Greg Stamp, however, hopes to show seeding in January isn’t so scary.

The Enchant, Alta. farmer seeded some spring wheat (AAC Oakman VB/AAC Westking) and durum (AAC Frontier) on Jan. 12 in a demo plot, mimicking recent research by Dr. Brian Beres on ultra-early seeding.

WHY IT MATTERS: With warmer southern Alberta weather, earlier seeding for spring wheat and durum opens up all sorts of possibilities for farmers, with research to back it up.

Beres conducted a four-year study that involved ultra-early seeding dates with hard red spring wheat on dryland sites in several locations across Western Canada, including Dawson Creek, B.C., Edmonton and Lethbridge, Alta., and Scott, Indian Head and Swift Current, Sask.

The overall conclusion was ultra-early seeding produced yields as good as — or, in several cases, higher than — crops seeded during the more traditional April/May seeding times. Seeding dates in the past have been more arbitrary, determined more by crop insurance deadlines than actual scientific research on sweet spots of seeding timing.

“The idea here is to treat the field like it’s a winter wheat crop. So we’ve got fall rye, trits, and winter wheat right beside it. Then we’re going to go in February and March again if we get a chinook and the soil temperature warms up. Then we’re going to plant our normal spring demos in late April, beside all these as well.”

As a dryland farmer, the goal is to take advantage as much as possible of early moisture, and beating the heat for flowering and maximizing disease control. Stamp was aiming for 1 C at one inch in his planting. Stamp used a Crop Intelligence weather station with temperature and moisture probes to see how the seeding is faring.

The early-seeding practice is the exception, not the norm, in southern Alberta, with other producers like Alison Davie at North Paddock Farms in Taber dabbling in it as well, according to Stamp.

“I think there’s value. I love this kind of research because it’s so practical to farmers. It’s not a typical practice, but I think long term, there’s going to be more people doing this,” said Stamp.

The initial hesitation by some farmers, Stamp admits, is in the logistics — namely, putting a drill in the ground in January, when people are at farm meetings, or on holidays, and/or equipment may be in the shop getting repaired. Another challenge is weed control.

Pre-planning has to be done in September-October, with spraying your field or laying down a residual herbicide — in essence, treating it like a winter crop. Wheat and durum varieties developed in Western Canada have adapted for cold tolerance, battling abiotic stress in more frigid temperatures.

“Even with seed, we need to have the varieties that the person is going to want to plant cleaned and ready to go, so they can buy seed at that point too,” said Stamp, adding he is targeting a high plant stand at 40 plants per square foot.

“There some work being done on what varieties are better. How does vigor impact this? Some of those things are unknowns at this point that we are assessing.”

Ultra-early seeding takes a shift in traditional mindsets, but it all comes down to the bottom line if the practice is to be continued.

“If there is money to be made or risks to be reduced, then I think there’s an opportunity there,” said Stamp.

Stamp is doing a field day in June with hopes Dr. Beres will speak on his ultra-seeding research.

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Cover crops offer a lot on paper, but timing remains a major roadblock for Prairie farmers. Recent trials done through Manitoba’s Diversification Centres suggest there may be a workaround — at least for wheat.

Jessica Frey, an applied research technician with the Parkland Crop Diversification Foundation and a University of Manitoba masters student, led a multi-site project looking at cover-cropping legumes with spring wheat. The goal wasn’t to produce a lush forage stand, but simply to get legumes established early and growing alongside a cash crop without compromising yield.

Why it matters: Getting cover crops to fit better into the Prairie growing season could help farmers build soil without sacrificing productivity.

“We’re not going for massive gangbusters growth in that stage,” she told farmers during a field day at the Prairies East Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Diversification Centre at Arborg, Man. “We just want to see that the cover crop is there. That is the goal.”

Solving a Prairie problem

Frey pointed to a 2020 survey of 281 Prairie farmers that found 71 per cent reported benefits from cover cropping — from improved soil health and biodiversity to less erosion and a reduced need for fertilizers and pesticides. But getting them established remains the major challenge. In fact, that same study said the top two reasons farmers are reluctant to plant cover crops are the short shoulder season and limited moisture in the fall.

