Canola growers who seed with a corn planter say it isn’t necessarily just about yield.
“There are other benefits to consider,” said Stephen Petluk, who used a Seed Hawk air drill and a Monosem corn planter this year to seed more than 4,000 acres of canola near Lethbridge.
Petluk compared the seeders on two similar fields, located 1 1/2 kilometres apart but with the same soil type.
“It’s not what I’d call a scientifically perfect comparison,” he said.
“The Seed Hawk has precision fertilizer placement and it was seeded one week earlier than the Monosem test field. The Monosem has no provision for fertilizer.”
He said canola fields planted with the Monosem planter looked better than those seeded with the air drill. The specific Monosem test field that matched up with the Seed Hawk test field looked perfect.
His first big surprise came when the combines hit the fields.
“On the test fields, the Seed Hawk field yielded exactly the same as the Monosem field. There was exactly zero yield benefit with the Monosem. The air drill and corn planter test fields both averaged 40 bushels,” he said.
“The planter field had looked so much better all summer. But then I have to consider that the Monosem field was planted one week later, yet it was ready to swath at the same time the Seed Hawk field was ready. So it shortened the season by a week.
“The other benefit was two pounds of seed per acre through the Monosem versus four lb. per acre through the Seed Hawk. Half the amount of seed gave me the same yield per acre.”
Petluk said these benefits occurred across his entire farm. He surmised that fields seeded with the planter had fewer plants, and therefore more space per plant, heavier stalks, bigger root systems and healthier plants.
Source: Producer