Can you believe it? Paisley Johnson, big brother to Peter "Wheat Pete" Johnson took top honours in the 2026 International Plowing Match farmstead beautification contest. Hats off to Paisley! Meanwhile, torrential downpours and severe hail have hit parts of Ontario and the U.S. on this episode of Wheat Pete's Word, host Peter Johnson covers rapid crop maturity, sprayer return on investment, cover crop management, and late-season disease updates.
Have a question you’d like Wheat Pete to address or some field results to send in? Agree/disagree with something he’s said? Leave him a message at 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet (@wheatpete), or email him at pjohnson@realagriculture.com.
- Ploughing match victory: Paisley Johnson won first place in the 2026 International Ploughing Match farmstead beautification contest
- Hail damage assessment: Heavy hail causes leaf shredding, but corn and soybeans retain photosynthetic ability with minimal yield loss
- Severe flooding abroad: Indiana recorded up to 15 inches of rain, with solar radiation down 20% impacting crop photosynthate
- Rapid bean maturity: Edible beans hit maturity in under 90 days across wet and dry Ontario regions.
- Sprayer return on investment: High-acreage utilization makes sprayers the most economically justifiable equipment on cash crop operations
- Advanced corn maturity: Ontario corn fields show rapid milk line progression despite tracking 100 heat units behind normal
- Eragon desiccation tip: Spray Eragon (called Heat in Western Canada) during peak sun and heat to maximize herbicide performance on edible beans and others
- Residue management control: Sizing combine header width to matching residue spread capability ensures proper distribution and soil performance
- Seeding date, row width and more for winter wheat — there's magic in planting date. Check out the video with Dennis Pennington here
- Red clover management: Clip waist-high red clover to encourage root regrowth for soil health rather than unreliable seed crops
- Broadcasting oat risks: Surface-seeded oats face germination and frost risks compared to drilling or incorporating into soil
- Don't forget to clean the combine!
- Cover crop economics: Cover crops prevent weed seed production and drive soil health through continuous living root photosynthesis
- Disease outbreak alerts: Monitor late-season corn and soybeans for tar spot, southern rust, and Phytophthora root rot.
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First place! My big brother takes first place! Good day and welcome to Wheat Pete's Word here on Real Agriculture for Wednesday, August the 26th. On this episode of The Word, how can it be? We're desiccating edibles, corn maturity is so far advanced, what is going on? Then we have cool feedback from audience listeners. We have cover crops, we have soil health. Oh, we just have so much. It's agronomy, agronomy, agronomy after that, and let's go.
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So cool. My big brother Paisley enters the 2026 International Ploughing Match contest for farmstead beautification. Anybody who knows my brother knows once he enters, there's no halfway, baby. There's only 200%, or maybe it's 300%, because that's how Paisley operates. Kudos to Paisley. Thanks to the committee, he actually won first place. Huge hats off. And by the way, Pais, beautiful farmstead, no question about that. Well deserved. But yeah, definitely thanks to the committee. And meanwhile, oh my gosh, we step back from that and it's like, what is going on with the weather? We had hail. We had a deluge over the weekend at my— at Lucan where I farm, 4.5 inches of water. There's some other areas close there that say Up to 6 inches of rainfall fell, ponds everywhere, and hail. So let's just stop for a minute on hail. Hail at this time of year, typically it's got to be really severe because the beans, the soybean crop, and hopefully the edible bean crop, the seeds are still forming in the pod. And so it's unlikely that the pod gets hit and opens up and shatters beans on the ground. Now, If the hail is heavy enough, you can absolutely knock pods on the ground. That is yield loss. But on corn and on soybeans, if we shred the leaves, and it looks horrendous, and yes, south of Lucan, my farm missed it, but it's not very far away. Ooh, some of those bean fields looks very, very tough. The reality is that you still typically have lots of photosynthetic material there. Yes, you see the shredded leaves, but when you look at it, there's still lots of green stems and pods.
Yeah.