“We have a short growing season,” Frey said. “We’re sometimes working with 90 frost-free days. We can’t count on that fall window to get a cover crop in the ground after our first harvest.”

Seeding the cover crop at the same time as the wheat is meant to solve that. Instead of waiting for conditions that might never come, the legumes get heat and moisture during the one part of the season Prairie farmers can count on.

In Frey’s trials, she adjusted the seeding rates to give the legumes a fighting chance. The wheat was seeded toward the lower end of the recommended rate, while the cover crops were seeded at the higher end of the recommended rate to compensate for their deeper placement in the same row.

“That gives the cover crops access to early season heat and moisture,” she said.

The cover crop treatments included four legumes — alfalfa, red clover, sweet clover and white clover — plus a non-legume cover crop control. A wheat-only plot served as the main control for comparison. This allowed the research team to track both legume establishment and any agronomic impact on the wheat.

The research was conducted at four Manitoba diversification centre sites in 2023, and repeated in 2024 at two of them. In total, five site-years generated data on wheat and cover crop establishment.

Wheat: No penalty, even in drought

Across those site-years, including the dry 2023 season, wheat performance for all treatments matched the wheat-only control. Yield, protein and biomass remained unchanged.

“There was no impact on the wheat compared to just the wheat-only control,” Frey said. “Even in drought years, that impact on the wheat was not there.”

Cover crop establishment was variable, depending largely on moisture. Alfalfa tended to produce the strongest stands across sites. White clover thrived at most but not all locations. Some failures occurred in extremely dry plots and one herbicide misapplication.

Still, the legumes were consistently present, and that was a win.

“Once it’s there, you have options,” Frey said. “It acts as that nutrient bank. You’re injecting nitrogen into the system.”

Weed biomass data is still being processed, but Frey noted the cover crop appeared to help suppress weed pressure.

Canola: management issues and moisture limits

The second half of the study aimed to let the legumes overwinter, then manage the biomass in spring and seed canola into it.

The same cover crop treatments were carried into the canola phase, using Clearfield canola so the biomass could be terminated chemically in early spring before seeding. The goal was to control the legumes, then evaluate how canola would establish and perform in the residue.

Here, the system stumbled. Cold, wet conditions at some sites delayed canola emergence, leaving a narrow spray window. The cover crop got ahead.

Arborg was the only site to produce a canola harvest, but even there, it wasn’t great.

“I wouldn’t claim it was an amazing canola yield by any means,” Frey admitted.

She repeated the phase this year at Roblin using mowing and Liberty Link canola. That mechanical approach showed better early establishment, but data isn’t yet available.

Unlike the wheat phase, moisture appeared to be the limiting factor in canola, which speaks directly to one of the main reasons Prairie farmers hesitate to try cover crops in the first place: water competition with the cash crop.

Moisture was also front and centre in related work by Manitoba Agriculture cereals specialist Anne Kirk. She designed her winter wheat trial to closely follow Frey’s approach, and the two researchers stayed in contact as the projects progressed.

Kirk ran her trial at Arborg using the same legume treatments seeded with winter wheat, adding a spring broadcast treatment as well. The biggest contrast between the wheat and canola phases came down to soil moisture.

She explained that canola has small seeds and requires a moist, firm seedbed. Deep-rooted legumes took the limited moisture first, both in fall and again before spring seeding.

“The big story here would be moisture,” she told the field day crowd. “The canola was seeded, and it just sat in the ground for a very long time because the moisture was quite low,” Kirk said.

Overall, while the wheat phase offers a promising path forward, the canola side of the system still needs work.

Lessons for today

The wheat phase did exactly what Prairie farmers have long hoped for: it established cover crops without sacrificing yield or quality. That opens new possibilities for integrating legumes while managing risk.

“We can pull this off without taking a hit economically,” said Frey.

Still, no one should expect lush forage under the wheat canopy, nor rush to seed canola into living legume sod without a refined management plan.

