Welcome to RealAg Radio for this Agronomic Monday edition!
Today on RealAg Radio, host Lyndsey Smith unpacks the current events impacting your farm, discusses agronomy with Peter ‘Wheat Pete’ Johnson and brings you a discussion with Bernard Tobin of RealAg and Brucelea Poultry field crops manager Mark McLean on how nitrogen robots are helping navigate the corn growing season.
00:00 - Coming up...
01:42 - Today on the show with Lyndsey
04:53 - Agronomic Monday with Pete and Lyndsey
19:45 - Agronomic Monday with Pete and Lyndsey
34:38 - Agronomic Monday with Pete and Lyndsey
48:39 - Nitrogen Robots with Mark and Bern
Thoughts on something we talked about on the show? Connect with host Lyndsey Smith at lsmith@realagriculture.com, on X/Twitter by using the hashtag #RealAgRadio, or give us a shout on the response line, 1-855-776-6147.
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Welcome to RealAg on the Weekend with your host Shaun Haney! On this week’s edition of the show, Haney hits on the use of artificial intelligence and geopolitics with Jacob Shapiro, highlights some of the Canadian Farmer Sentiment Index data, gets a harvest weather forecast with Eric Snodgrass, and talks canola crush with Mark Walker...
Read more » Well, there's absolutely nothing we can do about the weather, but there's plenty of things we can do to make sure that our fields stay in the best shape possible when weird and wild weather comes rolling through. That's what we're going to talk about on today's Agronomic Monday with Peter Wheat Pete Johnson. We've also got Mark McLean on to talk about, can we send robots out to spoon-feed the corn crop? That is all on today's show as well. We're also going to talk about some green stem issues, some pre-harvest and desiccation decisions, and a little bit about the role of sulphur in alfalfa production. That's all on Agronomic Monday. That's RealAg Radio, 4:30 Eastern on SiriusXM, or of course, right now on YouTube.
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It's time for RealAg Radio on Rural Radio Channel 147 on SiriusXM. RealAg Radio and RealAgriculture.com is your home for insight and analysis of the issues that are impacting your farm business. Let's get real and get connected with RealAg Radio.
Hello everyone and welcome to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio Channel 147, SiriusXM, or of course wherever you get your audio, or if you're following along on YouTube. I am your host, Lyndsey Smith. It is Agronomic Monday, and I know typically we've been starting the show bang, get to it, right to the content, but we've got There's so much happening in the wider world with the trade deal conversations being called off at the 11th hour on Friday. We've also got, as mentioned on Friday's show, we had Trump weigh in in the States talking about 300,000 tonnes of beef from— we're going to call it mystery meat. I'm not really sure where it's going to come from. There's just so much happening on the political and on the trade file that I really wanted to just take a moment to direct everybody to either our Instagram, our Facebook, but especially RealAgriculture.com and our YouTube channel. We've got tonnes of coverage there on what we know, what we don't know, and feedback from all of the trade groups or the producer groups as well. So cheque it out, please. Also, I wanted to send out just a quick reminder for tonight. We've got Fertilising Forages on The Agronomist at 8 PM Eastern. And on Friday's show, I didn't have a chance to stick up for solar sites, but as many of you know, I'm a solar grazer and we had a conversation about land use And I didn't get a chance to mention that, hey, when you put a solar site in, or if there is one, you can still graze it, and therefore it is still farming, it is still agriculture. You can send your feedback on that one to lsmyth@realagriculture.com. Okay, without further ado, we're going to take a quick break, and I'll be back with Wheat Pete right after this. Hey, whatcha looking at out there? Huh?
Oh, nothing.
Uh, didn't you say that like a week ago?
Still true.
When you own the ground in fall, your soil-active herbicide is already in place, waiting for spring, waiting for weeds.
I'll leave you to it.
Beautiful.
Fierce MTZ by Vecta Volterra. Visit newfarm.ca/fallapply. It's summertime and you've got a lot of important decisions to make when it comes to your corn crop. Let the Corn School on RealAgriculture.com help guide you through those big decisions with input from leading experts in the field. If it's spray timing, disease identification, or any other field issue, the Corn School's got you covered. The Corn School on RealAgriculture.com, brought to you by BASF and Pride Seeds.
RealAg Radio is Canada's only daily radio show focused on agriculture. Get expert advice on Agronomic Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays we'll cover a broad broad range of issues. Thursday, we'll hear from farmers across the country on the Farmer Rapid Fire, and we'll wrap things up Fridays with the RealAg Issues panel with Kelvin Heppner and Lyndsey Smith. Join us Monday through Friday at 4:30 Eastern, and don't forget about the replay at 7 in the morning on Rural Radio 147 SiriusXM.
Welcome back to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio Channel 147 SiriusXM. It is Monday, August 24th. It is Agronomic Monday. I am your host, Lindsay Smith, and this segment brought to you by FP Genetics. FP Genetics SU Performer Hybrid Fall Rye is known for its standability and harvestability. Visit fpgenetics.ca to discover FP's dynamic rye portfolio and to contact your local territory manager or product specialist. FP Genetics— gain a genetic advantage and experience The next wave. Well, one guy who knows all about fall-seeded crops is Peter Wheat Pete Johnson, and he joins me now for this Agronomic Monday. How are you, Pete?
