Take a walk on the information side Crop walk informative, learning experience » By Lee Hart
It may not be a walk on the wild side, but taking a few hours for a crop walk sponsored by southern Alberta’s applied research organization, Farming Smarter, is always a walk on the informative side
Ross McKenzie talks to a group of farmers about winter canola.
E
ven for an old non-farmer like myself, I always learn something. And if you’re a progressive, leading edge, farmer-type looking for new ideas and, perhaps even of greater value, advice on what doesn’t work, make a point to pencil in time for the 2012 Farming Smarter crop walks offered during the growing season. One of the early walks I attended this year was the winter pulse crop walk. It was a combination of field trials being conducted by Farming Smarter, as well as other trials that were part of the Alberta Agriculture research program. There is a lot of collaboration between the two agencies. The early June Crop Walk was a good way to get the 2011 season started. At a time when spring grain, pulse and oilseed crops were
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Farming Smarter / Fall 2011
barely seeded in the soggy soil across much of Western Canada, in field plots east of the Lethbridge Research Centre you could see green robust stands of winter peas and lentils. They may not fit in everyone’s rotation, but seeing these plots at least opens the possibility to options other than spring seeded pulses. Ken Coles, Farming Smarter research manager, explained the range of seeding dates and seeding rates tried at various locations to achieve optimum stand establishment. In this, the third year of province-wide trials in conjunction with Alberta Agriculture, yields of both winter peas and lentils were coming in higher than spring seeded crops. Farmers on the tour learned growing winter pulses is sort of a wash out in the Edmonton area, although they did quite well at Brooks and