“If your goal is an amazing forage field, then don’t do it my way,” Frey said, but added that it could be helpful for some mixed farms. “It might be just enough to give you that week or two in the spring that you need before turning them out onto your regular pasture.”

Next steps

Understanding how much nitrogen the legumes contribute to a following crop was one of the main goals of phase two. Frey collected plenty of nitrogen data, but the canola struggled to establish well enough for her to draw clear conclusions from it — at least for now.

“What I don’t have yet is the story behind it,” Frey said of her nitrogen data.

Both projects will continue refining biomass control and evaluating the right crop following wheat.

But on the wheat side, the message is already clear: cover-cropping legumes can work here.

“We have a really unpredictable spring and fall,” Frey said. “Seeding together gives that cover crop access to the moisture and to the heat when it’s actually there.”

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OMAFRA determined winter wheat that was seeded on time looks healthier than what was planted later in the fall. Also, water in low-lying fields, poor drainage and soil compaction are posing problems for winter crops.

In the southwest of the province, hay fields and pastures are greening up. However, for fields and pastures east of the Greater Toronto Area, it remains too early to determine their condition.

OMAFRA said winter canola generally looks good, but there hasn’t been a lot of growth so far this spring. A wet fall delayed some seeding, which has put into question the extent of its winter survival.

Spring canola planting will soon get underway once the soil temperature reaches a minimum of +2 C. Farmers should wait until the soil reaches 5 C, the report said, adding that 10 C is optimum for rapid emergence.

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“There’s lots of data that shows seeding early has a significant benefit to yield,” he says, adding that for most crops it can be up to two per cent a day.

“If you can … start seeding five days earlier because you don’t have to worry about applying fertilizer, that can, right off the bat, give you around a 10 per cent yield advantage.”

Fall is also often the time when farmers can take advantage of lower fertilizer costs. Weir, who makes a point of tracking prices, says, “Ninety per cent of the time at least, fertilizer is significantly cheaper in the fall than in the spring. So that’s a big plus.”

John Heard, a soil fertility extension specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says fall fertilizer applications continue to be a well-accepted practice, particularly in Manitoba.

“It works well with our production system here,” he says. “I think our fertilizer use surveys have shown somewhere between 35 and 45 per cent of (Manitoba) farmers put down fall fertilizer, and often (that’s) banded anhydrous ammonia or banded urea.

“We do less zero till than Saskatchewan and Alberta,” Heard says, adding farmers there favour more one-pass seeding and fertilizing.

“We certainly have some of that here. But, for now… rightfully or wrongfully, there’s more tillage being done in Manitoba, and that fall anhydrous ammonia pass sometimes just does the job.”

Of course, fall fertility applications may not be an option if Mother Nature doesn’t co-operate. “Sometimes, you just can’t get it done,” says Heard, noting the unusually wet fall two years ago prevented many western Canadian farmers from laying in fertilizer on time.

“In those cases, then farmers need to develop a Plan B, which is often a spring application of some description, but it may be one they’re not really set up to do with (their) equipment,” he says.

Heard says producers who miss the fall window for fertilizer applications can plan with their agronomists how to meet their fertility needs later. However, if too many farmers are in the same position, he adds, they could face a supply squeeze the following spring.

“A lot of our fertilizer dealers here, too, are not all set up to deliver and apply all the fertilizer in the spring. They really count on this fall application to get a good bunch of the nitrogen out,” says Heard.

Avoid nitrate forms of fertilizer

Nutrient losses are always something to consider when formulating fertility plans. Heard and Weir caution farmers against fall applications of nitrogen in a nitrate form because that’s when it’s most susceptible to losses caused by denitrification, volatilization and leaching.

“We’re not fans of nitrate forms going down in the fall,” says Heard. “(They) are vulnerable to losses right off the hop.”

Heard doesn’t recommend using urea ammonium nitrate for that reason and says better choices for fall applications are anhydrous ammonia, urea or an enhanced efficiency product like ESN or SuperU.

