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Tillage for better crop establishment
Crops, Wheat & Chaff

Tillage for better crop establishment

Q & A with Nutrien Ag Solutions

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Q. Can tillage help with better crop establishment or fertility management? A: Crop establishment can be impacted by soil moisture and temperature, especially in areas where more warm-season crops such as soybeans and corn are grown. High soil residue levels act as an insulating layer to the soil and reduce the rate of soil temperature […] Read more
This photo was taken on August 1, 2009. There was great crop growth, from old fashioned methods.
Columns, Crops

Cover crops and green manure

In the Palliser Triangle, cover crops aren’t the answer in a dry cycle

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The current interest in soil health issues has expanded our thinking and spawned much research and new farm-scale work with many new-to-us plant species. Cover crops are planted in the non-commercial season to add diversity to the mix and juice up the soil organisms that go along with the different plants. In wet years, cover […] Read more
It didn’t take much disturbance to raise the dust during a tillage demonstration at the 2018 Ag In Motion farm show.
Columns, Hart Attacks

Well here is a game changing concept

Profitable crop production with little or no added inputs. Is someone talking nonsense?

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Talk about an interesting contrast in messages! In one week during my summer travels I attended a first-in-Canada Soil Health School in Manning (Alberta Peace River region) and a few days later I was eating dust at a tillage demonstration at the Ag In Motion farm show at Langham, Sask. My old brain had to […] Read more
Figure 2: Impact of soil drainage on application of tall applied nitrogen.
Crops, Wheat & Chaff

Timing your fall nitrogen application

Q & A with Nutrien Ag Solutions

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Q: We’re often told fall applications of anhydrous ammonia should not be applied until soil temperatures are below 10 C. Why? A: At one time fall NH3 applications were associated with Thanksgiving. With farm consolidation and the need to apply anhydrous on more acres in the fall, the question now is how early is too early? To understand […] Read more
Crops, News, Weather

Harvest advances in the south, hay yields below average

Saskatchewan Crop Report for the week ending August 6

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Producers in the province have one per cent of the crop combined and two per cent swathed or ready to straight-cut, according to Saskatchewan Agriculture’s weekly Crop Report. The five-year average for this time of year is one per cent combined. Reported yields so far range from average to well-below average. Fifty-five per cent of […] Read more
Closeup of a plowed field, fertile, black soil.
Columns, Crops

Carbon: the mega plant nutrient

Nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon dioxide? CO2 is at the heart of crop production

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When teaching about plant nutrition the first step was to list the various categories of nutrients starting with major nutrients and ending with the micros. For this piece I’ll reverse the order and start with micros. The typical nutrients Micronutrients: Micronutrients are required in small amounts and not often added as a fertilizer. But when […] Read more
Warren Eilers, in a slough bottom with an EM38. This spot is flushed of almost all salts.
Columns, Crops

Horse pasture soil salinity: beware of new ground

Land has been left in grass for a reason. And sometimes this reason is salinity

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In the mid to late 1970s soil salinity was the biggest issue on many Prairie farms. The hue and cry was that we would soon have little land left to farm. Some said salinity was increasing by 10 per cent per year but I never bought into that number. From 1975 to 1980 we held […] Read more
While some areas of the crop were coming up well, others had no germination or uneven emergence, as well as spots with stunted plant growth. Regions with lighter soils, such as hilltops, were more affected.
Canola, Crops, Features

Crop advisor casebook: Germination grief: What went wrong with Dave’s canola?

A Crop Advisor's Solution from the May 15, 2018 issue of Grainews

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I’m certain it’s flea beetles,” said Dave, an Alberta producer I visited last June after he discovered his canola crop had emerged poorly. While some areas of the crop were coming up well, others had no germination or uneven emergence, as well as spots with stunted plant growth. Also, regions with lighter soils, such as […] Read more
This is what the asparagus patch looked like on October 10, 2017. Obviously still accessing enough water. It can root to 12 feet or more, so capillary rise from the water table is keeping it going.
Columns, Crops

Finally, the well went dry

Do you know where your water table is, 
and what it will offer this year?

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At my Dundurn farm I now have three years of records of the water table level in my asparagus crop in the yard and at two locations in the annual cropped field. Now, you may wonder why I would bother you with asparagus data. I use my asparagus patch as a surrogate for perennial forage […] Read more
The photo shows this old scribe in his young kid days giving advice to a farmer by phone — a very efficient way to do business back in the day when phones were answered. But, I was only able to help because the #12 Soils Map was right beside my phone. My first question was always, “Where are you from?” Then I could take a quick peek at the map and give a much better answer. Many thought I had the soils map in my head — 
but now the truth comes out.
Columns, Crops

Precision ag Step 1: soil maps

The most important part of precision agriculture is the soil maps of your fields


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My first work on precision agriculture was actually in the 1960s and colleagues had been doing work on the idea before that. Back then it was all about identifying specific soil profile types in a field and trying to determine if their variable properties could be managed differently. Some things were clear: 1. Leached (white […] Read more

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