Three years ago, the Gould brothers, Farley and Matthew, tried ultra-early seeding. They figured it was a good way to get a spring jump on planting their 13,000 acres.
Researcher-farmer Graham Collier is a neighbour, so the Goulds were well-acquainted with his work on ultra-early seeding.
Farley said the system has worked well and so far, there have been no failures.
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“I think it’s definitely a risk. But I think the upside outweighs the downside, especially in our country out here at Consort (eastern Alberta),” said Farley.
“There’s always a chance the crop will come up and then we get a hard killing frost, or we get a lot of rain and the seed just lays there and rots.
“We haven’t done any side-by-side trials yet, so I don’t have data. But comparing Field A to Field B, the earliest seeded fields always come out better than the later fields. It’s hard to really define ultra-early. We start what Graham calls ultra-early, but then we keep on rolling without a break, in order to get all the acres seeded. Ultra-early just continues to blend into conventional seeding.”
In 2022, the Goulds started seeding April 3, which is about a month earlier than normal. They experienced no problems with those ultra-early fields. Farley says the neighbours are paying attention. He says there’s a lot of interest, but also a fair amount of skepticism.