“Ammonium sulphate, generally used as a sulphur source, can provide nitrogen also,” he adds. “(It’s) best put down late in the fall so that nitrogen stays in the ammonium form rather than the nitrate.”

Heard says when it comes to fall fertilizer applications, in-soil banding is generally considered a much better option than broadcasting fertilizer on the soil surface. That’s because banding not only inhibits nitrate conversion but also helps protect fertilizer from immobilization by soil microbes, leaving more nutrients available for plant uptake.

If nitrogen is broadcast rather than banded, it becomes readily accessible to soil microbes, which will use it to decompose straw before the nitrogen is available for use by crop roots, Heard explains. “We want (soil microbes) to decompose straw, but we want them to be second in line behind our crop plants,” he says. “We don’t want them to be first in line.” 

Heard says for optimal performance, it’s best that fall-banded fertilizer is not disturbed during spring tillage or seeding operations.

When banding anhydrous ammonia in the fall, it’s important the ground be sealed behind the knives to reduce the risk of nitrogen loss. Heard says the best time to do this is when the soil isn’t too wet or too dry.

“We like to have moist soil ideally to do that, then we have good tilth, meaning those slots can close up nicely and the moisture is there to hold (in) the ammonia also,” he says.

Heard suggests one way to assess soil conditions in a field is to do a test run with the fertilizer applicator to assess how cloddy the soil is and whether it can pack well enough to provide a good seal. Farmers can also do a short pass with anhydrous ammonia and then go back to check whether there’s a strong ammonia smell.

“If it’s unbearable, well, then you stop,” says Heard. “You park, and you wait for better moisture conditions.”

Heard and Weir agree farmers should avoid applying fall fertilizers into wet soils (or fields that are likely to become waterlogged) because that’s asking for trouble.

“If you’ve got a low lying, poorly drained field, that’s not where I put on a fall banding or fall treatment of any sort,” says Weir.

Wait for soil to cool down

Fall-applied nitrogen is best applied banded when soils have cooled down to 5 C, or are at least below 10 C at depth, says Heard. At those temperatures, it will tend to remain in a stabilized form until spring, reducing the risk of ammonia to nitrate conversion and subsequent nutrient losses.

“The cooler it is, the less conversion there is,” Heard says. “When it’s warm, it’s much quicker.”

Heard and Weir say on most Prairie farms, optimal soil temperatures will usually occur around Canadian Thanksgiving.

Heard says farmers may be tempted to apply nitrogen earlier if they have time, particularly if there are attractive pricing offers from fertilizer dealers, but they could end up regretting the decision. “If it was to be put on (too) early, even nitrogen that’s in anhydrous ammonia will convert from the ammonium form to nitrate, and then it is vulnerable to losses.”

Heard says nitrogen losses with early applications don’t always occur, noting that fall banding on warm soils performed as well as — or better — than spring banding at some Manitoba research sites located on well-drained upper slopes. Early banding on warm soils did result in high nitrogen losses in wet conditions with poorly drained, depressional soils, however.

As Heard points out, farmers do have options if they’re planning an early fall fertilizer application when conditions aren’t ideal.

“If a grower makes a decision to apply at what we would normally consider an inappropriate time, now, fortunately, we have some technology that allows him to do some of that while reducing the risk,” he says.

These technologies include nitrification inhibitors, like N-Serve or Centuro for anhydrous ammonia and eNtrench for urea, which contain ingredients toxic to nitrifying bacteria that help keep fall-applied nitrogen in the ammonium form, says Heard. SuperU has both a nitrification inhibitor and a urease inhibitor, which slows the initial conversion of urea to ammonia, he notes.

Weir maintains nitrification inhibitors can be useful in situations where there are variable moisture levels within a field. If there are low spots that aren’t as well drained as the rest of the field, for example, a nitrification inhibitor can be added to delay ammonia to nitrate conversion in those areas.

Weir says controlled-release products like ESN, a urea fertilizer with a polymer coating, are another option for farmers considering early fall nitrogen applications. These products can reduce losses by delaying the initial release of nitrogen and providing it gradually to better match crop uptake needs.

