Agronomist Notes

After a four-day rain delay, I’d say seeding is 85% complete. Some drills are starting up today or tomorrow and have switched to planting barley if that wasn’t the original plan. Ground temperatures hover in the mid teens and crops are flying out of the ground within 6 to 8 days of seeding so it will be fast and furious from here on in.

There have been light frosts in the area for the last few nights and some canola has been touched but nothing too severe. I hear Central Alberta has seen temperatures as low as -5oC which is a very heavy frost but hopefully the damage is limited.

In Beyond Agronomy News this week we’ll look at tips to help you maximize herbicide efficacy. You find a handy rainfast guide and also our yearly wild oat/ graminicide tank mix guide to print off and keep in the sprayer.  We’ll look at how to assess frost damaged canola and while we’re on the cold topic, I’ve included a few pointers for spraying after cool or frosty conditions. I have another perspective on inter-row seeding through the lens of a drill mounted video camera. We’ll finish up with fundamental and technical grain market news.

FYI: I’ve been uploading CTF pictures on my Beyond Agronomy Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Beyond-Agronomy/92518701494. Have a visit and look through the last two years of progress.

Pictured above: Tony Pliva’s wheat seeded inter-row on May 11th welcomes the sunshine near Drumheller, AB.

Agronomy

Crop Staging Area (Calgary to Drumheller to Three Hills)

Seeded	May 1-7	May 8-15	May 16-21	May 22-29
Wheat	early 3 leaf	2 leaf	1 leaf	emerging
Canola	2 leaf	1 leaf	cotyledon	emerging
Barley	early 3 leaf	2 leaf	1 leaf	emerging
Peas	3rd node	2nd node	1st node

Steve’s tips of the week

• Now is the time to look for emergence patterns. Is residue management causing emergence delays? Is seeding depth highly variable? What is causing crop emergence variability?
• Book your fungicide today, especially if the humid, wet weather continues. Heavy residue from last year combined with the right conditions will put our super yield potential at risk.
• Continue checking for wireworm damage and look out for cutworm and flea beetle damage as well. Look closer at fields that don’t seem to be advancing as fast as others.
• Stick to herbicides with 1 hour or less rainfastness when possible.
• To avoid crop damage do not spray herbicides when temperatures are dipping down to 5 degrees over night.
• Do not spray ‘imi’ herbicides like Odyssey, Viper or Solo during cold weather as their effectiveness is dramatically reduced. Wait for temperatures to warm up past 15 degrees before you spray.
• Monitor volunteer canola in wheat and barley fields. It can get out of control fast with warm temperatures.
• Be sure to measure plant stand densities when weed scouting this week. SL

Quick points on maximizing herbicide efficacy

Group 1’s

• Only 10 to 15% of Group 1 wild oat herbicides actually translocate within the plant. Most Group 1's rely on spray droplets to gravitate down the leaf to the growing point. That is one of the reasons water volumes are so important when dealing with heavy wild oat populations.

Liberty

• The day after an application of Liberty is just as important as the day you spray. Warm and sunny weather the following day will dramatically improve control.
• Spraying Liberty in the evening is fine so long as the temperature is warm enough during application and the following day is sunny and warm. Cloudy conditions following application reduces efficacy.
• Be sure its 15 to 20 degrees Celsius with moderate sunshine. If the temperatures below 15 degrees and cloudy, Liberty will not work well.
• Centurion
• If you have more than 300 ppm of bicarbonates, add ammonium sulphate AMS at 1% v/v (1 litre AMS per 100 litres) to improve grassy weed control. 
• Infinity
• If you add AMS, you will get improved Canada thistle suppression and kochia control. With the AMS added 6” tall kochia can be knocked down.
• Infinity has three systemic modes of action with the Group 27 pyrasulfotole and one contact mode of action with the Group 6. This herbicide offers very little Group 1 wild oat antagonism.

Achieve Liquid

• If you have bicarbonate levels above 400 ppm, add ammonium sulphate AMS at 0.5% v/v (0.5 litre AMS per 100 litres) to improve grassy wild oat and green foxtail control.  
• Non-tillered crops can be injured by Achieve Liquid if an application is followed by or prior to 5 degree Celsius air temperatures.
• Tillered cereal crops can be injured if sprayed within 48 hours of freezing temperatures.

Avenge

• This Group 8 wild oat herbicide has no activity on one or two leaf wild oats. The wild oats must be in the 3 to 5 leaf stage before Avenge will work effectively. Go figure!