I am awesome, thanks, Lyndsey. Although, you know, it just— it's the way life goes. We've gone from being in a drought to being in a deluge at my farm, and I'm not even in the wettest part of Ontario, and you just go, oh my gosh, really? So it's funny I sent to my clients a little update about wheat and canola and that type of thing, and I said if it stays dry seeding wheat, what my recommendations would be, and I put in brackets, now that I've said this, it won't happen, and for sure it's not going to happen because now we are just swimming up to 4.5 inches of rain over the weekend at my farm in Lucan. You just go, ah, really? Come on, where was that in July when I needed it?
That's right. Well, so, or you could be like us, Pete, and you never ran out. It just kept going, and we are sort of in the same boat. So, uh, definitely seems to be, um, more feast than famine this year on water in certain areas. But you're right, many areas were hurting for moisture, and we're probably glad to see some return, uh, but sort of wish it was a month ago and maybe not in 4-inch increments. That would be great. Uh, what about any hail or extreme weather? Because I was touring this weekend, saw a couple fields at sort of Renfrew, Cobden way that had been hit by hail earlier, some shredding on the corn. What have you seen there, and does it have a huge impact on yield potential?
And so yes, Lyndsey, there was hail close to my home farm. I haven't got there to see how bad it is yet. There is a few things that I have on my plate, you know, I don't always get there immediately, but it really depends on how bad it is. So there was marble-sized hail in quite heavy amounts, and If all the corn leaves are shredded, that will have some impact, but not as much as you think. Where we really run into trouble is on the soybeans if we start knocking pods off, on the corn cobs if we start getting injury on the cob from the hailstone itself. And I'm— as everyone knows, hail is never a good thing, but at this stage, we're probably not at huge risk. The soybeans pods are not fully developed yet, so we're not splitting them open and shedding seeds out on the ground. Now, some of the edible beans are getting very close to that, so if you had edible beans, you know, that actually started shelling out of the pod would be bad, but again, mostly I think we're just ahead of where we'd hit really critical, but I haven't been to the field, and so if you get a whole bunch of irate farmers because that's what Wheat Pete said on RealAg Radio, I haven't been there, so be careful.
That's okay, Peter, I just typically blame you anyway, so it's just broad shoulders. Yeah, par for the course really. Okay, now but on this topic of a lot of water all at once, and I will say, you know, for us personally, this is a year— so last year was on the dry side, we weren't in the drought, but we had a couple years where we didn't have these gigantic rain events. But even just 4 years ago, we had one in like October, November that was just— it was like a spring rushing of our creek of the drainage, but we did get down in Indiana, I think it was, where, you know, huge rain events. Catch us up on what some of your agronomy friends down there are asking their growers about.
Yeah, so this is astounding to me, and I think the Pro Farmer Tour, when they went across the US looking at potential corn yields, found the exact same thing. It's been either too dry or too wet, but in Indiana, Dan Quinn, the corn specialist there, and Shaun Castile, the soybean specialists, but really sharp researchers, you know, great agronomists, great minds if you will, and they actually are so out of their depth, I guess is the right way to phrase that, on the amount of rainfall that they have had on the corn and soybean crops in Indiana that they sent out a survey asking growers how much rainfall, what does it look like on your crop, how much impact will this excess moisture during August have based on your experience. And so areas of Indiana have up to the highest category on the map is 15 to 20 inches of rainfall. Apparently there's areas of Indiana that got 15 inches of rainfall in a single event, Lyndsey. Like I'm whining about 4.5 in my area. That's right, yeah. And that, by the way, is too much. But that 15, that's 3 times that, and you just go, oh my gosh, what does that do? And so across Ontario, by the way, it's not just Indiana, like, like these conditions really are starting to have impact on some crops that are out there, but it is amazing that with all the information and knowledge, depth of knowledge that we have, we're getting into uncharted territory on some of the impacts of this, this very unusual, very severe weather that we're seeing across North America. It's not, it's not just Ontario, it's not just Western Canada, it's across North America. And you go, wow, that, that's weird.
Well, and weird is the way to put it. So what was someone— someone used the phrase, I think it was last week, weather weirding. And so having these sort of weird sort of events where they're, you know, outside the realm of of averages, or even that 1 in 100, 1 in 250, whatever. What it says to me though, Pete, when I hear about these things, and on our own farm at a very small level, this is one of the things that we notice the difference of, is having— this is where to me a service crop or a cover crop at this time of year can make a huge difference, or a week from now, or whatever the case may be, because the rate at which the velocity of those raindrops when they're hitting the ground, they can do incredible damage. to the soil structure and take it all away with runoff.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Like, it's, it's— there's a few videos out there that are really cool, but if you get a big thunderstorm droplet, like, it's almost like a little atomic bomb if it hits bare soil, and it just, it just explodes those particles apart. And, and that's why we get crusting, and that's why we get— so it's really interesting you mentioned that, Lyndsey, because we fixed a tile In my wheat field, and the tile had blown out and we got water ponding. My wheat died in that area, and I thought I had that farm fixed from that perspective.
Wrong.
