Seeding is finally well underway so I spent the day doing seed counts. We were trying to see how different speeds and seeding rates affected the seed count in the soil. My initial impression is that our results were not terribly conclusive. We will be doing followup plant counts as the season progresses. It should [...]
If you’re looking for information on pest control in crops, every year Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (MAFRI) puts out a Guide to Crop Protection. This guide provides information about the herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides used in Manitoba. The key thing to be aware of is that this is a guide. It is a [...]
If you want to find out what’s happening with crops across Manitoba, the Manitoba Crop Report put out weekly by MAFRI during the growing season is a great resource. It divides agricultural Manitoba into 5 areas and gives a quick breakdown of what is happening in those areas. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an [...]
I really enjoyed this TED Talk. The success of agriculture over the last century or two is amazing. It wasn’t that long ago that over 70% of the world’s population were farmers. Now 2% of Canada’s population is involved in farming. The vast majority of Canadians are putting their trust for their daily food in [...]
When looking at nutrients for crops, two key figures to keep in mind are crop uptake versus crop removal. Crops require a lot of nutrients to grow but some portion of those nutrients are left behind when the crop is harvested. Crop uptake of a nutrient is the amount of a nutrient used by a [...]
Geotagging is a way of adding information to photos to show where and when they were taken. Digital Photography School has a good Introduction to Geotagging Images. I found the part on geotagging images using a separate GPS and camera to be particularly interesting. The precision that a GPS brings when tagging photos for damage [...]
Want to build a barn, dig a lagoon, install a septic system, or start irrigating specialty crops? You’d better know what kinds of soil you’re dealing with or your project may quickly turn out to be an anchor around your neck. The quickest way of finding out about the soils in an area is to [...]
I spent the day soil sampling. I did it the old fashioned way – working a dutch auger by hand and walking the field. It took a very long time. I only did it that way because our trucks and ATV were elsewhere and this field needed to be done in a hurry. Lots of [...]
In spring of 2008, the Manitoba Government lifted the moratorium of the construction of hog barns except in three large areas of the province. The problem is that those areas are the exact areas that were seeing the most expansion or construction of new barns prior to the moratorium. This leaves a number of hog [...]
With higher fertilizer prices, a couple people asked us about charging for the manure from their barns. How do you determine what manure is worth? Using the numbers from the Farm Practices Guidelines (FPG), application by injection, and the target nutrient rate of 100 lbs. N/acre, here are some figures for Farrow, Nursery, and Finisher [...]
