
Leaf rusts come in many shapes and strains and can be particularly hard to avoid, as the pathogen blows in from parts unknown (well, we know where, but that turn of phrase sounds better). What's perhaps more troubling is there is evidence that stripe rust may have over-wintered in parts of Alberta this year. Over-wintering... Read More
Seed size can vary significantly, making planting by weight or volume alone a rather untrustworthy endeavour. So it's no wonder calculating seeding rates based on the thousand kernel weight (TKW) of the desired crop is advised by so many researchers and agronomists. In this Wheat School, Richard Marsh of Syngenta re-joins Lyndsey Smith to compare... Read More
The pea leaf weevil can cause devastating economic losses to both peas and faba beans. Though the adult beetles feed on these crops after overwintering in perennial legumes, it is actually the larvae that cause the greatest damage. Larval feeding occurs on Rhizobium nodules for roughly six weeks. This may limit or completely inhibit nitrogen-fixation... Read More
Double nozzles are necessary to get the best possible coverage of a vertical target, true or false? Turns out, the answer is more likely that third option — the dreaded "it depends." In this Soybean School episode, Real Agriculture's Bernard Tobin is joined by Jason Deveau, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food spray specialist to... Read More
How close did you get to achieving the soybean plant density you were aiming for? What's the yield potential of the stand you have? The only way to get a bead on those answers is to get out and scout the soybean stand early in the season — at about the first trifoliate stage. How... Read More
A drawn out start to the growing season doesn't necessarily mean a drawn out growing season. Warm days with plenty of sun and mean growing degree days accumulate quickly, sending crops through their growth stages quickly, if the moisture is there. Wheat, and in this case winter wheat, can at times throw a curve ball... Read More