Mm-hmm. But when we dug down, and the water had not ponded there regularly, it ponded there this spring only, and it was because the tile broke and it boiled out and it came from the neighbours. And it's not the neighbour's fault, it's just what happens when that occurs. When we dug down there, even though, like, I try hard, I do limited tillage, I do rotation, I do service crops or cover crops, call them whatever you will, like, I'm always trying to build the soil up. Dang, when we dug down to fix that tile, that soil was like concrete.
Mm-hmm.
And so even just the water sitting on the soil and, and leaching through, like, it just puts such weight on our fields that it compacts things. And when you add that to the impact of the raindrops, it makes a massive impact on crop productivity. And so you're right, if it's one of those times, and it, I mean, there's always these trade-offs, that's the other point, right, Lyndsey? So one of the things I say to my clients, and actually on the Word, and to anybody, if you're going to grow winter canola, zero residue, okay? And you know I'm not a tillage person.
I know, but those slugs.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so if you are planning on winter canola, so now you've buried the stubble and we sort of say we're going to stale seed bed it, so 2 weeks with nothing there, and then we can take out the volunteer wheat with glyphosate. Well, you know what, if that 4.5-inch rain hits on that bare soil when you're just trying to set up for canola seeding, it's all bad and you have to How do you manage around that is a really, really tough challenge. So yes, service crops, absolutely critical, but sometimes you just get caught that the rainfall hits in that part of your production cycle, and that's just a tough go. Good structure will help, but it still isn't the whole answer.
Well, and there's a limit, right? So exactly that, like, good structure will help, but I mean, maybe that's a 2-inch rain or 4-inch rain, but like Oh. It doesn't matter. So I mean, I guess, I mean, to the good, if it's falling on corn and beans, at least there is that plant material to slow it down. And also those plants are still actively taking up water. So I mean, at least this time of year, that's better than say a November storm of that magnitude that just causes all sorts of issues. So, okay, now on this note though, you did get a call out of the Niagara Peninsula about heavy clays, water ponding, etc., and beans looking kind of sickly. So what's that all about?
Yeah, so Josh sent me an email asking, like, they've had that Niagara region, parts of the Niagara region have had too much water all the way through, but they just got hammered in the last 2 weeks. They actually were in a state of emergency. They had a 1-in-100-year storm, and then 3 years— 3 days later or a week later, I don't— don't quote me exactly, but before that water could get away, they had a 1-in-250-year storm. And he says that 30% of the soybeans in many soybean fields are now prematurely yellow. It looks like Phytophthora root rot, and he asked, what is the yield loss? And so, Lyndsey, the yield loss in that situation is pretty much directly related or correlated to how much yellow you get because most of the soybeans are at R5. So R5 is beginning seed. If that plant dies and that there's not much, like it's just developing the seed in the pod, there's nothing there to harvest. And I know this because Pete has Phytophthora in his own soybeans, unfortunately from earlier on this spring. And all year, and this is the way Phytophthora can work, all year plants will just die randomly. And I now have, I don't know, 10 or 15% of the soybeans in my field that have sometime between When we first saw it in June till now, just died. And if they're dying today at R5, the yield loss, that plant is gone. If they get to R6 before they yellow off and die, well, R6 is full seed. So now there's something in the pod, it will be a smaller bean, so there's still some yield loss, but it's not 100% yield loss. They get to R7, the yield loss is almost zero. But it, man, to get that close, right, we're We're almost there, we're at R5, we got to get to R7. Yeah, good luck with that because if they die at R5, she's bad news. And actually Josh asked a really good question because it's Phytophthora. He said, how do we tell what race it is? How do we choose varieties for next year? Is there some management that we can apply so that we don't get ourselves into this situation next year? Really smart agronomist to think of that. And really, and so yeah, drive around, see the fields that aren't showing Phytophthora, find out what the variety is there, what resistance gene that variety has, and that would be a good indicator of what you might look for moving forward. But every field is different, so even that is just a guideline, right?
But I mean, it is in all of these things, there's at least something to either think about, talk about, explore, write down, look at, and that's exactly it when we're dealing with a disease issue. Dig a little deeper on variety changes or differences, etc., and see if there is something you can do either next year or next time you're back to that field or whatever the case may be. So yes, an excellent checklist. Okay, let's take a quick break. We'll be back with more of Agronomic Monday here on RealAg Radio right after this.
Peter Johnson, @WheatPete, RealAgriculture.com. I'm the host of the Word and I love doing the Word. I love the word, I love the questions, I love the challenges, I love having to apply agronomics to all over the globe and areas outside of my normal jurisdiction. Also, I love the feedback the most, where growers challenge me, tell me about their plot results, help me to learn. The word, absolutely the best part of my day.
How's your seed quality? What should you treat with? What about herbicide carryover and environmental concerns? Spring is here, And you've got a lot of things to think about in regards to your pulse crop. The Pulse School on Real Agriculture has information and advice for all these questions and more to help you navigate this season. Brought to you by BASF. Pulse School episodes are available at pulsschool.com, realagriculture.com, or as a podcast on your favourite streaming service. Download the latest episode today.