The urea in ESN needs warm, moist conditions in order to leak out of the polymer and into the soil, which physically reduces the amount of product that is available for losses in the fall, especially in dry conditions, Weir notes.

He says some farmers will blend ESN with regular urea and then band it as a way to hedge their bets if conditions worsen after fall applications. “If they lose 50 per cent of the urea, they’ve still got all the ESN, so it’s an insurance program,” he says.

Consider co-banding phosphorus

Putting in phosphorus not only helps replenish fields depleted in the nutrient, but it can also boost yields.

Fall can be a good time to apply phosphorus, since it doesn’t move around as easily in the soil as nitrogen and is less susceptible to losses as a result. It’s also a way farmers can spread out their phosphorus programs, so that what’s being put in at seeding time doesn’t exceed seed-safe rates.

“If they’re putting on fall nitrogen anyway, that’s an opportune time to co-band phosphorus with their nitrogen,” Heard says. “We see that as another gold star practice that doesn’t encumber spring fertilization and reduces risk of damage from you having to put down too much phosphorus with the seed.”

Heard says the dual placement of phosphate with nitrogen will tend to increase the availability of the phosphorus to the following year’s crop due to the acidifying nature of anhydrous ammonia. Banding phosphorus and nitrogen together also keeps the phosphorus under the soil surface so it’s less vulnerable to losses from runoff and snowmelt.

Monoammonium phosphate is a widely used source of phosphorus and nitrogen. Weir says it works well on its own or blended with other products like urea, ESN or SuperU in a banded fall application.

Weir recommends farmers who do this save some phosphorus to put in with the seed row in the spring. Heard agrees. “Certainly, we advocate some starter phosphorus in the spring to provide some nutrition until the seedling reaches those bands,” he says.

By co-banding nitrogen, phosphorus and, if needed, sulphur in the fall, it can make things easier and safer for farmers come spring seeding time, adds Heard.

“Canola crops need sulphur and ammonium sulphate is harsh (when placed) in the seed row of canola,” he says. “If you can co-band your ammonium sulphate, if that’s what you’re using, with your nitrogen in the fall … (that’s a) good spot to put it in.”

Weir maintains some growers are moving away from putting down sulphur at seeding time because of toxicity concerns with ammonium sulphate as well as some handling issues.

“It takes up moisture and can cake in the air drills and stuff like that, so a lot of guys are looking for alternatives,” explains Weir. By applying ammonium sulphate in the fall, he says, this enables farmers to get their sulphur in and a good chunk of their nitrogen out of the way as well.”

Farmers who use ammonium sulphate likely won’t have to apply any more sulphur to their fields for the following three cropping years, Weir adds.

The post Your fall fertility primer appeared first on Grainews.

Though the winter nutrient ban has been lifted, the province cautioned producers to “assess current weather conditions and periodically check weather forecasts” if they’re applying anytime between now and April 11.

“Nutrients should not be applied in instances where the weather outlook is unfavourable,” the province said — for example, “a forecast of snow or an appreciable amount of rainfall that would result in runoff.”

All other manure management regulations are still in effect, the province added, such as the ban on applications on “sensitive lands along waterways” and on lands classified as Nutrient Management Zone N4.

Typically, the province’s ban on winter application of nitrogen and phosphorus, including manure, is in place between and including Nov. 10 of one year and April 10 the following year — with variances where conditions allow.

The regulation was put in place in 2008 as application of nutrients onto frozen or snow-covered soils “results in an increased risk of nutrient runoff” into Manitoba waterways, which in turn increases algal blooms in Lake Winnipeg and elsewhere. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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A: Seeding into warm soils ensures the best start for the crop. Proper crop emergence is the fundamental start to reaching the crop’s yield potential.

Seeding into cold soils may result in slower emergence. This places crops at risk of infection by soil pathogens. Pathogens can cause seedling diseases, which can result in poor or staggered emergence or even seedling death.

