ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alta. – Growing wheat within sight of the Rocky Mountains is a risky crop venture, but new varieties and a changing climate have farmers taking another look.
Kim Nielsen, agricultural fieldman with Clearwater County, said there has been renewed interest in wheat in the non-traditional wheat growing area.
Three varieties of wheat – Foremost, Crystal and AC5700 – were seeded on the county’s grain variety plots this year to give farmers a peek at how the new wheat varieties grow in an area with about 90 frost-free days.
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John Middell said he is most interested in the high energy varieties of wheat that could be used in his hog rations.
“Traditionally wheat has just not done well. We’re on the fringe here for wheat. With the trials, we want to find wheat that has a better chance. Maybe we’ll find an answer with winter wheat,” said Middell, who donated land for the plots.
The county also planted six barley and four oat varieties to allow farmers to compare how the grains grow in their area.
It’s the first time the county has seeded variety plots in a number of years, but the plots always generate a lot of interest, said Nielsen.
It’s one of the few ways farmers can look at how crops developed at research centres in other regions grow in their area, he said.
Farmers can look at the results from research centres at Lacombe, Alta., or research plots at Westlock, Alta., but the growing conditions are different than the Rocky Mountain House area, he said. Lacombe has rich black soil and Rocky Mountain House has grey wooded soil. Westlock has grey wooded soil, but more frost-free days and less rain.
“We see tremendous value in seeing how the varieties compare to other areas,” said Nielsen.
The fieldman is the first to admit the plots are not scientific research but more of a local show and tell.
“It still has tremendous value,” he said.
Varieties that do well in the plots help farmers take the guesswork out of new crops that seem to grow well in other areas.
Because most farmers are not strictly grain growers, there is less disease in the crop. The higher rainfall also makes crops more susceptible to lodging and collapsing in mid season.
“Lodging can be a real headache for us here,” said Nielsen.
The six barley varieties that were also seeded are Sundre, Ponoka, Trochu, Xena, CDC Battleford and CDC Trey. The four oat varieties were Morgan, Mustang, Waldern and Baler.
Middell said he had a keen interest in the high-yielding Sundre, but the barley didn’t stand up in the heavy rain and soil enriched by hog manure.
“We were quite interested in this, but it hasn’t handled it well. It’s lodged, down,” he said. “We had high hopes for it.”
Middell did like the performance of Xena, not a common barley variety, but one that seems to do well in the area’s cool, wet conditions.
Nielsen said the county doesn’t have the equipment to take accurate harvest samples, but it is planning on clipping metre square samples to be threshed at Lacombe to get yield data on each of the crops.
