Category: Soil

This week, Winnipeg, Man., hosted the World Congress on Conservation Agriculture — a three day event that brought together research and extension staff with farmers and industry to discuss the state of conservation agriculture all over the world. Conservation agriculture, a combination of zero-tillage, cover crops, extensive crop rotation and more, looks very different from... Read More

Two nitrogen stabilizers, N-Serve and eNtrench from Dow AgroSciences are now approved for use in canola, corn and wheat in Canada. Both products can be applied with fertilizer in fall or spring to protect farmers' fertilizer investment. N-Serve and eNtrench nitrogen stabilizers work by slowing the activity of the Nitrosomonas bacteria — a temperature sensitive... Read More

I promise at some point to jump off this Rotation Bandwagon and start talking about something else agronomy-related, but for now, humour me while I beat this ailing-but-still-alive-but-just-barely horse. Where was I? Oh, yes. Rotation. In my last podcast, featuring Randy Kutcher, we learned many things about plant pathology — how genetic resistance to a... Read More

It definitely seems to be one of those springs that will get referred to as, "remember the spring of 2014?" It isn't too late yet, but frustration is really settling in as farmers just want to get #plant14 really going or, for many, just started. No matter if you are in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or... Read More

Patience wears thin as we head in to May and the ground is still wet and cold. The cost of going in too soon, based on soil conditions and not the calendar, can be mighty costly. If the ground is fit, but a little cool, that's one thing, but ground that is both wet and... Read More

In two months' time, people from around the world will meet up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to share their knowledge and experiences with conservation agriculture. This is the first time the event, the sixth of its kind, has been hosted in North America. The World Congress on Conservation Agriculture will bring together researchers, industry and, most... Read More

Managing for nitrogen losses in crop production is important, absolutely, but N isn't the only nutrient at risk of being lost from the plant's refrigerator. Phosphorus, that other macro-nutrient we know and love, is also subject to losses — and while losses may go relatively unnoticed in the cropping system, our lakes are rivers pay... Read More

Phosphorus management is and must be a long term proposition. Phosphorus behaves very differently than nitrogen in the soil, as it binds tightly to soil particles and releases slowly over time. This is good and bad — it's not subject to the same loss risk that N is, but it also means that sometimes the... Read More

There's nothing quite like demo plots — where else will you find head to head comparisons of one variety or practice compared against its neighbour? The trouble with plots, though, is that you only usually see them once and then have to wait for data months later to find out what the real difference was... Read More

For anyone who has ever had to seed in wet or very wet conditions, mud is a four letter word. For those in heavy, sticky clays, mud is also synonymous with a poor planting job, often gumming up the equipment and messing up the seed bed. While there's no point in pushing hard when it's... Read More