A challenging growing season can make harvest decisions anything but straightforward, especially when crops in the same area respond very differently to the conditions.
Near Neerlandia, Alta., Shane Strydhorst, chair of Pulse Canada and director with Alberta Pulse Growers, is seeing that contrast firsthand in his pea and faba bean fields. A cool, wet spring delayed seeding before roughly nine inches of rain fell across much of the farm in June, drowning out portions of the pea crop and opening the door for weeds.
“It looks like we took a year off from weed control. We did in fact spray...and it just shows how important crop competition is when it comes to dealing with weeds in our fields,” Strydhorst says.
The variability is carrying into harvest. Parts of the pea field have been sprayed to control volunteer canola and dry down green material, while greener areas will require another pass later. At the combine, Strydhorst says the goal will be to keep things moving slowly enough to limit cracking and splitting, while adjusting for areas ranging from very little crop to heavy weed growth.
Just down the road, the faba beans tell a very different story. While some low areas drowned out, the crop largely thrived under the wet conditions, producing plenty of biomass and pods, says Strydhorst. The challenge there is maturity, with the crop still quite green heading into mid-September.
Harvesting faba beans will mean waiting for more leaves to brown and drop before desiccating, then managing the large volume of material through the combine. Strydhorst says faba beans are relatively forgiving when it comes to cracking, but header setup will still matter for keeping seeds on the right side of the cutter bar.
With harvest timing, crop value, weather risk and field conditions all competing for attention, Strydhorst says deciding what comes off first will require some flexibility.
“There’s always lots of decisions to be made and lots of factors entering into those decisions.”
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Read more » It looks like we took a year off from weed control. We did in fact spray before the crop emerged, we sprayed in crop, and it just shows how important crop competition is when it comes to dealing with weeds in our fields.
Are there any combine settings that you're going to be changing in order to work with what's here?
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I'm Amber Bell and this is Real Agriculture. For today's episode of Pulse School, I am here with Shane Stridhorse, who's the chair of Pulse Canada and director on the Alberta Pulse Growers Board. We are standing in your pea field here, Shane, and it's been a rough year.
It's been a challenging year. It's ugly.
But we're going to talk about what growers should do in some of the challenging years, maybe what combining looks like, what decisions are on the table. So welcome, it's great to see you.
Thanks, Amber.
Okay, let's start off with why don't you tell us a little bit of what this year has actually looked like here in the Nearlandia area.
So we got off to a little bit of a slow, later start. It was a cool spring, a wet spring, so we got in the fields a bit later than we would have liked. Things were a little bit wetter than we would have liked at the outset. And then, yeah, then the skies opened up in June, and I think we had about 9 inches of rain across most of the farm in June, which was quite a bit too much at that time of the year for the crops. And the crops, a lot of them drowned out and were replaced by a lot of the weeds that we see growing behind us.
Right, and there wasn't a lot of time to get in there with the sprayer either.
No, and it looks like we took a year off from weed control. We did in fact spray We sprayed before the crop emerged, we sprayed in crop, and it just shows how important crop competition is when it comes to dealing with weeds in our fields.
Now, talk to me a little bit about what the decision process was to bring peas into this field to begin with, and a little bit about what the land is like here.
Sure, yeah, so this field was intended to be a pulse last year. I put Edge down last fall, and the plan was for it to be a faba bean field, but because of the late start to spring and the fact that faba beans are a very long season crop, we had to do a little bit of switching this spring. So this field got switched out into peas, which, yeah, did not do as well as we would have hoped and did not do as well as a faba bean crop would have done here.
What are some of your harvest management strategies now? I mean, the field is in different stages of growth. What are you looking at for some of your decision-making process in how you're going to harvest this?
So most of this field was sprayed 3 We did a spray 3 days ago using glyphosate and heat, largely to control volunteer canola that came up and thrived in parts of the field. So hoping to dry that down by the time that the peas are ready to harvest. And part of the field had to be left because it was still far too green, so we'll have to come back and either use a similar approach or possibly use Reglone on that part of the field when it's ready. And yeah, hopefully we can get all this, what is now green material, get it through the combine and get it chopped up and hopefully set ourselves up for a better, a better year next year.
What are some of the issues that might come up as you're going to be combining?
I guess there's always a chance we've had a pretty cool wet run of weather here, so this pea crop is standing fairly decent right now where there are peas, and I guess those could always go down in the next week or 2 before we get in here with the combine. And the ground isn't dry, so whatever dirt goes through the combine will probably be sticking to the inner workings of that machine. And we have also experienced where geese have landed in a standing pea crop before and they weren't courteous enough to wait till harvest and they've made a big mess at times in the past. I'm really hoping that doesn't happen here this year.
Are there any combine settings that you're going to be changing in order to work with what's here?
I guess, well, for me actually, I'm new to a rotary combine this year, so I'm learning a little bit as I go, but I guess we have to run things slowly so you don't crack the peas on their way through the machine. And yeah, I guess one nice thing about pulse crops for storage is you can generally put them in the bin a little tougher and they actually aerate very easily because of the large spaces between the seeds. So, and it can be preferable to actually harvest that maybe say that 18-19% moisture and air them down in the bin. So yeah, it's always a matter of trying to get them in, in good condition without cracking and splitting.
How have the pulses held up compared to some of the other crops like canola or wheat?
Ah yeah, the peas obviously didn't do very well. Barley was challenged with the moisture this spring. Canola, some places did okay, some places it drowned out completely as well. Wheat looks like it did okay, and the faba beans, because they love water, they, they look fantastic.
