| Canola Swathing Underway |
| Written by Kelvin Heppner | |
|
Swathing is underway in the earliest canola fields in parts of southern Manitoba. "One of our key messages is the appearance of the plants doesn't really tell you a lot about the true maturity of the plant," says Derwyn Hammond, agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada. "You have to get out there and split the pods open to see what's going on inside, especially in a year when the crop has suffered through a lot of stress." He says he's getting lots of questions from growers regarding timing as moisture stress has led to wide variability in development on most fields. "One of the challenges will be figuring out what proportion of your yield those areas represent, and is it worth managing those areas separately?" says Hammond. He notes there are two perspectives on whether the uneven development will discourage growers from trying to straight-harvest their canola. Ideally, straight cutting works best with uniform crop development. However, Hammond says some growers are concerned about stunted plant height in stressed areas. "They're concerned that the light swath and the inability to anchor that swath, because they're going to have to cut it so close to the ground, will leave those swaths quite vulnerable to the wind. So there are some growers looking to straight-cutting as an alternative." This note comes from the Canola Council of Canada's CanolaWatch Report: "For growers faced with uneven maturity within fields, the best approach is to swath when the most mature plants are close to 60% seed clour change - provided that the least mature plants are showing some seed colour change at the base of the main stem and that seeds in the upper pods (and branches) are dark green and firm." |
