Category: Crop Schools

With concern over bee health and the potential impact of seed treatments that contain neonicotinoid products increasing, the seed industry is taking steps to offer farmers choices in seed treatment options for 2014. How do you decide if you need to order seed with or without an insecticide seed treatment? Greg Stewart, corn specialist with... Read More

Is the soybean setting on the combine really where you should start when setting up the combine for harvest? And is a flex header really necessary or just a nice-to-have sort of piece of equipment? The answers are yes and yes, and in this video, Harvey Chorney, of the Prairie Agriculture Machinery Institute and a... Read More

With good lodging resistance, early seeding and marketing flexibility, it's no wonder faba bean acres continue to rise in Alberta. And with harvest nearing completion, those faba bean stalks are starting to fall, leaving many a smiling farmer in their wake. "By now a lot of the faba beans have started to come off," said... Read More

Canola that goes in the bin dry but hot is still at risk for spoilage. The same can be said for grain with high weed seed, insect parts or just dockage in general. While it seems obvious to some, reports of full bin losses happen every year — losses that could be avoided simply by... Read More

How has the corn crop fared? Will the high levels of vomitoxin seen in wheat and barley also occur in the corn crop? Not always, says Greg Stewart, corn specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. In this episode of the Corn School, Stewart discusses preliminary production estimates of the Ontario corn crop,... Read More

Phil Needham's main message for anyone aiming for maximum wheat yields is always to pay most attention to the actual seeding pass. The potential of any crop is established at seeding and emergence, and achieving maximum potential requires quality seed, high seeding rates and the all-important precise seed placement. Several types of drills will do... Read More

The first rule of planting winter wheat is to start early. If you didn't (and, with a late soybean harvest, that's reasonable to expect), the next rule of planting winter wheat is to start now. That's because the earlier in the ideal seeding window winter wheat gets in the ground, the more likely that crop... Read More

Hear that? If you shake soybean plants and hear the rattle of seeds in the pods, the plant has reached physiological maturity. Does that mean the crop is ready to harvest or past being damaged by frost? Not so fast. In this Soybean School video, Kristen Podolsky, production specialist with the Manitoba Pulse Growers Association,... Read More

Is blackleg resistance breaking down in current canola varieties? The only way to really know is to first scout (swath-timing, harvest and post-harvest are all great times to scout) for the disease and confirm infection. Resistant varieties may still become infected, so seeing infected plants in your crop isn't necessarily cause for alarm, but if... Read More

The canola crop is ripening at an incredible pace — should you wait and straight cut or try and swath ASAP? How fast is too fast to combine canola, in either scenario? These are questions that come up every year, but the trade-off between swathing and straight-cutting are especially important this year as the canola... Read More