FARGO, N.D. – If 30 inch row spacing works for soybean growers seeding into heavy wheat residue, would it also work for canola producers?
The 2009 North Dakota wheat crop ranged from 70 to 90 bushels, but it turned out to be a mixed blessing for canola growers who seeded into those fields this spring.
Many farmers point to excess wheat residue and custom combiners as the two chief culprits for their spring troubles.
Gene Breker, sales manager of the seeding division for Amity Technology in Fargo, said that’s not totally accurate.
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Breker said it’s easier to blame the circumstances than it is to look into the mirror for the answer.
“There’s no doubt we get a lot of straw when we have a wheat crop like that,” said Breker.
He said the problem is compounded when the producer tries to place the canola seed shallow, thinking he’s following recommendations.
As a result, the 2010 canola was adequate in the strips with no residue and poor in the strips with excess straw.
Breker said pulling hoe drills through that residue requires extremely wide row spacing and straw still piles up because of the drills’ ranks.
“Shank drills create problems with bunching, especially after a wheat crop like we had last year.
“You can’t use a hoe drill with six inch or 7.5 inch row spacing because it will not go through heavy wheat residue. That’s why all the hoe drills now are on wide spacing, 12 inches or more.”
He said there has always been an issue with disc drills trying to cut residue.
“It’s like putting a steak on a Styrofoam plate instead of a real plate. There’s nothing to cut against.
“Harrowing just spreads the problem around. Vertical tillage helps a little bit, but it doesn’t get rid of residue. You just get shorter residue.”
Breker said the only way to make a disc drill acceptable to all farmers is to get rid of the residue in the seeding zone.
He said one version of the Amity Single Disc Drill has been used for the past three years by farmers planting soybeans into heavy wheat residue.
In the wide row soybean configuration, the Amity drill locates the seeding tools on 30 inch centres. The discs are toed out and place the seed into two rows six inches apart.
“We use the Yetter sharp tooth residue manager. That’s the first tool to touch the soil. It scrapes the seed row nice and clean.”
There’s no residue clinging to the wheel when it comes around. It moves 85 to 90 percent of the residue, even in corn, and throws it into the 24 inch gap.
“There’s plenty of space for straw, so it doesn’t roll back into the seed row. But the trash manager has to be mounted so it floats if you want it to really throw the straw.”
Breker said the residue managers create a black strip that warms up quickly in the spring and provides a uniform surface for better seed placement.
“It’s the same benefits you get with strip tillage, but it all happens with your single seeding pass and it’s very simple and inexpensive compared to strip till.”
He said air drills with ranks of toolbars have an inherent design issue. Straw from a front rank falls into the path of the following rank.
“Our single disc drill has only one rank. You can only do that with wide row spacing. Once the drill has passed, the seed rows are clean and all residue lies in those 24 inch gaps. There’s no second rank to catch stuff.”
The paired row concept is decades old, but the idea of paired rows with a 24 inch gap is new. Amity customers have used the technique only for soybeans into heavy wheat residue, reporting good success.
Although he doesn’t know of anyone who has tried the ultra-wide spacing on canola yet, Breker thinks the residue managers clear a good enough path that accurate canola seed placement should be possible.
“Canola is more touchy than soybeans when it comes to things like seeding depth.
“If it does work, it can mean a lot more canola bushels for growers seeding into heavy wheat residue.”
He said farmers who want to try it, but think 30 inch spacing is too radical, might consider backing off to 24 inch centres with twin six inch rows.
That still leaves an 18 inch gap for the trash managers to pile straw and it averages out to a more conventional 12 inch row spacing.
At the University of Oklahoma, researcher Chad Godsey ran winter canola experiments this year, testing 30 inch rows seeded with a row crop planter versus 15 inch rows applied with a no-till coulter-type drill.
He found that yields were similar between the two, but at 30 inch spacing, the canola didn’t form a full canopy.
He said there is an opportunity to use this strategy in heavy stubble conditions, but a narrower row strategy would likely deliver higher yields. At 30 inches, there might be a 10 percent yield penalty, despite the 2009-10 crop showing no reduction.
Other things observed with the 30 inch spacing on canola were that the singulating planter’s precision seed placement both in depth and spacing resulted in more rapid emergence and even plant development and staging.
At four and five pounds per acre, on 30 inch centres, the seedling losses due to crowding reduced the population to that of plots where two and three pounds were planted.
The lower rates resulted in yields that were similar to those of crops seeded at higher rates with the drill, creating potential savings for producers.
He concluded that in heavy residue situations where tillage is being avoided, planters with row cleaners have potential in canola production.
