What you do in the first 20 days of the growing season can make or break your canola crop, says the senior agronomy specialist with the Alberta Canola Producers Commission.
Doug Moisey has been on the road this past fall, offering his insights from the past growing season at a series of producer meetings.
Many of the problems Moisey saw this year were related to deep seeding in cold soils.
“The bottom line is that you have to pay attention,” he said. “No matter how good all these varieties are, it’s still a very small seed that has to be precisely placed into that half-inch layer.”
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Canola’s small seed does not allow for a large margin of error and when producers reduce seeding rates, they tend to have depth-control issues and place seeds too deep, said Moisey. This can affect emergence and potentially reduce the plant stand by half.
“This is still a critical issue,” he said. “I can count the number of fields I saw in the first couple of weeks that were not coming up and it was directly related to deep seeding.”
Another common error is trying to cover too many acres in a day.
“I looked out this year, and a lot of guys who were seeding really fast never won the race,” said Moisey.
Seeding speed also depends on what drill is used, he said, noting those with newer equipment might need to slow down.
Going too fast can cause back ranks to be buried deeper. This can make a difference at swathing time, when some rows are ready earlier than others. Producers will then make the decision to swath rows that are not properly mature, which can reduce yield and quality.
Seeding date affected many producers this year. Many producers blamed their poor crop on their choice of variety, when in fact it had to do with the change in seeding date and time to maturity, said Moisey.
“What we saw is that after May 16, the green seed percentage started to increase.”
Due to the cool temperatures in September, a day or two made a big difference in terms of maturity. Late swathing combined with poor curing weather this year did not allow the crop to properly cure, he said.
Seed size and weight can also affect seeding rates. When using bigger seeds, seeding rates need to be bumped up accordingly, said Moisey. Some of newer varieties have a 5.5-gram per thousand seed weight. In order to get the minimum five plants per square foot, producers need to get in seven to eight pounds at 40 per cent.
“If we move it up to 70, we could actually lower seeding rates down to four or five, but I don’t want to be targeting that,” Moisey said.
This is important because the lot of the new varieties are five plus or six, he said.
“When you’re going in very early into cold soil temperatures and pushing fertilizer with the seed at very high rates, you could potentially have some issues with delayed emergence,” he said.
Bigger crops also produce more chaff and Moisey said he saw lots of fields around the province where chaff that had not been properly managed.
Storage precautions
Anyone who is storing on-farm seed should keep it in a cool dry place away from heat, rodents, and chemicals such as 2,4-D and MCPA, which affect germination.
“A partially open jug or a broken seal on one of these jugs will actually affect your germ,” said Moisey.
Sample bags should always be sent into seed labs for germination tests, and new seed should always be stored separately from older seed, he said. Samples kept from carryover should always be seeded separately. Moisey stressed that producers should always keep a sample of their seed as it allows for testing of seeds used on farms and how it was stored.
University of Alberta entomologist Lloyd Dosdall had another tip for producers – be on the lookout for cutworms. The coming year could be another big one for pests and there are several cutworm species that could be an issue. He urged producers to get out into their fields early to scout for these insects. The appearance of crows or seagulls in fields in the morning may indicate a cutworm issue, he said.
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“Ilookedoutthisyear,andalotofguyswhowereseedingreallyfastneverwontherace.”
DOUG MOISEY
ALBERTA CANOLA PRODUCERS COMMISSION