If seeding into colder soils, one way to lower the risk is to use a seed treatment. A seed treatment will help protect the seed against disease if it has to sit for a longer-than-desired period of time and gives the seed and seedling the best chance of survival. Some seed treatments also provide plant health benefit additives that can help with the pop-up effect of seedlings to encourage faster emergence. Poor emergence may cause lower-than-desired plant stands. Reduced plant stands create an environment more favourable for weed and insect pressure as well as staging issues when timing herbicide and fungicide applications.

Planting at the optimal soil temperatures will help ensure the best crop emergence. Where possible, cereals, peas and lentils should be planted at a minimum soil temperature of 5 C, canola at 7 C and soybeans at 10 C.

If soil temperatures are cooler, seed shallower if adequate moisture is present to access a warmer seedbed. Other considerations include bumping up the seeding rate to compensate for lower seedling survival and use a seed treatment whenever possible. Planting into cooler soils cannot always be avoided but agronomic practices can help to mitigate risk.

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“We start losing cold tolerance, especially in March and going into April now. And that’s when you need to monitor temperatures or for (the crop) to be covered up if you do get some cold temperatures,” said Doug Martin, chairman of Winter Cereals Manitoba and a farmer near East Selkirk.

Temperatures across the Prairies have dipped to the -20 C or lower range throughout the end of March and start of April. Temperatures are normally higher than 0 C at this time of year.

While Martin didn’t get any winter wheat seeded himself this year, due to the dry conditions last fall, his neighbours did. Based on conditions around his area, Martin had thought his neighbours’ crops would fare well for most of the winter, but now he isn’t as sure.

“We had a snowfall (in March) which was great and got the crop covered up, but since then we’ve had some melting and now some really cold temperatures.”

In Saskatchewan the situation has been worse; the majority of the southern portion of the province was bare for most of the winter up until the early March snowstorm.

“We’re very short on moisture and we need more and we need some rain this spring definitely. But the snow will help for sure,” said Amanda Swanson, a southern Saskatchewan winter wheat agronomist with Ducks Unlimited.

Swanson is optimistic about this year’s winter wheat crop. While the winter has been unseasonably cold and dry, she said it’ll all depend on the spring conditions. A warm, wet spring will be good for winter wheat, while a cold, dry spring could cause damage.

Ducks Unlimited won’t have an idea of how the winter wheat crop fared until at least early April. Normally agronomists hold off on doing assessments and digging up plants until producers are seeding or almost halfway done.

“We don’t want growers to be worried that they’re going to have to write off their winter wheat fields. Again our message is always for guys to be patient when doing spring assessments,” Swanson said.

According to Swanson, there have been a few areas of Saskatchewan where soil temperatures have come close to causing damage. Winter wheat can handle soil temperatures as cold as -16 C.

Even if there are crops facing a little bit of damage, she said, good spring conditions will help the crop to bounce back.

“I’m hopeful that most of the winter wheat out there made it through the winter, especially those crops that made it to the three-leaf stage in the fall.”

Western Canadian farmers seeded 335,000 acres of winter wheat last fall, down from 535,000 the previous year, according to Statistics Canada.

— Ashley Robinson writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Glacier FarmMedia company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow her at @ashleymr1993 on Twitter.

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The mercury dipped below 0 C in Saskatchewan on Thursday morning and Friday morning. Speaking Thursday afternoon, a regional crop specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, Shannon Friesen, said many of the coldest temperatures were expected in areas where the wheat was still somewhat protected.

“The good news is that colder temps seem to be in the north and west, where not a lot of the crop has actually emerged,” she explained.

The next two to three weeks will be critical, said Friesen, as the wheat crop seeks to shrug off frost and other pressures in a bid to establish itself.

“We’re not hearing too many reports of insects, disease issues just yet, but now that we have some rain some of that can change,” she said.

Generally speaking, winter cereal crops in Saskatchewan came out of winter in pretty good shape, with fewer instances of winterkill than in the past, according to Friesen.

Soil temperatures have also been somewhat warmer this year, which should help the wheat crop going forward, she said.

“In parts of the south and west side of the province, many producers noted that at times the wheat was just kind of sitting in the soil,” said Friesen.

“It wasn’t growing as much as it could have been.”

