Reading Time: 7 minutes Soil phosphorus levels are critically low in more and more fields. These fields may no longer provide enough phosphorus for crops to reach their yield potential, which means the solution to yield stagnation — on some fields, at least — could be plain old boring phosphate. Canola takes up around 1.5 pounds of phosphate per […] Read more
Is your soil lacking phosphorous? How to diagnose nutrient deficiency
Phosphorus deficiency is hard to identify and often goes unnoticed — even when significant yield loss can be occurring. Will an extra 20 lbs./ac. of phosphate pay off?
Building a career in the grain industry, from the pavement up
Is Charlene Bradley a template for a new generation of farmers?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Working in the grain industry had seemed an unlikely choice for Charlene Bradley. “If someone had said to me in Grade 12 that I’d be living on a farm and managing a grain elevator,” she now says, “I would’ve looked at them like they had three heads.” After all, growing up in Edmonton didn’t provide […] Read more
Your soil needs crop diversity
Stacked rotations may be worth more research, but until then, diversity is your best profit management tool
Reading Time: 4 minutes Healthy soil is the craziest, busiest jungle you can imagine. One gram of clubroot-infested soil can have a billion clubroot spores. A billion! All in a pinch of soil the size of a Skittle! Fusariums, pythiums, rhizoctonia and countless other beneficial fungi, bacteria and microbes are there, too. So are ions and molecules of calcium, […] Read more
The ultimate N rate for canola
If we could predict the weather perfectly, it might be different, but in the real world, the best tool to determine nitrogen rates is the soil test. It’s a great starting point for 2015
Reading Time: 5 minutes One lesson from the Ultimate Canola Challenge is that it’s a wise economic decision to follow your soil test recommendations for nitrogen. “We have always recommended soil tests to get an idea of the nutrient situation in a field, and what really pleased us about the Ultimate Canola Challenge results is how strongly they confirmed […] Read more
Managing your binned canola to prevent losses
A lot of high-risk canola went into bins in 2014, and by November, reports of heated canola had already started to pick up. Have you checked your bins lately?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Kristen Phillips knew she was putting high-risk canola in the bin. The Canola Council of Canada agronomy specialist, who farms near Brandon, Man. with her husband, Garrett, seeded a lot of crop late due to excess spring rains. And because they had to dodge potholes and seed when they could, a lot of the late-seeded […] Read more
Herbicide-resistant weeds are our biggest threat
There’s no reason why the West must become an Arkansas-style nightmare because of weed resistance, but we may be heading there anyway
Reading Time: 7 minutes Neil Harker calls herbicide-resistant weeds the biggest threat to sustainable crop production in Western Canada. “We’ve been the grim reaper talking about this for ages, but this is a watershed moment,” says the research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lacombe, Alta. “There are places in North America going back to the plow and […] Read more
Cut canola later, combine slower come harvest
Canola harvest losses can be a lot worse than you think. Swathing later is one way to boost yield. Refining your combine ground speed and other settings is another
Reading Time: 4 minutes Canola growers are leaving a lot of yield on the table. Or, more accurately, they are leaving a lot of yield “off” the table and on the ground at harvest. Estimates put losses from the harvest process alone at two to five bu./ac., on average. Early swathing adds to that total. Growers have two key ways […] Read more
Preserve blackleg resistance
Clip canola stems this harvest to check for blackleg in your fields
Reading Time: 5 minutes Blackleg has a way of sneaking up on you. A farm can go for years without any noticeable problems. But without the grower knowing, blackleg races within a field can shift — often in response to seeding the same genetic resistance source over and over — and infection starts to show up where it hadn’t […] Read more
12 insect tips for canola
Use these management tips throughout the growing season for effective, economic and practical insect control
Reading Time: 5 minutes Diamondback moths are in a deadly battle in canola fields — yet their primary adversary isn’t the grower. In fact, producers are learning to leave low populations of diamondback moth larvae alone because, in many cases, well-established beneficial insects will prevent the pest from becoming a major economic problem. The main parasitoids of diamondback moth […] Read more
Phosphate only in seed row
Fertilizer burn in the seed row causes hidden and costly damage in many canola fields, contributing to lower seed survival. Phosphorus is the only nutrient that shows any net benefit in the seed row with canola when soil levels are low
Reading Time: 4 minutes Canola is very sensitive to seed-placed fertilizer. We don’t know what percentage of canola seeds are lost to fertilizer burn or toxicity, given that many factors influence seed mortality, but generally, the more fertilizer placed with the seed, the more seeds and seedlings that will die. “Non-viable seeds and seedlings are a lost opportunity of […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