I'm Lyndsey Smith, host of The Agronomist, and I want to thank you for tuning in for over 200 episodes of our beloved little programme. Join me Monday nights, 8 PM Eastern on YouTube for our live and interactive agronomy Q&A. Each week, our guest panel will handle some of your toughest agronomic questions live streaming on YouTube, Facebook, X, and RealAgriculture.com. Tune in Monday nights or go to RealAgriculture.com/agronomist and sign up for our email notifications and don't miss an episode. Welcome back to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio Channel 147 SiriusXM. I am your host, Lyndsey Smith, and every season begins with the conditions left behind from the last. That's what we're talking about today. From the Raptor stripper header to the Spider disc drill, Kayhart designs equipment to support low disturbance farming practises throughout the production cycle. Visit kayhartindustries.com for more, and that's Hart, H-A-R-T. All right, we're bringing back in Peter Wheat Pete Johnson. Uh, Pete, you know what, off the top we didn't have a chance to to chat about your very busy weekend, but Friday you took in a Soil and Crop Day, over the weekend an air show. This is maybe why you haven't checked your fields, but let's talk about— I don't do air shows, they terrify me— but let's talk about the Soil and Crop Field Day. It was a sprayer day. What did you learn about the sprayer?
Oh, so it was Huron Soil and Crop, and it was actually at the Huron County Ploughing Match site, so that was kind of cool that they worked together, and it was just It was a 2-hour sprayer day, but we had a number of different sprayers there, and with the new technology, but also with retrofit technology, and there's getting to be way more retrofit technology out there, Lyndsey, than I realised, and some of it is really, really cool. Plus, we also had drones there, so, you know, the whole thing was awesome from that perspective. Kudos to the Soil and Crop Association.
Yeah.
It was a wheat field, they planted oats, And then perpendicular to the direction of the sprayer travel, I got them to also plant some soybeans so that we could use the green-on-green technology and see it work as it drove across the soybeans. And so that was a bit of fun. But one of the custom app guys that was there made a comment, Lyndsey, that just blew my mind.
Hmm.
So a 2-year-old sprayer, They bought it new, this is its second season, we're not all the way through the second season because it's August, we still have the fall, and he has 45,000 acres through that sprayer.
Mm-hmm.
And it just like, it's, I know he's custom, but even still, tell me any custom operator that in 2 years could put 45,000 acres on a combine. And so So essentially we have a million-dollar sprayer.
Mm-hmm.
And a combine, a big combine would be over that. It would be $1.2, $1.3, $1.4 million, whatever that number is. So roughly the same expense, but the value that sprayer brings, right? Like in terms of what does it make sense to own on the farm? The answer is a sprayer, like for goodness sakes, because it just gets so much more use than your tractors, than your hay binds, than your combines, than your seed drills. We spend so much on a corn planter and we use it like 10 days.
Yeah.
So that was one comment that blew my mind just from how much value you can get out of a sprayer, how important they are to the operation, and anybody who listens to Wheat Pete, Lyndsey, knows that I have zero tolerance for weeds. Like, I hate weeds, I just like, man, You can't let them go to seed, so that it just drives the importance of that sprayer. But what else did I learn the spray day? Yeah, I was pretty impressed actually, and I say this because I was surprised. The drone, I mean, it was a very calm day and so ideal conditions, but the drone did a better job of coverage than I have often seen drones do. And so what that tells me is that we've We continue to advance that technology so that we are getting away from the poor coverage that we were getting before. Now, I will add to that, Lyndsey, that please remember that a drone flies at 12 feet.
Right.
So that spray has to travel 12 feet to get to the target. When I am using a ground rig, I'm at 20 inches, right? That's Yeah. It's 1.67 feet versus 12, and so drift is still a huge concern, and we just cannot lose sight of that. But at least, at least the technology is improving, and the technology on the sprayers with the recirculating booms, I actually think there should not be a sprayer sold in North America without a recirculating boom. It is such an environmental win, and the power width modulation and the turn compensation and the green on green, the green on brown, like all of that was there. There's some really cool non-main companies that are developing technology now that can retrofit any sprayer.
Right.
And that was really, really cool to see some of that and the upgrades to those technologies, you know, like it's PWM but it's like PWM, the next step, if you will. It runs at greater frequency. And it was a very cool day. Pete was a very happy moderator that day. He had fun.
Which is really, that's what it's about, is does everybody have fun? But I really do, and I appreciate the retrofit side, right? Because it's one thing to make advances in technology or advance it to do a better job to exactly that, waste less product, make sure we've got more product where we want it. But not everybody can buy A new sprayer every couple years, an update, and etc. And so to me, the retrofit side really does deserve that attention because you can do a better job with what you already have with maybe just a fraction of the investment and do a few modifications and away you go. And, and why not? But it is, you're right, it's a, it's a unit that, you know, you usually the first one out of the shed and the last one put away in the whole growing season. So very important and well worth the money then to invest in those retrofits, etc.
Maybe not the last one put away because, you know, in the fall you can freeze them up, so they might put them away before the combine.
Maybe, I don't know. I know a lot of Western Canadian farmers that if they've got a window, it comes back out, it does its spray, and then it goes back in. So there you go.
And it should, by the way.
And it should, it should, exactly. We love fall weed control, it's really important. Okay, question though on, and this is interesting, where are we at on heat units Because I feel like the corn this year, specifically on corn, it— I saw tassels very early this year, and that I felt like it made sense because it was stinking hot. But where are we at now with heat units and maturity?
