Producers taking part in this year’s Top Notch Farming events are learning more about the importance of getting a good stand establishment.
Warren Ward, an Agronomy Specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, says it’s really the starting point to a successful growing season.
He notes a number of environmental factors, like a spring frost, can have an impact on crops.
"After frost if we've got one to two plants per square foot and they're uniformly distributed across the field. Which means that they're not in patches, we've got a nice uniform stand. It's a really low number of plants per square foot, but it's still as consistent enough that we can see a reasonable crop from that. Your yield expectation might be a little bit lower than you would have with your regular plant stand, but at the end of the day, you're probably further ahead leaving those low stands. As long as it's uniform than you were if you went in and reseeded and now you're a week to ten days behind in terms of the growing season."
He says with canola if it’s a light frost, farmers should give plants anywhere from three to seven days to recover before making a decision on whether to re-seed, noting there’s lots of factors to consider.
"How late in the year is it? What are your moisture conditions? Are there enough plants left and are they uniform enough that you don't need to reseed or is the damage bad enough that you do need to reseed it? It really can be a challenging decision for most people to make."
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