Tips for a successful pea crop
Farmers in Western Canada are taking to peas these days. This kind of interest also means more seed growers are selling peas.
Here are some tips seed growers can pass along to help new producers get the most out of the product, courtesy of Ray McVicar, a crop development specialist with Saskat-chewan Agriculture in Regina.
- Know your growing area. “Field peas are best adapted to the black and grey-wooded soil zones, because summer weather is cooler and wetter,” he says. “However, the cool, wet years we have had lately means a lot more producers are growing peas successfully in the more southerly dark brown and brown soil zones.”
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Like canola, field peas are very susceptible to heat at flowering. Just a few days of high heat can cause flower loss and reduce yield dramatically. That means early seeding is important so flowering is completed before the hot part of July.
“Producers should sequence pea planting before wheat,” said McVicar. “In case of a late spring frost, peas will regrow from nodes at or just below the soil surface. The crop will be delayed, but it will recover.”
- Select a good field. “It’s best to grow peas in a level, stone-free field to minimize problems with low and tangled crops at harvest,” said McVicar. “They are also poor competitors, especially in the seedling stage, so avoid fields with perennial weeds like Canada thistle.” He said peas do not do well in saline soils.
- Avoid herbicide residue. McVicar said producers should wait five years before planting peas or lentils on a field where Tordon or Glean was used. Contact your provincial extension agrologist or herbicide manufacturers for specific advice.
- Rotations. Consider what you’ll be growing on the pea stubble next year. “Peas and lentils are carriers of sclerotinia,” he said. “They are not commonly devastated themselves, but it could be disastrous to plant a susceptible crop, like canola, on pea stubble where sclerotinia was present.”
Consider a non-susceptible cereal crop after peas to avoid sclerotinia problems and take advantage of the nitrogen boost in legume stubble.
- Keep seed viable. Many pea varieties are very susceptible to seed coat breakage, which can lead to poor germination and poor seedling development. “It’s possible to reduce the problem by moisturizing the seed,” says McVicar. “Just before planting, tilt up the truck box and wet the peas lightly with a garden hose. Raising the moisture content by one or two percent can make the seed coat more flexible and reduce breakage.”
Attention to timing seed inoculation also helps maintain viability. “When you inoculate with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, do it close to seeding time.”
- Make sure equipment will plant peas. “If you haven’t tried your seeding equipment using peas, you could be in for a nasty surprise,” warned McVicar. “On some machines, the metering device opening isn’t big enough, and the seed is split or ground into flour.”
Practise short runs with the openers out of the ground. Check that there’s a smooth run of undamaged seed coming at the correct rates. With a large-seeded crop like peas, seeding rates are very dependent on seed size, and need to be carefully calibrated to achieve optimum stand.
– Canadian Seed Growers’ Association