Yeah, Lyndsey, I get a little confused, right? Because May was cool. If you remember May, it was cool. Pete kept saying, oh, this is wheat weather, baby, this is wheat weather. When it's wheat weather, it's not corn weather, it's not soybean weather. So we were behind in heat units, and to this day we continue to be behind, and we calculate corn heat units or crop heat units from May 1st.
Right.
So from May 1st till today, if you look at the numbers, we are still somewhere between 50 and 100 heat units behind normal. It's not huge, but it's, it's, you know, 2, 3, 4 days behind normal. And yet, I got sent a picture on Friday of corn that was denting.
Right.
I saw in my travels on Friday, I saw silage that had been taken off. Now, I'm quite sure they were probably low on feed, but they had taken the outside rounds off already, and that corn looked like it was not that far away from silage harvest, and that was what, the 20th of, 21st of Yeah. August, and the edible beans are also coming in crazy fast, and you kind of go, how can we be behind on heat units, and yet the corn looks as if it's advanced in maturity? If it's denting on the 21st of August, almost for sure it's black layered by, I don't know, the 15th or the 20th of September, and that's early corn. So we know that when we get under drought stress, you know, the corn will slow down, but depending on when that drought stress hits and how significant it is, it will speed that process up. But corn development, not everywhere, but corn development certainly in some areas and bean development is ahead of schedule. And that's just, it's an environmental thing, and it's one thing that I kind of try to wrap my head around and say, well, I'm not exactly sure why, but But I can see it, so it's real.
Well, yes, but I was— I know that May was relatively cool, but June here at least, I mean, June was so humid. Like, it was hot and humid, and we had— forget like knee-high by 1st of July, it was, it was Lindsay-high by 1st of July. And, but, and we weren't short of moisture. So now I haven't gone out to cheque if we have denting corn. I doubt that we do, but it does seem like it has been ahead, even though, to your point, May was not necessarily a scorcher, but June was.
Yeah, but I mean, the heat units should really take that into account, right?
They should, yes, exactly.
And so it's just a bit of a quandary to me that we're behind in heat units, but it does not look like we're behind on maturity in the corn crop. And again, I'm sure that there are people out there that are, you know, would not agree with that. Yeah, for sure. It's just the way it works, but I don't get sent those pictures if they aren't real, so Yeah, exactly, and someone going, what is going on here?
And also a good reason to go out and go cheque if you haven't in a while, go see where things are at. Okay, now you did mention edible bean desiccation passes on deck, and that is early.
Yeah, that's— I mean, how many times do we desiccate edible beans in August? And it happens, but where I was at the sprayer day up near Wingham, they have been incredibly dry And there will be edible beans almost for sure desiccated this week. So we desiccate them this week, we're going to likely harvest them next week. Like, that is just crazy early. And Matt Underwood was there from Underwood Grains. He's a real edible bean guy, a really sharp guy. And I said, Matt, like, this just seems early. And he said, yeah, it's just drought. But then I go to some of my own clients that have not been dry at all, because not everywhere is like Lucan and Pete's territory, and Their edible beans are also well ahead in maturity, and we are likely to desiccate some edible beans around Stratford that has been like you, Lyndsey, wet, wet, wet all season.
Yeah.
And I haven't been there to scout them, but they are very close. And so whether we desiccate them towards the end of this week or early next week, regardless, that is at least 10 days earlier, maybe 2 weeks earlier than we would normally expect. And so Yeah, something's going on environmentally that we are seeing things ahead of where I would expect them to be.
Well, and this is my curmudgeon point of desiccating versus a pre-harvest pass. Pete, there's a difference between a pre-harvest herbicide pass and a desiccation.
Can you please explain what a pre-harvest herbicide pass is and how it differs from So with desiccation in the edible bean game and in some IP soybeans, we cannot do a pre-harvest weed control pass because we are no longer allowed by the end user. They don't want us to do that, so it's strictly desiccation. Desiccation is dry the plant out to facilitate harvest, and if there are weeds there, hopefully we can also dry those weeds out so we don't stain the beans. A pre-harvest weed control pass is something where I have, you know, sow thistle, Canada thistle, you know, some of those perennial weeds that I actually want to kill. There's almost never a point in annual weeds doing a pre-harvest weed control pass because annual weeds will have already set seed and you can try to kill the plant but the seeds are already there, it doesn't matter.
Right.
When it's pre-harvest for weed control, it's almost always those tough-to-control perennial weeds, winter annual weeds perhaps, but mainly perennials. And it's, by the way, if you really have heavy pressure of things like perennial sow thistle, Canada thistle, dogbane— we saw some dogbane in wheat this year that was just horrendous— pre-harvest really works well. But that's, that's the difference. You're not trying to dry out the crop, you're trying to kill the weed, versus desiccation is we're ready for harvest but Unfortunately, plants don't all die uniformly, and so drying them out to get a quality product that the market demands is what we're trying to do.
And in a perfect world, desiccation is faster, but that's in a perfect world, so not always, but we try. Okay, let's take a quick break. Pete's gonna stick around for one more segment, and we'll be back with more RealAg Radio right after this.
