alfalfa in manitoba's interlake region

Managing diseases in alfalfa

From seedling issues to stand die-off, understanding the timing and symptoms of alfalfa diseases can help protect yield

Understanding the multiple potential disease pressures on your alfalfa stand can help you improve its yield.

Snow depth on the Prairies, an important number for overwintering wheat crops, has decreased by four centimetres from 1948 to 2012.

Payoffs and pressures for cereals in a changing Prairie climate

Warmer, wetter, longer growing seasons carry risks as well as rewards

Cereal crops in Western Canada will be influenced by climate change in the coming years — but the impact will depend on both the crop and the primary area of Western Canada where it’s grown. Barley and oats are grown primarily in the cooler regions of the Prairies and will benefit from a longer growing […] Read more


An open canola stem revealing blackleg

Back to blackleg

Lab-testing canola stem samples can help verify the disease and its specific race

Everyone knows blackleg has been all over canola crops throughout Western Canada this year — but producers will still have to wait a bit to find out just how much the fungal disease has impacted Prairie crops. That’s why Clint Jurke, agronomy director with the Canola Council of Canada, is waiting until survey data is […] Read more

This is one of the weather stations Shannon Winny has on the family farm in Saskatchewan. The round black device at the top is the ultrasonic wind speed sensor. The station, powered by a small solar panel, can also collect data on rainfall, temperature, dew point, humidity, solar radiation and leaf wetness. The cables near the bottom are part of an add-on feature for soil moisture sensing. Basic models start around $1,100. | Photo: Courtesy of Shannon Winny


On-farm weather stations help guide management decisions

The return on investment can come from improved efficiency, helping growers get the most out of a crop under variable growing conditions

An on-farm weather station doesn’t make the crop grow better, but farmers and agrologists using the technology say real-time information about precipitation, wind, temperature and soil moisture reserves can help guide decisions about if or when to apply crop inputs — and provide a good indication of what yield they might expect. Field scouting is […] Read more


Root diseases do their worst between germination and early flowering, leading to poor emergence and stunted, yellowed seedlings.

Phytophthora’s Prairie evolution

For Manitoba the ‘honeymoon’ is ending as soy diseases such as phytophthora root rot arrive

Glacier FarmMedia — The worst phytophthora infection that Laura Schmidt of Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers has ever seen was in the province’s west, just south of Souris. “Probably 25 per cent of the field was impacted,” the production specialist told attendees at a Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization field day near Melita, Man. “One in […] Read more




This map from PrairieFHB.ca shows the FHB risk level for the CPSR wheat variety AAC Penhold, as of May 15. The higher-altitude Prairie-wide map was pretty green (low risk) so we’ve zoomed in here on the Medicine Hat and Lethbridge area of southern Alberta. Yellow denotes “moderate” risk; red denotes “high” risk, while black (not shown) would denote “very high.”

Maps now mark the spots for fusarium risk

Prairie-wide, variety-specific FHB risk maps now available online

Wheat, barley and durum growers in all three Prairie provinces can now check online whether fusarium head blight may be coming soon to a field near them. We’ve written before in these pages about the development and expected launch of new Prairie-wide fusarium head blight (FHB) risk maps — which have now gone live online […] Read more



A tomato harvest from planter boxes in Winnipeg.

Tomatoes and onions in gardens everywhere

Part 7 of a series: On all farms, tomatoes should go into ground not previously used for tomatoes

Tomatoes Tomatoes originated in South America from wild plants with grape-sized fruit. They were developed by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. They were first brought to Europe in the 1540s, to Italy in particular by the 1550s. North Americans were slow to pick up on tomatoes, regarding them as poisonous until almost the year […] Read more