Reading Time: 5 minutes It was an eerie orange noon on August 15 and James Oberhofer needed to turn his truck lights on. When the agronomist for Six Strong Agronomy tried to scout under a canola field canopy, he saw only darkness. Things were in a stunning standstill as Alberta suffered the worst day in what had been a […] Read more
Canola growth stalled under a shroud of smoke
Alberta canola farmers dealing with another late harvest in 2018 estimate that smoky skies in August delayed their crop by at least 10 days. Is that possible?
If you have low soil pH, should you lime?
It can take tonnes of lime per acre to move soil pH from 5 to 7, but improved fertilizer availability for all crops, better nodulation for pulse crops and alfalfa, and reduced risk from clubroot in canola can make the investment worthwhile
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Finally.” That word got special emphasis when Doug Penney was asked about liming. “It has become a hot topic… finally.” Penney, a long-serving Alberta Agriculture fertility specialist and now semi-retired crop consultant, says many fields in Western Canada — especially in Alberta — probably would have benefited from lime a long time ago. Fields most […] Read more
Flax Council of Canada joins up with Canola Council
Reading Time: 2 minutes Winnipeg | CNS Canada – The Flax Council of Canada has announced a new operating structure; restructuring its board and joining forces with the Canola Council of Canada. The move comes six months after the council shuttered its Winnipeg office and reduced its services. “It’s clear that Canadian flax has tremendous potential, both on the […] Read more
‘Spray Guy’ puts the nix on ‘cavalier’ fungicide application
Fungicide drift should earn the same prevention as herbicide, according to one of Western Canada’s best-known spraying experts
Reading Time: 3 minutes Most farmers are more worried about drift if they’ve got herbicide in the tank, but at least one spray expert says those same concerns should apply to fungicide and insecticide. “I can’t tell you how often I hear, ‘Oh, it’s just a fungicide, fog it in,” said Jason Deveau, the fondly nicknamed “spray guy” from […] Read more
Pulses. More than a break crop in your canola rotation
Tours and events this summer will help you check which pulse crops can diversify your farm’s rotation
Reading Time: 6 minutes Rob Stone says red lentils “drive the bus” on his farm at Davidson, Sask. Granted, he says canola does quite a bit of driving too. But the point is this: his pulse crop is so much more than just a break crop for canola. Stone seeds about one-third of his land to lentils, on average. […] Read more
Out-competed
Again, the Australians are showing us how we’d market our crops if we had our act together
Reading Time: 7 minutes Is the Canadian grains sector being out-marketed globally? This is a question that has nagged me since February 16, the date the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre released new information brochures for Australian wheat, barley, oats, canola and pulses. “These publications are aimed at international purchasers of Australian grain,” the association (AEGIC) said in its […] Read more
Four steps for better seeding this spring
It’s an age-old conundrum: You need to expand so you acquire more acres of land to get more return, but then the rush to get a crop in means seeding some acres too early, too late, or too fast. “There’s a lot of potential for making a mistake when it comes to seeding,” said Harry[...]
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Giving crop roots a boost
Researchers can now identify the microscopic organisms on which roots depend, and are discovering ways to make their relationships even more effective
Reading Time: 4 minutes For as long as plants have been growing on land, their roots have shared a symbiotic relationship with microbes in the soil. Arbuscules — the microscopic nutrient-gathering hairs of mycorrihizae — have been found connected to 400-million-year-old plant root fossils from the Rhynie chert in Scotland. A paper by Winfried Remy et al, published in[...]
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Species-specific crop protection
RNA interference provides a new method of pest control, using tools so precise they hit only the target insect or disease
Reading Time: 4 minutes “We like to call sclerotinia the bully,” says Mark Belmonte. And stopping a bully is not easy. The pathogen attacks fast, it moves quickly through the plant and it can do heavy yield damage right away. “Because it acts with brute force and involves multiple genes, sclerotinia is difficult to study and get a good[...]
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Dealing with a flush of clubs
Clubroot specialists across the Prairies are sharing how to slow the disease’s spread, and how to keep it down when it does arrive
Reading Time: 4 minutes It turns out 200 kilometres of forest is not an impenetrable barrier for clubroot. Canola growers in the Peace River region had crossed their fingers, but knew deep down it couldn’t hold. “Most growers knew we weren’t living in a bubble up here,” says Gregory Sekulic, Canola Council of Canada agronomy specialist for the region.[...]
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A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