The bit of rain that fell this week should improve things, she said. “If we didn’t get this rain we might have been in more trouble.”

According to Bruce Burnett, a weather and crop specialist at G3 Canada, wheat and durum are off to a quicker start this season compared to other crops.

“Wheat and durum are probably the two crops that have mostly emerged,” he said.

— Dave Sims writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow CNS Canada on Twitter at @CNSCanada.

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Wyatt, who along with his wife Jennie and son Wade crops about 3,000 acres of grains, canola and pulse crops near Mossleigh, southeast of Calgary, says before he began using ESN fertilizer about four years ago, he was making two passes to get enough fertilizer applied without seedling injury. Another more costly option was to change the air seeder to a model with some type of fertilizer banding system. ESN is a polymer-coated urea that releases nitrogen to the crop over the growing season.

“With my single shoot drill with two-inch openers I just couldn’t put down enough fertilizer at time of seeding without damaging the crop,” says Wyatt. From a gradual start, the past couple years he has been using a blend of 50 per cent ESN and 50 per cent urea, along with 10 pounds of sulphur and 25 pounds of phosphorus that’s all applied with wheat and oat seed at the time of planting. The blend is put together by his local fertilizer supplier.

For his cereals he’s targeting about 80 pounds of actual N, made up of half urea and half ESN. With wheat, for example, that’s about 320 pounds of product per acre he’s putting into the narrow seed row — 220 pounds of all fertilizer and 100 pounds of seed.

Higher protein

“It’s allowed me to keep using the equipment I had, and seed the cereals with a one-pass operation,” says Wyatt. Another real benefit has been a consistent bump in wheat protein levels. With his own on-farm trials, comparing wheat grown with the ESN/urea blend to wheat fertilized with spring-applied anhydrous ammonia and urea he saw a 1.5 per cent protein increase in the ESN/urea treated crop.

Last year (fall of 2014) his wheat ranged from 14.2 to 14.7 per cent protein, compared to reports from other area farms where protein was about 12.5 per cent.

“I haven’t necessarily measured a yield increase but the protein has definitely been higher,” says Wyatt. “It may not happen every year, but so far it has been higher.” He says the market pays a premium for each tenth of a per cent increase in protein. “With that higher protein if you can get $1 more per bushel on a 40 bushel crop that’s certainly worth going for,” he says.

Dale and his son each own their own land, but pool their equipment and labour primarily at seeding and harvest. Dale produces canola, barley, wheat and oats, while Wade also grows peas and Durum. Wade has also seen a protein increase in durum using the ESN/urea blend.

With a mixed farming operation that also includes a 200 head commercial cow-calf operation, the senior Wyatt also uses the ESN/urea fertilizer blend on oats, which are produced mainly for greenfeed. He hasn’t checked for a protein increase in the oats, but he has observed improved regrowth on oats after the crop is baled.

“We’re seeing quite a bit more regrowth on the oats after the greenfeed has been harvested and that makes good fall pasture for the cows,” says Wyatt. “There was always some regrowth, but since I started using ESN in the blend it is considerably more. The oats are obviously getting another shot of nitrogen from the ESN later in the season.”

While the 50/50 ESN/urea blend has had not adverse affect on wheat and oats, Wyatt is still a bit leery about using that fertility rate in a narrow seed row with canola. Being a much smaller seed, he’s concerned there might be seedling injury, and didn’t want to risk an expensive lesson. “I’d really like someone else to try it first,” he says. At the same time, he’s also thinking of doing a trial with a few acres this year just to see what happens.

Good solid product

It may not be the best marketing line, but Ray Dowbenko, senior agronomist with Agrium — the developers and manufacturers of ESN — says the “good news” story with ESN is that there is nothing new.

“We did our first research with ESN in 1997 and then launched the product in Canada in 2006,” says Dowbenko. “And the reality is that it hasn’t changed. Since 1997 we have looked at it over a wide range of crops, in all types of farming conditions in Canada and the U.S. and in various countries around the world and it performs the same. It is just a very good, solid, consistent product.”