So this would have been a really good year for any growers wanting to plant faba?
Would have been a great year if you could get enough faba beans in early enough. It would have been a great year for them. But yeah, they're, they're still pretty green, and if we have a chance to look at those, it'll be great because you can see how, how different they are at the same time of year as other crops that are getting ready to come off.
We're going to go look at those in a little bit, but before we close out this portion, any words of encouragement for growers that are struggling with fields such as this one when it comes to peas?
I guess I'm a farmer, I'm optimistic, hoping and praying that things are going to turn around and be better next year. And yeah, looking forward to getting this mess off the map and Probably doing some fall weed control and yeah, it'll be a pretty dedicated programme next year, probably seeding our wheat on this field at a little higher rate just to increase competition in the early part of the growing season and yeah, that's about the best we can do.
What will fall weed control look like on this field?
I guess, yeah, the glufosinate and heat approach to try to get any perennial weeds And yeah, we might be putting down some Avadex here because we've got some wild oats that got away on us, so that might be something we're going to consider this fall setting up for next spring.
Will there be a pre-burn as well?
There'll definitely be a pre-burn next spring, either before the crop is seeded or else after seeding, pre-emergent.
That's great, thanks Shane.
Thanks Amber.
So Shane, we are now in one of your faba bean fields. Talk to me a little bit about the history of this field, what it looked like, because it experienced the same weather as your peas. So what are the main differences between the faba beans and the peas?
Yeah, faba beans love water and peas do much better under drier conditions. So we obviously lost a couple of acres, or yeah, a couple acres out of this field where it drowned out, but that's more just where the water ran and stood. But the rest of the field did really, really well. There's a lot of biomass here, looks like there's a lot of pods, so if this crop ever matures— and we might, might be depending on some frost to help us out one of these days, but yeah, we'll see what happens over the next couple weeks.
Let's talk about the maturity a little bit because we are into mid-September in this area. What is the average maturity? When would you typically be harvesting?
Well, back in the day they always said spray your faba beans September 7th because you wanted to have them dried down enough before the first frost And it seems the last couple years that first frost is a little later than it used to be, so I'm hoping that we have enough days without frost for this crop to see itself through, finish filling the pods, and yeah, we've harvested anywhere from, you know, the second week of September all the way through into November sometimes.
How will harvest management look different in this field versus your pea field?
So this field, we'll be hoping that more of the leaves turn black, brown, and drop, and then I have Reglone ready to go. And we'll— that's a desiccant, and we'll be spraying that on when the time is right, and it's looking like it's a little ways away yet, but that'll be for a rapid dry down, hopefully to get it before any frost comes our way. And yeah, there's a lot of material here, and these stems can be a little bit, a little bit tough going through the combine and for residue management for chopping. So the drier that they get before we put them through the combine, the better for For setting ourselves up for next year.
With crops at such different stages, a lot greener than they should be right now, how are you going to make your decisions on which crop to harvest first?
Well, I guess first of all, this crop, the beauty of it is it won't be ready when everything else is, so there's a little bit of a time management benefit there. But yeah, I guess we always have to balance things like the value of one crop over another if they're both ready at the same time. Do we have something to lose if we leave one crop out? Say it's barley in the swath, if it gets rained on, you're going to lose something there much more quickly than, say, a standing wheat crop. So there's always lots of decisions to be made and lots of factors entering into those decisions.
What will weed control look like in this field?
So we did pre-emerge spray, we did in-crop spray, we will use Reglone because there's not really any perennial weed pressure here, so we're not too worried about that. And yeah, the next year it looks like it should be setting up for fairly good conditions to get a good wheat crop established here, and we don't have a lot of wild oats, so we're not really looking at anything like Avidex on a field like this for next year.
How will combine settings change between the pea field, which has a lot more weeds, versus your faba bean field?
Yeah, I guess this crop will be probably trying to target the optimal settings for the combine for a large seeded crop, you know, having the wider spaced concaves in the machine, sieves will be set fairly wide open, lots of fan speed to blow the chaff out. You're not going to blow these faba bean seeds out of the back of the combine very quickly in my experience, and yeah, a lot of material, whereas the peas, it's a little lighter, so probably Probably have to fiddle with settings a little bit there and probably change in different parts of that field because, yeah, there's going to be parts of the field with very little going through the machine and parts where the combine will be running at capacity, which is where you kind of want it to be running.
How much attention do you put towards cracking pod shatter?
Fava beans are fairly forgiving compared to peas when it comes to cracking. Again, we'll probably try to get into the field when that's around that 18-19% moisture and They can dry very quickly. You can start at 18-19 and you can be at 15 by the end of the same day or the next day, so they can dry pretty quickly, but the cracking is a bit forgiving. For the header settings, we'll probably try to tilt it back a little bit, have the reels back as much as we can so that when the reels do hit the crop, they don't possibly cause pods to split open before they are above the header. But yeah, as you can see, a lot of this field is Some of it's standing pretty good, some of it's twisted and tangled, so we're going to have to scoop down and, and put a little bit of extra material through and, and just try to be a little bit careful that we keep the seeds behind the cutter bar and not in front of the cutter bar if they're going to fall out.
I'm really hoping the weather holds as we go into harvest, hopefully soon.
Hopefully.
Hopefully soon. Thank you so much for joining us, Shane.
Thanks, Amber.
And that was Shane Stridehorse on Real Agriculture.
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