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Welcome back to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio, Channel 147 SiriusXM, or of course wherever you get your audio, and you can find us on YouTube if you would like to see our beautiful smiling faces. I am your host Lyndsey Smith, and step up and lead with the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers and SaskOilseeds. Those organisations are looking for registered producers to join their boards. Make your voice heard, shape the future, and apply by September 11th. Director nomination forms are available at saskpulse.com and saskoilseeds.com. That's right, I am a big proponent for people joining boards, so I encourage everybody to, if you're in Saskatchewan, put your name forward. Okay, joining me for our last segment of Peter Wheat Pete Johnson, it's Pete. And what we didn't mention, so I want to get you just quickly on this harvest management question, One of the things that does come up this time of year are green stems, seeing some of that in oats. Are we seeing it also in barley or wheat? How do we manage for green stems?
Yeah, and so, Lyndsey, that's a great question, and just before I go there, can I just also add to your first comment? Volunteer, volunteer. I mean, it's so important to get out there and participate, and I don't care if it's on the local soccer board or it's the local agricultural pulse committee, like Like, man, we do not work without volunteers. It's so incredibly important. So hats off to all those that do, and if you're not doing it, I really encourage you to do it. It's just incredibly important. And I'm sorry to take that segue, but it just really, I feel passionate about that if you can't tell.
I love it, and our communities run on volunteers, so go and do it. Okay, yes.
So yeah, so green stems, and it's mainly in oat. The barley crop doesn't seem to have as much of it this year. Spring wheat, not so much either, But we are really getting a fair few complaints about the oat crop having green stems, and in particular, and this goes back to our previous conversation about desiccation, in particular where the oats lodged. And so had a great conversation with Andy about that. The oat crop, you know, it looked like it was ready, they pulled into the field, 27% moisture, just a little high.
Just a little damp.
Yeah, I mean, you did start with a read on stripper headers. It might be a spot where a stripper header could work, but, you know, it just— and so they stopped. But what they really noticed was how many green stems they had. They also had some foxtail weeds in the base that was causing some issues, but wherever it was lodged, they had new plants, or what looked like new plants coming up, starting to head out.
Interesting, yeah.
And Andy said, Like, what is that and how do we deal with that? So that was Friday, it was going to start raining Saturday, he wondered about going out there with Reglone to desiccate and my answer was not before 3 days or 5 days or 7 days of rain because we desiccate with Reglone at that stage and we can get into a lot of shatter loss and stem break. If we're going to do that, we had to do that 5 days before Friday, and then we maybe could have combined Friday. But it is really interesting to me how plants control their growth. So those lodged oats, guaranteed what happened is when the oats lodged, we lost the apical dominance, right? Pretty much, yeah. And so we have all these little tiller heads down at the bottom that the main head is saying, no, we don't have enough resources, we don't have enough resources, It lodges, well now the stem is broken enough that we lose that hormonal control holding those tillers back and guess what? Up they grow and now they're above the rest of the crop, they're getting lots of sunshine and they're saying life is good, maybe I'll make a head, and so it just, yeah, it makes it really tough. Swathing would be an option but nobody in Ontario owns a swather anymore, it's just like—
I will have you know though, this is like the the 4th time in 2 weeks that we have talked about the lack of swathers in Ontario and where they would be useful. So I'm just gonna put it out there, I know there's one or two, like I know of one or two, so I'm sure there are more. They are quite ancient by what I've seen, but there, there just aren't enough of them around because I'm telling you, if we're gonna have more cereals in rotation, the swather really has a place every once in a while. Yeah, so just putting it out there.
Just as a As a guy that grew up with swathing, you can also get caught with swathing because we swath, you know.
You can, yeah.
And then you get 2 weeks of rain and then it grows in the swath and then you kind of wish I shouldn't have swathed.
Just let it stand. I know you're—
This is Ontario.
Yeah, you're darned if you do, darned if you don't. Anyway, I'm just saying it is a fun thing. Now, okay, here we are, we're August 24th. I do want to touch on just briefly winter canola and winter wheat. Winter canola obviously goes in earlier than winter wheat, But Pete, for those who are thinking, hey, I've got ground here that's going to go into winter wheat, edible beans are going to come off early, is there such thing as too early for winter wheat?
And Lyndsey, the answer is absolutely, but be cautious with that. So, you know, I have often talked about ultra-early seeding of winter wheat, and sometimes that is your best option, but when we ultra-early seeded winter wheat, because I've just been around long enough that we actually did those silly things. We drove to St. Thomas with our plot drill, Shane and myself, and we planted winter wheat, I believe it was the 1st of September at St. Thomas, which is probably about 1 month ahead of the optimum date.
Okay.
When you do that, you almost always get enough fall disease in the crop that you get lower yields and And in the data we did that there, Chad Anderson did some work in South Lambton with us at the same time. When we seed ultra early, you can lose maybe 10% in yield potential. So can you seed too early? Absolutely. But let me add that the risk of low yield by seeding too early is far less than the risk of low yield by seeding too late, right?
Yeah.
And so if you're in Haldimand County and you get the chance to seed on the 10th of September and that's, you know, 3 weeks too early, but you see a 5-inch rain on the forecast, well, you get that 5-inch rain, it'll be November when you seed.
Yeah.
