Category: Soil

A visual assessment of pulse crops isn't enough to know how well or poorly your inoculation program worked this year. What's more, it's important to track nodulation to ensure enough time to go in with a rescue nitrogen application, if warranted. So how do you know if your pulse crop is fixing enough N? Time... Read More

How often do you walk the waterways, riverbanks and marshy areas of your pastures? These transitional areas from pasture to waterway, called riparian zones, are vital to soil and water health and deserve attention now and again to ensure cattle haven't been too hard on them, or that invasive species or undesired species have moved... Read More

Well-managed pastures can produce good yields for years, but will produce best if fertility of those pastures is planned for the long-term. Big producing pastures require big fertility numbers, though grazing helps to cycle these nutrients back to the soil. Over-grazing, too low or high stocking densities and time all can begin to mine pasture... Read More

There are few things more troubling to a farmer than a sickly looking or well-chewed plant. Environmental stress is unavoidable, but determining the correct stress is important if you're looking to either a) remedy the situation or b) avoid it in the future. Manitoba soybean farmers enjoy relatively few disease and insect pressures, so far,... Read More

With concerns around climate change, the availability of non-renewable resources, and increasing the sustainability of industries as a whole, it is not surprising that organizations like the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) are looking at ways to harness energy that is otherwise wasted. I recently spoke to Joy Agnew, project manager at PAMI, about their... Read More

Thriving in wet, soggy soils (and thus seldom acknowledged as a problem-pathogen in Canada), aphanomyces is difficult to differentiate from other root rot microorganisms based on symptomology alone. Molecular techniques and identification of spores in the lab are the best means of identification, and as of right now, there is no commercial test available for... Read More

There are times when high quality high just isn't in the cards. In fact, sometimes the weather makes even attaining low quality hay nearly impossible. It's times like these that some farmers choose to turn too-wet hay into silage or haylage. The downside there, however, is that quality has already been lost — had you... Read More

Damage from soybean cyst nematode can be minor, but once this pest is established in a field, it's there for good. Since being confirmed in Ontario about 15 years ago, the nematode moved throughout much of the soybean growing region. Knowing the nematode pressure level in your fields is essential to minimizing damage through the... Read More

Not only does the CX-6 Trident row unit have some flashy colours, but the product also made a real splash at Canada's Farm Progress Show and was awarded the people's choice award for innovation. The word "innovation" gets thrown around too often, it seems, but the row unit, developed by B.C.-based Clean Seed Capital Group,... Read More

With the corn crop off to a good start, now is a great time to assess root establishment, check for compaction layers and get a handle on seed placement. See How to Measure Hard Pan In this video, Mark Van Veen of Salford Machinery, walks us through two soil pits — one that shows us... Read More