It won’t be long before we see planters and seeders for #plant24, but some regions, like southern Ontario, will be much further along than others.
The mild winter has no doubt had many of you thinking about field paths, and the wheels are turning with everything from nitrogen and sulfur applications to fertilizers and even early plantings.
And with that come questions and almost the first warning signs, and on this week’s podcast, Peter “Wheat Pete” Johnson answers the toughest questions.
Have a question you’d like Wheat Pete to answer or field results you’d like him to send you? Do you agree with what he said? Do you disagree? Leave a message at 1-888-746-3311, tweet us (@wheatpete), or email us at: (email address protected).
summary
- Ontario and parts of the U.S. have had an incredibly mild winter.
- Winter wheat is amazing!
- This means we need to talk about nitrogen management.
- The maple trees in the south have already finished blooming. We will continue north and east.
- Seasonable temperatures are expected to return across much of the state by late March.
- What we don’t want is for our fruit trees to grow too much and suffer a cold May frost or late April frost when they bloom.
- What does this mean for migratory pests? there is a great article Anthony Hanson from Minnesota talks about cold weather and insect survival.
- What should I be careful of when overwintering? Soybean aphids, alfalfa weevils
- Resistance to corn rootworm has developed in Ontario corn fields, so be careful in fields with continuous corn.
- Rotate, rotate, rotate
- Migratory problems: potato leafhoppers, armyworms, and some armyworms
- Oh, the wheat and barley stripper header is cool
- However, they are heavy and difficult to drive, but they work on lodging wheat from wheat stalk sawflies.
- Note that in a stripper header, almost all of the separation takes place in the header, i.e., in the volume.
- When it comes to moisture retention, nothing beats this
- Stubble height is important for trapping snow, but what it really does is reduce evaporation from the soil surface, and that evaporation does much more harm than not trapping snow.
- In some areas it is still too early to introduce nitrogen. Now that it’s getting colder, if you can get out above the frost, you can go out on a frosty night and apply a small amount of nitrogen and sulfur, but no more than 50 pounds. Especially when it gets cold
- It is true that November wheat requires different management than September wheat. Trouble with tiller
- Will I get in trouble if I don’t add the S? Availability is an issue for some people
- Fertilizer questions: How to distribute fertilizer evenly? How much nitrogen? Does the source of fertilizer matter?
- But again, the key is uniformity of application. There are a lot of S, but the release is slow.
- What happens to the N loss? Low temperatures keep the N loss lower than expected
- In some tests, no-till or strip-till actually resulted in less loss than minimum-till or conventional till.
- Questions about phosphorus availability and sources. Root/soil/fertilizer interactions are important
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