And it is amazing, with corn it's the stalks, and even shredded leaves will still photosynthesize. It is amazing to me how plants can take that beating, and typically the yield loss at this stage is really quite small. Now be careful, because it can cause issues if there's damage inside that corn cob and it rots, that's all bad. And as I said with the soybeans, there's still some things that can happen. But when you look at it, Typically, it looks much worse than it is, and hopefully it's only a very small, you know, up to 5% yield loss from that perspective. Meanwhile, we're not the only place that's getting hammered. In fact, there are other places that are getting hammered even worse, if you can imagine. Indiana. So Dan Quinn, Shaun Castile— Dan Quinn's the corn guy there, Shaun Castile's the soybean guy— super researchers. It's so wet in Indiana. that they have never seen this before. They don't have records of it. Up to 15— 1-5— 15 inches of rainfall in one event. And they actually sent a survey out to farmers to try to get a sense of what the farmers thought, how significant that impact was going to be on their crops. And we won't know until the crop is in the bin. But that is amazing amount of rainfall and lots of flooded crops, which absolutely has an impact. Ohio sending out a forage fact sheet or a forage Article. I mean, there are, there are round bales of hay that are 2/3 submerged in that picture, or in pictures I've seen from Ohio. And you just go, man, normally hay, it's sucking lots of water, it's on well-drained soil. They've had lots and lots of rainfall. So some impacts other places. The other really interesting thing that, that will factor in at some point, but in that Indiana report, solar radiation for the month of August is way down. So on average, and I mean, it bounces around every year, but on average, the solar radiation number was 240. This year, 199. So we were 20% below normal with solar radiation. That makes a difference in terms of how much photosynthate we put into that cob and adds on top of that excess rainfall. It makes sense. When it's rainy, it's cloudy. When it's cloudy, there's less solar radiation. I mean, this is not rocket science. And we're seeing some of that in Ontario as well. But really, really interesting in terms of how that might impact on the final crop harvest. We will wait to see. It's unlikely it's going to help. All right, I want to move on. But I do want to talk about maturity. A couple of things. First off, I made my first call to desiccate edible beans yesterday. So that would have been August 25th. We actually could have desiccated them on August 24th. They were ready. Of course, all the rain on the weekend, I didn't even go scout because the field was just mud. And we won't be able to drive through the field probably till Thursday. But this is August and we already have edible beans. They are not in the ground 90 days. They were planted in June. They're not in the ground 90 days and they are basically mature. This is incredibly rapid. And you go, what is going on? So we had a great sprayer day here in Soil and Crop, up at Underwood Farms near Wingham. Just an excellent sprayer afternoon last Friday. And by the way, I just— I'll throw out this one comment from Mitch at Brussels AgriMark because I just think It drives home the point of how valuable a sprayer is. And we've talked about this before, but out of all the equipment, you look around your farm, a cash crop, livestock aside, you look around the cash crop farm and you try to justify that combine. You try to justify the planter. Oh my gosh, how do you do that? I mean, even tractors. We get to the sprayer. At the sprayer day, Mitch, driving a Hagie, said, this Hagie, we bought it new 2 years, like it hasn't gone through the full 2 seasons. We're most of the way through the second season. 45,000 acres through that sprayer. Now, fair enough, they do custom work and whatnot, but tell me how many custom combines you could put 45,000 acres through. Maybe the ones that travel from Texas up through to the Peace River District. I don't know, I've never been on one of those combines to know how many they could get through in 2 years. But When you look at how many acres you get through with that sprayer, it is the one piece of equipment on a farm that actually probably makes economic sense and return on investment. Everything else, it's like, man, this doesn't work. That's just the reality. In any case, yes, so on dry bean maturity, it's early. And at the urine spray day, we talked about that. And the thought process was, well, Pete, it's dry here. And it's because of the drought.
Right.
