Soil salinity and seeding options focus of Forage Agronomy Workshop

Feb 02, 2018

Producers taking part in a Forage Agronomy Workshop had a chance to learn more about Soil salinity and seeding options.

Most crops and forages will grow on slight to moderate salinity, barley and canola are the most tolerant crops in more saline soils, and for areas that are white with salt, you’re pretty much limited to grasses.

Ken Wall is an Agronomist with Pioneer Co-op Ag Team and has some basic tips for producers to keep in mind when looking at establishing forages:

"Make sure your land is clean and has a firm seedbed," he said. "I really stress that you have a firm seedbed. When you're walking on it after you've got it packed, your feet, your heels should not sink more than a quarter inch, and then make sure that you have good packing and good seed to soil contact."

Producers looking at seeding forages this year will probably want to seed early or wait until we are moving into a wet cycle.

He notes if you seed the end of April, generally you don’t need a lot of water if seeding into wet soil, adding grass is fairly resilient once it catches.

Source : Discoverestevan

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.