Tank mixing fungicides

• Do not tank mix fungicides containing strobilurin (Group 11) with herbicides unless registered. For example, a half rate of Stratego which contains trifloxystrobin combined with Inifinty herbicide can cause severe leaf burn. Check labels first! SL

Stick to herbicides with one hour rainfastness when possible this week

With the possibility of rain showers rolling through every few days, I’ve decided to switch over to as many herbicides with one hour rainfastness as possible. Here are my top ten herbicides choices with one hour rainfastness or less:

1. Axial 100 EC
2. Horizon NG
3. Traxos
4. Puma Advance
5. Everest
6. Velocity
7. Infinity
8. Precision Pack blends 2525, 23235, 8454 and 858 by DuPont
9. Attain
10. Frontline XL

Don’t just cross your fingers that it doesn’t rain after you spray- print off my handy rainfast guide and keep it in the tractor so you’re certain. SL Insert pdf.

Quick Reference: Graminicide Mixing Instructions

Each year the list of wild oat herbicides gets longer and more difficult to know what order to mix each product. With that, I’ve compiled a list you can print off and keep in the water truck or sprayer to help you mix the perfect cocktails this spring.

Insert pdf of graminicides tank mix guide

Assessing frost damage in canola

The recent frosts will have some producers anxious about its effects on young canola seedlings. Thankfully, the frost occurred after a period of cool wet weather which helps canola undergo a slight hardening process. It’s important not to scout fields too early and from experience, very important to scout fields properly to gain accurate plant counts. Plant counts are the only way to remove some of the bias we get when looking at frost damage and what looks like a potential wreck on our hands. Here is the protocol for assessing frost damaged canola:

1. Wait several days after frost to allow plants to recover (or not) before you assess damage.
   1. Normal conditions: re-growth within 3 to 5 days. Cold conditions: re-growth may take up to 10 days.
2. Walk a diagonal path across the field and evaluate all plants in a 1/4 m2 (3 ft2) every 20 paces and note each sample.
3. Calculate the percentage of the field that has adequate plant recovery.
   1.  For example, 70% of the field has a minimum of 20 to 40 recovering healthy plants per m2 or 2 to 4 plants per ft2. A minimum of 2 plants per ft2 is necessary to achieve decent yield potential. 
   2. Be sure to keep the areas that have no surviving canola plants in perspective. We tend to remember the really bad areas when we do the percentage calculations. Human nature can cause us to over exaggerate the severity. Get a second and third opinion.  
4. Make note of weed competition. Heavy weed pressure that cannot be controlled will increase the number of plants needed to maintain adequate yield. SL

To see pictures of frost damaged canola and more go to: https://canola-council.merchantsecure.com/canola_resources/product37.aspx

Spraying after cold or frosty conditions

Here are a few pointers for getting the best results when spraying under cold conditions like we’ve experienced recently:

• After a frost (0 degrees C to -3 degrees): please wait for at least 72 hours of good growing weather before applying herbicides. Minimum day time temperatures following the frost must be at least 18 degrees C with overnight lows no lower than 3 degrees.
• Overnight temperatures of +0 degrees C: please wait at least 48 to 72 hours of good growing weather before applying herbicides.
• Overnight temperatures of +1 degrees C: please wait at least 48 hours of good growing weather before applying herbicides.
• Overnight temperatures of +2 degrees C: please wait at least 24 to 48 hours of good growing weather before applying herbicides.
• Overnight temperatures of +3 degrees C: wait till temperatures warm up to at least 10 degrees that day before you start spraying.
• Overnight temperatures of +4 degrees C: can begin spraying early that morning.

Source: Bayer Crop Science

Everything You Need to Know about Twitter and Tweeting

I know you’re thinking- what on earth does Twitter have to do with farming? Well, it has a lot to do with farming, actually. I’ve been using Twitter since May 2009 and find it a great way to discover timely information on grain market, agronomy and global agriculture every day. I send out tweets a couple times a day about what I’m seeing in the field, pictures of crops, or our CTF system. If you’re thinking about joining Twitter, the information you find is not like Facebook where people tell you when they’re combing their hair or going to the John. Twitter has some great followers who provide really good information on a daily basis.

If you’re interested, this article http://technmarketing.com/web/everything-you-need-to-know-about-twitter-and-tweeting/ outlines the top reasons on how and why people use Twitter. Follow me at BeyondAgronomy. SL

Offset Hitch working like a dream in our CTF system

You never really know how well your modifications work until you get in the field and start ground truthing them. We were fortunate to have Morton Molyneux from Farm.tv stop by with his mobile shank and frame mounted camera to catch our offset hitch in action. We spent a few hours messing around with the camera during seeding to find out where the shanks were following and to look for skewing. I’m happy to say skewing was minimal and our hitch worked really well as you can see in the photo.

Morton has me inspired to buy a mobile camera and start looking at drill skew, soil throw and inter-row capabilities in real time next year. For $200 and the cost of a ram mount arm to brace to the frame, I think we all could learn a lot from getting a closer look underneath the drill during seeding. SL

To buy your own mobile camera, go to: http://gopro.com/cameras/hd-hero-960-camera/