ESN is patented polymer-coated urea. It is nitrogen fertilizer with controlled release into the soil depending on moisture and temperature. ESN provides controlled release of nitrogen and is different from other slow-release products known as inhibitors and stabilizers, which also manage the availability of nutrients to the crop. With the polymer-coated urea, ESN releases nitrogen to the crop over a period of time. With stabilizers and inhibitors the fertilizer is there in the soil, but the products alter the soil environment — the activity of soil microbes — which are involved in the process of making nutrients available to the crop. All these products were developed with generally the same idea, but use different processes.

ESN is designed to gradually release nitrogen from the polymer coated urea granule over much of the growing season. When used in a blend with regular urea or other form of nitrogen, the untreated nitrogen can provide nutrient to the plants sooner, with ESN releasing nitrogen over the coming days and weeks.

How it works

As the polymer coated urea granules go into the ground, moisture is absorbed in through the polymer coating, that moisture dissolves the nitrogen inside the granule, and then is gradually released through the polymer coating into the soil.

The product is designed so about 15 per cent of nitrogen is released within the first 10 days, within about 30 days as much as 40 to 60 per cent of nitrogen has been released, and within 60 days between 85 to 90 per cent of the nitrogen has been released. So for all the nitrogen to be released it’s going to take between 60 and 90 days.

The benefit of the controlled release is to protect the nitrogen so it isn’t lost through leaching or into the atmosphere (a process known as volatilization) and to release it during the growing season when the plant most needs it.

By protecting the nitrogen so it isn’t lost and then making it available to the plant when most needed, Dowbenko says, research has shown several benefits. First of all you get the full value from the nitrogen. Controlling nitrogen release keeps the nutrient available for the crop, and not weeds. More or all nitrogen can be placed in the seed row without risk of seedling damage — making direct seeding with single shoot seeding systems like Dale Wyatt’s still practical and relevant.

With some crops like corn and potatoes, where growers commonly used split fertilizer applications to provide enough nutrients to the crop during the growing season, ESN makes it possible to apply all fertilizer at time of planting.

With all nitrogen available to the crop and when needed by the crop, research again shows very consistent increase in protein and crop yield.

Dowbenko says field research has shown protein improvements ranging from zero up to 1.5 per cent increase, with a good average range of 0.5 to one per cent. On the yield side, research has shown a very consistent five to eight per cent yield increase in wheat and eight to 10 per cent in canola. And, yes, he says research and farmer experience has shown higher rates of fertilizer with ESN products can be used with canola and cereals with equal confidence.

Granted it is a more expensive form of fertilizer averaging in cereals and canola $4 to $6 per acre more than conventional urea, but Dowbenko says the added protein and yield returns more than make up for the added cost.

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Areas of southwestern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta have already not had any snow cover for some time, according to CWB analyst Bruce Burnett. Those areas, he said, were drying out and would need additional moisture for germination.

It’s a similar situation in Manitoba’s Red River Valley, where there might not be a lot of topsoil moisture around when farmers start planting, said Burnett.

However, after a number of years with fields on the wetter side, producers would welcome a drier spring, he said, adding that there were no real concerns over subsoil moisture across the Prairies at the moment.

Conditions can change quickly at this time of year, but Burnett said the forecasts were generally pointing to an earlier, rather than later, start to spring seeding.

“We don’t know what the weather will be, but the fact that the snow will be essentially gone in most areas by the middle of the month will help out,” said Burnett.

When snow is gone, soils start warming up quickly, he said, adding that even if there is more snow or rain, chances are it won’t be enough to delay things that much at this time.

“March can bring some wet snow storms and April generally brings rainfall,” making it tough to predict just when seeding will begin in Western Canada, said crop specialist Neil Whatley of Alberta’s provincial Ag-Info Centre in Stettler.

“We’re having a good thaw right now… but it will take awhile to get the soil warmer,” he added, noting soil temperatures will need to be in the 5 to 10 C range in order to seed.

“You don’t want to seed too early, because you’ll still get a couple of frosts,” said Whatley.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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