No, I'm sorry, Stratford has not been dry. Stratford is where I made the call to desiccate edible beans yesterday, and we are seeing this across the province. Whether it's wet or dry or just perfect, the edible beans definitely seem to be ahead in maturity. I haven't quite got my head on right, but what, you know, why that is. But I will say, whatever you do, When you are desiccating the beans, remember, for most of us, Aragon is the product of choice. We can't use glyphosate. That ship has sailed. Just get over it. With Aragon, spray in the heat of the day. I've said this and said this and said this, but people just don't believe me. You spray in the heat of the day. If you spray Aragon at 8 o'clock at night, even now, and it's in August, it acts like a totally different herbicide than it is if If it is sprayed at 1 o'clock under sunny conditions, they call it heat out west. Man, you spray it at the right time of day and she will scorch things off. You spray it at night and it's just absolutely different. So remember, that is by far, people talk about additives and all these things, and absolutely add the merge, do it right, but gosh, time of day and sunshine really makes the difference with that particular product. Let's talk about corn crop. I got a question. I got a question from Owen sending me some pictures. He's going, Pete, what's the matter with my corn? We planted it beautiful. It's a gorgeous silt loam field. Like, it's always been great corn. And it was doing super well till maybe 2 weeks ago. But the last week, it's like it's given up. The leaves are just firing up from the bottom. There's a few firing down from the top. Did we run out of potash? Did we run out of nitrogen? So we look at the pictures and it's like, man, the They just look like they're maturing. So I fired back, like, where is the maturity on that corn? It's already, again, as of yesterday, the 25th of August, it was at 25% milk line, one-quarter milk line. It's already moving down towards maturity. And this is an adapted hybrid that we wouldn't normally expect to black layer till much later. This is incredibly early. Pictures from Drayton as well, where corn is denting. The corn crop, for whatever reason, appears just like the edible bean crop and even the soybean crop. Everything is advanced in maturity. Yeah, it's a good thing as long as the yield is there. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not asking for it to be late. Early harvest is a bonus with yield, but it is a quandary why. So I went to my experts and asked, what's going on with the corn crop? We are, by the way, 100 heat units behind normal heat unit accumulation for most of the province of Ontario. How can it be, if we're 100 heat units behind in maturity, that the corn crop is just looking this much advanced? And we can argue, well, it was the drought, it was whatever, but this is across regions with good moisture, with questionable moisture, and I'm sure the— you know, there's—
Yeah.
People are going to say, no, we're not seeing that. But it is happening out there much more than we anticipated. So my good friend, Dr. Dave Hooker, says, well, Pete, one of the things that could be, we're 100 heat units behind. But remember, May, we track air temperature. The corn crop, the growing point is below the ground, and soil temperature is what matters. So air temperature might have been cool because May was the cool period. That's where we lost the crop heat unit accumulation. That's where we got behind.
Yeah.
But if those days were reasonably sunny, the sunshine on black soil can really warm that ground up, and the corn can actually go through its life cycle much faster than air temperature would predict. So that's a fair comment, Dave, but I'm not sure it describes everything. And Greg Stewart, my good friend Greg Stewart, saying, okay, Pete, what I really think is going on, because it just, you're right, we're ahead of where we would expect to be.
Yeah.
Ties Tollenaar, way back when. So Ties Tollenaar was the corn physiologist at University of Guelph for, I think, through much of the late '90s and early 2000s. Super smart guy, did a lot of work on heat accumulation and critical temperatures. And Ties said that heat is really important at critical phases and less important during less critical phases. And And VTR1 is one of those really critical phases. So if we had good heat, just perfect heat at that timing for those hybrids, those— because not all fields are as advanced as some others. If those hybrids were tasseling, were at R1 right when that nice warm spell hit, almost ideal corn temperatures, maybe it just sped things up enough through that period and it The other comment that Greg makes, which I find phenomenally interesting, is we've changed these corn hybrids so that they silk before they tassel. Well, not always, because Pete was under drought, and when you're under drought, no, the silk doesn't come out, the tassel does. We've talked about that. But if we weren't under severe drought stress, the silk comes out first. It used to. We used to think 5 to 7 days for pollination to happen. If the silk's out first, as soon as we get pollen falling, man, it is pollinating almost immediately. So maybe we shorten that pollination window up under ideal conditions. So instead of being 5 to 7 days, it's more like 1 to 3 days, and we can gain some maturity in that range as well. So some thought process. At the end of the day, I don't think we know for sure. But it's really intriguing what is happening in the countryside, and for goodness sakes, if you are a silage guy, get out there and cheque your hybrids just to see where they're at, because there are some fields that are way further advanced than we ever, ever would have expected. All right, as Josh would say, you know, well, things are a bit ahead, things are too wet, that's just what happens when Mother Nature is your business partner. I never thought of it that way, but in agriculture, Mother Nature is our business partner. Alright, just a really cool note from Jared out