Last year’s difficult growing season and delayed harvest may have set the stage for increased weed competition in flax crops this year.
The delayed harvest meant many farmers were unable to complete their post-harvest weed control, says Manitoba Agriculture weed control specialist Kim Brown.
In crops such as canola, the late harvest and poorer quality crops also increased the odds of shattering, she added, which means there could be more volunteers this spring.
“The crops barely got off before the frost came and those (volunteer and winter annual) seedlings didn’t emerge,” she said.
Read Also
VIDEO: Prairie crops on track for average yields
LANGHAM, SASK. – Western Canadian farmers will harvest an average crop this year provided cooler temperatures prevail and the region…
“Whether or not those seedlings will emerge this spring we don’t know, but certainly there is the potential.”
Bruce Murray, also a provincial weed specialist, said it is especially important to think about what that means to flax because it is not highly competitive.
“What you need to understand as far as weeds are concerned is that flax is a wimp,” Murray said during a recent agronomy workshop in Brandon organized by Flax Canada 2015.
“It’s about half as competitive as canola.”
Cultural controls are among the options to manage the potential weed threat, he said, such as ensuring that seeds are as free of weeds as possible and planting into clean fields.
Murray was reluctant to recommend increasing seeding rates to get a denser stand of flax or delaying seeding to allow weed emergence and control before starting to plant.
There may be some benefit to those options, he said, but typically they are limited.
“I wouldn’t discount them, but you’re just not going to get the same kind of return as with some other crops.”
Volunteer wheat and canola usually emerge fairly early in spring, making pre-seed control a good option, either through tillage or herbicides.
The specialists recommend being extra vigilant for weeds this spring, but when it comes to controlling them, Murray said the common sense approach should suffice.
“You’ll probably see more volunteers than normal because of the way things were and possibly more winter annuals and perennial type species because it was a good year for them last year and we didn’t really get an opportunity to go after them.”
With strong prices and an increased interest in flax, growers may push their luck when it comes to deciding where to plant the crop.
Murray encourages them to think about what herbicides were used last year and whether residues could hurt this year’s flax crop.
“Revisit your herbicide history on these fields and make sure you’re not setting yourself up for a Group 2 carryover for this year. If you have Group 1 resistant wild oats, you better have a plan for controlling them.”