While some air drill engineers try to design machines that will work for all crops, Breker said that inevitably leads to yield compromises.
“Wide row spacing is for high value crops like soybeans and canola. For small grains, you want something like 7.5 inches.
“But that doesn’t mean you need two different drills. The basic Amity design lets you change just the toolbars.”
Breker said one person can switch toolbars in half a day.
Breker admits that optimal row spacing is more critical for high value crops than it is for a low value commodity like wheat.
But if narrow row spacing creates better seedbed utilization and better wheat yields, he thinks it’s worth investing in the dedicated wheat toolbar.
“Years of experience at Concord taught me that better seedbed utilization in wheat gives us three to five bu…. It spread the seed out wide so we got a good canopy sooner.
“I did many years of field demos across the prairie provinces, and we consistently got a three to five bu. benefit. Now, if wheat is $5 a bushel, we shouldn’t ignore that extra yield.”
Contact Gene Breker at 701-232-4199 gene.breker@amitytech.com .
Field pennycress seed has shown promise as a source of oil for biodiesel, as well as meal to use as a biological herbicide, said Kwesi Ampong-Nyarko, research scientist with Alberta Agriculture.
Field pennycress is known to most farmers as stinkweed or french weed.
Botanically, pennycress is in the mustard family. It grows as either a summer or winter annual. Wild populations live in many disturbed habitats, from roadsides and vacant lots, to beaches.
Pennycress, listed as stinkweed, was among the five most abundant weeds in weed surveys of Alberta and Saskatchewan cropland.
The commercial interest in field pennycress comes from the oil content of the seed, which ranges from 26 to 40 percent. The oil is suitable for industrial uses such as low temperature lubrication and biodiesel production.
The meal left behind after the oil extraction is high in glucosinolates.
Glucosinolates are common in the mustard family and are responsible for the sharp taste in mustard and horseradish, and the cancer-fighting properties in broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and other crucifer vegetables.
However, glucosinolates can be toxic, especially in high doses, which can be used to turn the meal into an organic bioherbicide.
Ampong-Nyarko tested the potential of the bioherbicide in greenhouse trials. Pennycress meal suppressed a variety of broad-leaved weeds such as lamb’s quarters, purslane, stinkweed, white cockle, scentless chamomile, cow cockle, dandelion, common groundsel and redroot pigweed.
It was less effective at suppressing grassy weeds.
The amount of meal needed for effective weed control is probably too high to make it an effective tool for field crops, but it has potential for use in horticultural crops.
High value vegetable and herb crops are often grown using plastic mulch for weed control. A strip of plastic is laid down, and desired plants are transplanted through holes in the plastic.
This eliminates most weeds but there can still be intense competition with weeds that emerge through the holes in the mulch.
In rhodiola test plots at the Crop Diversification Centre North near Edmonton, Ampong-Nyarko found excellent weed suppression when 20 to 30 grams of pennycress meal were applied to the holes in the plastic mulch. No negative effects were observed on the rhodiola. Rhodiola is being studied as a medicinal plant at CDC North.
The meal might also be considered as a valuable organic fertilizer, with about four percent nitrogen and 0.7 percent phosphorus. Injury to crops can be avoided by applying more than two weeks before seeding.
Producers could take advantage of this information by keeping in mind four possibilities: the use of screenings, wild crafting, green manuring and cropping.
Using weed screenings as a source of biodiesel, herbicide, feed and fertilizer could add value to products taken from the field.
Wild crafting offers another opportunity that otherwise would be wasted.
“It is feasible to harvest wild stands of pennycress using conventional combines,” said Ampong-Nyarko. “Seed yield of self-seeded winter pennycress harvested in July ranged between 1,980 and 2,560 pounds per acre.”
Weedy fields could also be used as green manures. As well, because stinkweed is often dominant in the spring, cultivation may provide some weed control, but further research is required.
A more extreme option is growing pennycress as a field crop.
“Pennycress has a lower break-even cost than canola” said Ampong-Nyarko.
“We have obtained a non weed status for pennycress, thus paving the way for its cultivation as a crop in Alberta.”
Ampong-Nyarko has studied the agronomy of pennycress and has developed cultivation techniques.
However, using a weed as a crop poses potential problems. Natural seed dormancy means that some of the seed sown one year will emerge in following years. Harvest losses will increase this problem.
Extra care must be taken in designing a rotation capable of dealing with the added seed input.
Ampong-Nyarko recommends following three years of field pennycress with a winter cereal.
Research suggests we may be able to convert a weed into an opportunity.
Brenda Frick, Ph. D., P. Ag. is an organic research and extension specialist. She welcomes your comments at 306-260-0663 or via e-mail at
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