of South Idaho, and Jared is growing, he runs a small custom operation there as well as farms himself, and their combine blew up. They've always run a 30-foot head, they blew their combine up, they got in an S780, which was a bigger combine, should easily handle a 35-foot head for them, They said, nope, we're staying with the 30-foot head. And Jared sent me just the best email saying, we are sticking with a 30-foot head because Wheat Pete says thou shalt not put a wider header on your combine than you can spread the residue. He says even in the high winds they can get out in Idaho because they're only running the chopper and it has good control, it has wind control, all those things. So it's a It's got all the up-to-date features, but because they're only using 80 to 90% of its normal capacity to spread the residue, even in a very heavy Dijon mustard seed crop. Now, get that, growing Dijon mustard seed to crush and make into the Dijon mustard that we put on our hot dogs. Even in that situation, With that 30-foot head there doing virtually the perfect job of residue distribution. So hats off to you, Jared, that was really cool, and thanks for the email. All right, I need to move on here quickly. So first off, clip red clover. Fida calling me up saying, Peter, like, man, my red clover is unbelievable, knee to waist high. It's late August. Hmm, what are the chances I could maybe get a little bit of seed out of that red clover by mid-October? Or do I clip it, and what does that do for soil health? So you have to clip it, right? First off, waist-high red clover is crappy for seed because there's too much foliage. It's too hard for the bees to work. We're trying to make seed in a time of the year where the bees start to slow down, right? Into the late fall when it's cool and cloudy and rainy, they just don't work, and we need the bees to work the red clover. And if you leave it for seed, the red clover will stop growing roots. What is soil health about? All about roots. So clip the red clover. I think the chances of a big red clover seed crop are small. I think the value of clipping that red clover and getting it to regrow, and as it regrows, it regrows new roots in the soil, and that's what makes soil health. That is a much better option. Joe and Chris both asking me about broadcast oats. Joe about broadcasting oats in the spring, does that work? Chris saying, Peter, can I broadcast oats now with a drone and will that work? Or can I broadcast oats into my standing soybeans before the leaf drop and will that work? So let's back up just one step. As soon as you broadcast anything and you don't get good seed-to-soil contact, the risks go up. Let's look at the oat seed. It has that stupid hull on it, and that hull tends to act to keep the seed from getting in contact with the soil and getting as much water maybe as it needs. At the end of the day, if you can incorporate, if you could broadcast and incorporate those oats right now, Chris, that will work. We know that works all the time. Awesome. But we get the seed to soil contact. Broadcasting oats into standing soybeans and letting the leaves drop, that works for wheat most of the time. Oats, a little different beast. It could work, but it just— the design of the seed makes it less likely. And Joe, for goodness' sakes, tell whoever you are talking to about seeding oats, broadcasting oats in the spring, this is a recipe for disaster.
Here's why.
We actually did a broadcast oat project with Elgin Soil and Crop many, many years ago. We did it into standing soybeans. We wanted to compare cover crop oat broadcast into standing soybeans versus cover crop oat drilled after the soybeans came off. We could get a stand with the oat crop most of the time, a little variable, but mostly it was there. One of the years we did it, we got a really cold night I believe it was about the 15th of October, something like that. The growing point of the oat that is broadcast is right on the soil surface. You get that really cold night, the crop is, you know, at the 2 or 3 leaf stage, and you can actually kill the oat crop. And we did that in a number of sites in Elgin County that year. It can happen in the spring as well. It can happen with wheat also, but the reason that frost seeding works is that we put that seed into the soil and we have 3/4 of an inch of soil or an inch of soil protecting the growing point from those really low night temperatures. Broadcasting that oat seed is just— and not incorporating— just a real concern for actually making it work. Just around cover crops, a grower calling me up and saying, Peter, You know, you talk about COVID crops and you say, oh gosh, 20, 25 pounds oats is enough, but you got to put on 50 pounds of nitrogen. Man, I look at the return on that, I go, really? And then you say, if I'm going to do it for forage, well, I need 50 or 60 pounds of seed and 90 pounds of nitrogen. And when I look at the yield that I get off that crop, it seems like cheap feed, but when you do the math, man, is that ever expensive.
Yeah.
And so, I'm not sure these cover crops are worth it at all. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait just a minute. There's so much more to it than that. First off, and the caller did say, you know, especially I take that oat off as a forage, and you tell me there's tonnes of potash that I'm removing as well, and I have to replace that. Well, for most growers, we're taking that off, the manure is going back, and that works, right? Because the potash goes back on in the manure.
Yeah.
We have to be careful how we do that math. But here's my other thought process for this. Okay, so I take my wheat off. Eh, cover crops don't work economically. We're just gonna leave it. What happens? Well, either we have to work it and work it to keep the weeds down, or the weeds grow and we let them go to seed, and either way doesn't work. 'Cause if I work it and work it to keep the weeds down, what does that do to soil health?
Bah.
If I let the weeds grow, they go to seed, what does that do for next year?
Bah.
