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Canola Council of Canada

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• Early seeding, pre-seed burnoff, check bins

  Issues of the week Most of the Prairies are reporting good soil moisture, especially with rain and snow in Alberta the past few days. Exception: South and central Peace are very dry. Most growers heeded the seasonal frost risk and held off seeding canola despite warm temperatures the past couple weeks. May 1 will be [...]

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• Crop and weather update

  Peace region (B.C. and Alberta): South, central and western Peace regions, including B.C., are very dry. Seeding is underway, despite the frost risk, as many growers are worried they will lose what little moisture they have if they don’t seed soon. Alberta: In southern Alberta, many areas got rain the past few days and more [...]

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• Quick hitters

  —Watch John Mayko’s webinar on “Top 10 agronomy tips before you start seeding”  and Doug Moisey’s webinar “Canola stand establishment – Getting the crop off to a great start”  on the Alberta Canola Producers Commission website. Click here for instructions to get set up to watch. —Some growers still have last year’s harvest to combine.  Because [...]

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• Tempted to seed early? Think frost

  Warm soil temperatures and decent soil moisture in most regions will mean rapid emergence. Seed put in the ground today could be up in seven to 10 days. (The graph below shows the connection between soil temperature and faster more even emergence.) Frost damage risk for these early crops is higher, especially if the plants [...]

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• Good time for pre-seed burnoff

  A long stretch of warm weather and decent moisture means fast growing weeds — especially perennials and winter annuals but also annuals and volunteers. Dandelions in some regions are already very large. With a week or more before seeding hits full stride, many growers will apply a pre-seed burnoff of glyphosate or CleanStart ahead of [...]

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• Fertilize to make optimal use of moisture

  With the rains last week, many regions have good topsoil moisture plus three to four feet of subsurface moisture. That means crop nutrients, not moisture, could be the limiting factor for yield. With fertilizer prices back in line this year, fertilizing to match yield potential can be an effective way to maximize profitability. Applying all [...]

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• How to use the seed depth tool

  As part of our “Make a stand” campaign, we are giving away seed depth tools (see the photo) through many seed retailers across the Prairies. Retailers who don’t have them can contact their regional CCC agronomist. Growers can use the tool to make sure ever run of the drill places canola at the recommended half [...]

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• Rotations tighten, disease risk rises

  While the recommended rotation for disease management is to seed canola once every four years, more growers are using a three-year or two-year rotation. This year we’ve heard more talk of canola on canola. This can cause a rapid build up of disease inoculum in the field, especially for clubroot and blackleg. With tight rotations, canola [...]

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• Hot April puts stored canola at risk

  Growers need to check their bins and grain-storage bags, even if canola was dry when it went in. With the warmer than usual April, many areas report some level of heating in storage facilities. When spring sunshine warms the outside of the bin, warm air moves up near the outside wall and down through the centre of the grain [...]

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