And so, like, you have to look at your soil type. If you're on a nice silt loam that can rain 3 inches today and you can easily seed in a week or 10 days, Hit the optimum window and gocrops.ca, right, the grain farmers website, the optimum planting date map is on the cereal section there. Know what your optimum date is. For Pete, I know it, it's September 25th, and so I try hard to target my wheat seeding date between September 18th, I don't want to be more than a week ahead of the optimum date, and and the end of September, but if I can, I'll be September 18th, not the 25th, because man, those fall tillers, and every day matters so much, those fall tillers are really what make big yield potential. And so you just, you cannot replace early seeding date. And Lyndsey, I think you'd support that statement from what you've seen as well.
Well, and just a few weeks ago and coming up in a couple weeks on The Agronomist, had this very conversation about the impact of seeding date, and that if you go— to your point, if you go too late, you can't outmanage that. Going too late caps your yield, that you can't— fertiliser won't fix it, fungicide won't fix it, you can't outmanage that late seeding date. So exactly that. And Pete, I think it's a really good point, if you've got heavy clay and a lot of rain coming, maybe it's too early on the calendar but for conditions it's right on top, right? So that might make the difference and away you go. But I think it is, it's a neat conversation to have because if you've got the ground there and you're thinking maybe I should roll, keep it in mind. Now this also brings up too, and there's a few other things on that, so I do want to shout out September 14th, Pete, you are going to host the Agronomists, 8 PM Eastern. You will be talking about seeding dates, rates, row width, all those sorts of things. Yeah, I will be. So everybody get that on your calendar, September 14th, 8 PM Eastern on YouTube. Pete will be hosting. I do want to, before, on that note though, before we run out of time today, tonight's episode of The Agronomist is on fertilising forages because here we are, you mentioned the ideal planting window, we also have a limitation on alfalfa fields especially on when we should be taking that last cut in the year, and this though is prime fertility timing.
Yeah.
for those forages to improve our winter survivability? What do we need to know, and should I be throwing sulphur in the fertility mix?
Yeah, and so, Lyndsey, what astounds me on that note is, is how often I get soil tests back from a dairy farm and they are low, low, and lower. And that when I started, it was the opposite. Yeah, we had a dairy farm, your soil tests were high, high, and higher, and all of the cash croppers were drooling over those soil tests. Man, it has just flipped. And so yes, absolutely, now is the time. Get your soil samples pulled if you haven't pulled them. You know, you can't manage what you don't measure, but so pull the soil sample. And then you have to look at sulphur. What's really interesting in some of that early work that we did is that if you applied potash onto a sulfur-deficient alfalfa crop, you will lower your alfalfa yield.
Whoa, right, that's wild.
Exactly, because what do we talk about on, on hay ground? It's potash, potash, potash. We move so much potash, you just got a pound of potash on. Well, guess what? If you're short sulphur, you actually hurt the yield. And so we really have to know where we're at, and that comes down to knowing how much sulphur is going on in the manure as well, because we don't yet have a good sulphur soil test. But I'm working with some new dairy farmers as clients this year, and, and so we will be putting sulphur on forage fields that they have not normally applied, because when I walked those fields all summer, you could just see that marginal sulphur deficiency. It wasn't severe, but the crop looked a little stunted. It was a bit yellow at the top of the plant, and you kind of go, man, what is that?
Yeah.
And I'm pretty convinced it was sulphur, so Not every farm is in that situation. When you ask, do you need sulphur, I think that's a farm-by-farm, and let's look at where we're at from that perspective, but don't discount sulphur on a forage crop because it is a major, major nutrient.
Well, and that brings up— and so that's what we're going to talk about tonight. So tonight, 8 PM Eastern, I've got Christine O'Reilly on, Cedric McLeod on. Christine really wants to talk about exactly that balanced fertility, so making sure That, and we know this, we know that certain nutrients work hand in hand and it differs by crop, and alfalfa especially is one of those ones that, and well, and I guess what I was going to say is why not, or why wouldn't alfalfa need more sulphur when we think about our entire cropping system over time is needing more sulphur because we're not getting it from the environment. So there's also that time lag too, right, of how much isn't being added through other sources.
Right.
And alfalfa is a high protein crop. It fixes its own nitrogen, which is a big component of protein. But guess what the other big component of protein is? It's called sulphur, and we don't fix sulphur from the atmosphere. We got it for free before, we don't now. So yeah, your point is bang on, Lyndsey, 100%.
It's like I like forages. Okay, we're gonna leave it there.
I do, I love them so much.
Thank you so much, and I am actually— this is a good reminder, I'm going to go and make sure that I'm double-checking my critical harvest period so that I am not overstressing my harvest and my alfalfa crop. Okay, let's leave it there, Pete. I'm going to stick around for one more segment. We're going to talk corn, nitrogen, and robots after this, but Pete, have a wonderful week. We'll hear you on The Word on Wednesday.
Awesome, thanks so much for the opportunity, Lyndsey. Have a great week yourself.
All right, okay. Okay, I'll be back with more RealAg Radio right after this.
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Hi, I'm Bernard Tobin, host of the Soybean School on RealAgriculture.com. Throughout the year on the Soybean School, we'll bring you timely agronomic video content from planting to harvest, from the latest agronomic research to the latest in production technology. Cheque out our massive video library on YouTube, RealAgriculture.com, or download the audio podcast versions wherever you get your podcasts. The Soybean School is brought to you by Maizex Seeds and Lallemand Plant Care.