So it just— we have to grow something. And if we really want to focus on soil health, at the end of the day, it's all about photosynthesis and reduced tillage. Those are the 2 factors. You just don't get maximum photosynthesis if you don't manage the COVID crop. The COVID crop manages the weeds. We want to feed the soil bugs. Like, I get that when you just do it on straight math, that it might not look as good as, say, corn silage. But there's just way more to it than that, in my humble opinion. And Scott sending me just an awesome picture of his early planted oats for forage after his wheat came off. They're already, I don't know, halfway up to my knee, and it's just the 26th of August. Oh, that is going to make an amazing forage crop and going to do all sorts of good for soil health. Just before we leave the whole discussion about COVID crops, had a great chat with Abram. Abram says, Peter, you always push straight oats, but you do realise that if you use a mixed stand, that the problems with things like crown rust really become greatly reduced. So if you add sorghum sudangrass, if you add millet, and you don't get more than 40% of oat in the stand, Typically crown rust does not become such a big issue. And so Abram, fair enough, the less oat you have in there, the less crown rust you get, and it doesn't spread as rapidly. So you're right, you'll see less crown rust. But as we discussed, now all of a sudden, from a maturity standpoint, from managing that stand to try to get the maximum value out of it, I get into a few more bumps because the sorghum sudangrass is not likely at the right stage to harvest at the same time as the oat crop is, and the millet will be different again. And it just— it's got some advantages, it's got some disadvantages. The last thing Abram wanted me to add was, hey, there are some oat varieties out there that are more resistant to crown rust. You're 100% right, Abram, that's always a moving target, but if you can pick one that has resistance, then you don't have to worry about a fungicide spray at the very least. On tar spot, Albert sending me some pictures just in his glory. He was ecstatic because at Rodney the tar spot has exploded. Southern rust is blowing up in Wisconsin and in parts of the US. So we're back into disease. It's turned wet. It's not a surprise. We're just going to see— and it's too late to do anything about those things now, but get out there and cheque. If you haven't had tar spot before, Now's the time to start looking. Josh from down in the Niagara Peninsula saying, oh Pete, it's been so wet here, we just, we've been flooded the last few weeks. The soybeans are full of Phytophthora root rot. A month ago we didn't see it. Today in some fields, 30% of the field is yellow and the plants are dying from Phytophthora root rot. What does that do to yield? So Josh, unfortunately And we talked about this on Agronomy Monday as well, but at the end of the day, it's what stage is the bean at? If the bean is at R5, where you have flat pods, the seed is starting to fill, you can tell that there's 4 seeds in that pod, 2 seeds, whatever. The seed— the pod is flat and the plant dies, there's zero yield. If you get to R6, so now the seed isn't mature, but they're big seeds in there, they're high moisture, but they fill that seed cavity, the plant dies, they're going to shrivel. They're not going to be big seeds, but they probably will turn colour and mature and add something to yield. You get R7, where the seed is, you know, fully developed in there, then the yield loss is zero. The problem with Phytophthora at this stage is plants will just keep dying almost for sure all the way along. It's happening in Pete's field. It's just one of those things. And Josh asked a great question, like, how do I tell of what to do What should you do moving forward? Awesome question, Josh. The answer is try to figure out the fields that aren't affected, what resistance gene that variety has. It would be a really good indication of what you might look for that could be better next year if this situation repeats. All right, there's lots of questions around planting wheat. You can plant wheat too early. If you want that discussion, please go to the Agronomy Monday, Lyndsey and I had that chat. Just because you're taking edible beans off, I don't know if we'll get any off in August, but we will likely get some off in the first few days of September. You know, if it's September 2nd, you have edible beans off at Stratford, it's too early to plant unless it's going to be so wet on September 15th and 20th that you don't have a chance to plant. So you can plant too early.
Yeah.
A great video by Dennis Pennington that Bernd Hoben did. We'll link it in the chat. Get a chance to watch it. It's all the planting tips. One last really cool thing, Wisconsin, Rodrigo Worley out of Wisconsin has put out this combine cleanup video. This is how resistant weeds spread. So again, we're going to link that in the chat. Have a look. And if you're moving fields and you know that field had a bad weed problem, This is a great way to prevent it spreading onto the next field. And with that, that's it, that's all. On behalf of the team here at Real Agriculture, this is Wheat Pete with the Word for Wednesday, August 26th. Hey, keep the feedback, the questions, the comments coming. It's so appreciated, it just makes my day. And I'll be back next week to talk too long yet again. See you then.
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