Seeding date, depth and rate all play a factor in a successful crop
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
Alberta growers considering the production of winter wheat need to take a number of elements into account, according to Clair Langlois, a cereal extension specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.
The first thing to consider is seeding rate.
“We’re now at about 350 to 400 viable seeds per metre squared,” he told Call of the Land today. “That’s about 34 to 38 viable plants per square foot. You should be using actual 1,000 kernel weights to get this number.”
Alberta Agriculture’s online seeding rate calculator allows farmers to input a variety of information, including crop, plant density, germination rate and row spacing. The calculator then gives farmers an idea of how much seed is necessary.
Another element farmers need to think about is seeding date.
And, like real estate, the motto “location, location, location” comes into play.
“It depends on where you live,” Langlois said.
In Southern Alberta, growers are pushing the planting date from the first two weeks of September to late September to prevent diseases from spreading, he said. Farmers in Central Alberta should consider seeding winter wheat in the last week of August or first week of September. And northern Alberta farmers should consider planting in the last week of August, he added.
But regardless of where producers live, they should hold off on planting winter wheat until after August 20, Langlois said.
And the third element farmers should consider before seeding is planting depth.
“Basically you want it shallow (for winter wheat),” Langlois told Call of the Land. “The coleoptile is much shorter on winter wheat so it doesn’t have that stretch that spring cereals have. If you make it work too hard, it exhausts itself getting out of the ground.”
Langlois suggests a planting depth between 0.5 to 1.0 inches.
Curious to find out how other winter wheat crops are doing throughout the province once they've been seeded?
The Western Winter Wheat Initiative’s interactive map provides plot, yield and $/acre information on a number of winter wheat fields in Alberta.