Welcome back to this final segment of Agronomic Monday here on RealAg Radio, Rural Radio Channel 147. I am your host, Lyndsey Smith. This segment brought to you by MNP. Rooted in agriculture, MNP Ag Advisors combine field-level agronomic knowledge with financial and operational insight to help farm businesses make confident decisions, turning insights into action. Learn more at MNP.ca. All right, as promised, we're going to go to this conversation with Bernd Tobin and Mark MacLean on robots providing N for corn for the growing season.
Back on the Corn School with Mark MacLean, Brucelee Poultry crops manager. Sir, how are you doing?
We're doing okay, yeah. It's a little different than the last time you were here. Last time we were wearing sweaters, and I think you brought a little rain with you last time, which I wouldn't mind if you did again.
I'm going to try to bring back some more rain. Mark, we want to talk about Upside Robotics, your nitrogen robots. Again, as you mentioned, we were here in June. We're back here almost 2 months to the letter. I want to talk about Let's talk about, you know, obviously how the robots have been performing, but first of all, hey, the conditions are tough.
Yeah, we've— we're deficient in moisture, you would say. Obviously where we are with this farm, it is beside a gravel pit. It does have some droughty soils, and it's not hard to see that we are at a moisture deficiency. The robot station says we've got somewhere around just over 4 inches of rain. The John Deere app says we've got somewhere around 9 inches of rain. I would say we're somewhere between that. If we've got 6 inches of rain total since planting, I would be surprised. But yeah, it's on the other side of it, it's come at decent times to kind of keep things just slightly going. We're now though into some critical time, and as we're— yeah, it's—
I'd like some rain.
Yeah, you'd like some rain. And hey, I'm going to break I'm going to try anyway, but first of all, let's talk about what you've seen since we were here. The crop came along well. Interesting, obviously you've got this set out where, you know, you've got the centrepiece of this field, the robots are running, you're doing the outside with your own programme. 200 pounds of nitrogen, 130 down, 70 at Y-drop. Tell us about Y-dropping. What did you see? What did this whole field look like?
So again, we were moving through the season, things were looking great, came to Y-drop timing, We make a decision at that point, what are we doing? I figured we had 110% yield potential at that point. I was optimistic, it was looking great. So we charged ahead with Plan A. Even at tassel time when I came in and I covered the whole field with fungicide at that time, and at that time I would say we were probably back down to 100% yield potential and then we've We've just, we've ticked down ever since, unfortunately.
What's interesting is 110% of yield potential and with a lot different nitrogen total down at that time. I mean, obviously even now, what's the total on nitrogen?
Well, so I'm full pops on. I'm where I'm at. From what I can tell without really digging into the robots, I would say they're somewhere between 60 and 70 units Not percent, units of nitrogen on, and I'm not sure what Tanya and them are thinking about this dry weather at this point. I haven't had a sit-down with them in a little while, but I'm going to assume that if I could have some of my nitrogen back in the tank, given what I'm seeing now, I think that would be an okay situation.
So I mean, we're hoping for some rain.
You've got a lot of yield potential here, but if things sort of keep going sideways, you've kept a lot of money in your Yeah, the robots definitely, because, you know, when you look at what nitrogen utilisation is after R1, you know, there's still a lot of nitrogen to go into this plant. So if there's no water, it ain't bringing it in, and if there's no nitrogen here, which then you don't—
you're not wasting it.
So right now I would say the robots are a little ahead of me on the programme now that the way the weather's went, and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I want to talk about what needs to happen What's going to happen for the rest of the way? But first of all, how have the robots been performing? We had to rescue one or two along the way, but overall, you know, how have they covered and travelled the ground?
Yep, and the same thing is, you know, like they've had their little ups and downs and they've had a few antenna problems and they've had a few application problems, but, you know, I got a phone call the other night asking if I could go rescue one. I think Bill maybe was at the Legion a little too long and he ended up upside down somehow. in here, so we got him rescued up. But they are, you know, they— after a lot of the kinks got worked out, and I would say it's been really quiet as far as babysitting for the last month.
Jack and Bill, of course, have been working this field. Talk about what you need to see the rest of the way. Let's say we get some rain, we get some rain, what do you want to see in this field, you know, the rest of the way?
Yeah, so I'm expecting if we do get rain, like you say, there's rain forecast in There's rain forecast Saturday and Sunday. You know, we do grow other crops. The wheat's off, the beans— we have— the beans are— the chequebook's closed on the beans.
Yeah.
You know, there's still some chances maybe here if we get some rain tonight that I'm assuming they're going to continue applying nitrogen after the fact of here because we still do have plants. They're not dead yet, they're just not happy. So yeah, as we go through the rest of the season, we'll just see. If the tap turns off and we keep missing these rains, then, and the nitrogen stays in the tank, that's maybe not a bad thing.
Yeah, well, Mark, thank you for taking the time. We're going to cheque in with you end of season regardless of what happens, do the math and see what we've learned.
Yeah, we'll find out.
That does it for today's show. Thank you everyone for joining me here on Agronomic Monday. We'll talk to you on Friday, and in the meantime, head on over to RealAgriculture.com or follow us across social to keep up to date on the latest of what's happening with our friends south of the border. Cheers, everybody.
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