Wheat Pete’s Word, Nov 16: Fall manure losses, terminating clover, corn smut, and how we spend our days

What is your time worth?

This week’s episode of Wheat Pete’s Word encourages everyone to slow down for two major reasons: one, time is fleeting and the years we get with our kids and our loved ones are short; and, two, working safe on the farm and the roads requires a stop, look, act approach.

But host Peter Johnson isn’t only waxing philosophical in this week’s Word — he’s also got advice on manure applications, managing clover, estimating corn yield impacts, and more!

Have a question you’d like Johnson to address or some yield results to send in? Disagree with something he’s said? Leave him a message at 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet (@wheatpete), or email him at [email protected].

SUMMARY

Safety, safety, safety — we’re not doing a great job in agriculture
Please, be safe. Your health is the most important thing
Think twice, act once. Slow down
Time is ticking! Go to @SahilBloom and read about on how many hours we spend with family, friends, our children over our lifetime
I recently came across data on who we spend our time with over the course of our lives.

The insights are simultaneously inspiring and depressing.

Here are 6 graphs everyone needs to see:

— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) November 12, 2022
Don’t miss the time with your kids and your family
Poster season and research meetings begins!
GoSoy.ca should have trials up soon
The YEN (Great Lakes club) results will go up Monday
Corn field fires down south apparently moved north — in Grey and Bruce county saw a corn field fire each
Corn field fire 2022 (supplied)
In Saskatchewan, it’s so dry a farmer tried rolling snow to get it in to the ground (sublimation may get around that, so may have been futile)
Test weight of corn doesn’t matter to yield
Does kernel weight translate to yield? It did in 2021
Is it region dependent? Dale Cowan is looking in to it
Corn piles are adding up
Is it too much corn or are elevators stuffed? Ports are jammed (read/hear more here)
Three producers said winter wheat out-yielded corn in 2022. Wow
Yield loss from herbicide drift was twice as costly this year
The increase in crop heat units in Ontario in a 10-year moving average since 1951
Latest is to 2021. Over that time, 425 CHUs gained
Smutty corn even in dry conditions — is there a toxin to worry about?
Smut is a stress factor (maize mushrooms, you can eat it)
Brown gold time! Manure questions: is it ok to leave manure on the surface
In general, liquid on the surface in late fall and no incorporation = high risk of movement into waterways
And it stinks = unhappy neighbours
What about losses? It depends
C:N ratio matters, pH matters and changes rate of loss
Join us on Monday at 8 pm E to talk N loss prevention
Oat, pea, radish cover crop plus dry beef manure, applied in August should be fine to not incorporate
Spring dragline dairy manure in to corn? Unless it rains right away and soaks in, you’ll lose the N
Cover crop red clover credit: is it different for worked vs sprayed? The time to grow is the difference, not how you terminate