The Canola Council of Canada is receiving more calls than usual this spring about fertilization.
Prairie soil is saturated with water, with the exception of Alberta’s Peace River region, and many producers want to know if they still have nitrogen and sulfur in their soil.
“The most common questions are regarding the more mobile nutrients, nitrogen and sulfur,” council agronomist Dan Orchard of Wetaskiwin, Alta., said in an e-mail.
“The growers are concerned about what remains in the soil and what has been lost through various nitrogen processes and transformations.”
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Orchard recommends that growers conduct a sufficient number of soil tests to accurately represent the nutrient content in a particular field.
They should also make sure to take samples from lower depths to “get an accurate assessment of where these nutrients are in the soil profile,” he added.
The best time to take those samples is right now because spring testing is “the most accurate in predicting the soil nutrient situation at seeding,” the canola council said in a news release.
“Labs may be able to provide results within a few days or a week, so spring tests can be done without holding up the seeding process.”
Orchard said producers might also want to consider controlled release ESN nitrogen fertilizer, given the prevailing wet conditions.
“Slow release nitrogen products tend to perform best under extreme conditions,” he said.
“This is true with ESN, as it is a polymer coated urea, which slows the release/breakdown of the urea and may reduce losses of N (both leaching and volatilization) when conditions are warm and wet for extended periods.”
The canola council may be receiving more calls than normal this spring, but Manitoba Agriculture soil fertility specialist John Heard said growers in his province aren’t calling him with similar questions.
He said that might be because Manitoba growers are more accustomed to wet soil conditions than oilseed producers in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
However, Manitoba canola growers might need to apply more nitrogen in 2011.
“Soil testing last fall showed that there was low nitrogen … more than we’ve seen in recent years,” he said from his office in Carman.
“We’ve had rains in October … and it’s been wet, so nitrogen levels have probably gone down…. So if you’ve had a lot of losses, it’s a difference between low and lower.”
Farmers in regions that harvested an excellent crop in 2010, such as Alberta, will need to increase fertilization rates to replace nutrients removed from the soil, Orchard said.
Heard said canola growers should also consider the potential economic returns of applying more, or less, fertilizer.
A Manitoba Agriculture website called the nitrogen rate calculator allows producers to evaluate the financial returns of various fertilizing scenarios.
Heard expects growers to apply more nitrogen than usual this year, considering that canola futures are trading above $13 per bushel.
