Friday Crop Report on a Thursday!

[seldomseen]

A damp morning here.
Really enjoying an actual agricultural discussion this morning!
Thanks guys.

[Sheepwheat]

Gabe mines the soil. It’s just at a slower rate by grazing and using covers to make use of nutrient cycling. Immobile nutrient levels do not get replenished from the sky or spontaneously appear in the soil. I by no means am an expert about this stuff but I think enough through it to come to the conclusion any of these sorts of guys have some relevant points and things to take away but you have to think about how you adapt to your conditions. So many of these hucksters peddling cover crop/grazing blends that simply do piss all except cost the poor schlump a bunch of money when they could’ve seeded whatever crap they had in the bin and got the same results. Cow calf and stocker business is a low margin game at times and getting sucked into these schemes is all too common. I have enough friends with cows who’ve had wrecks with this crap. I hate to be a negative resistant to new ideas person but at the end of the day I call bs when someone comes out with any of it. I might try a bit to give it a fair shake but at the end they’re usually bs.

IMO. The soil was originally built, and the nutrients didn’t come out of thin air originally either. Only animals and grazing, and burning, etc.

There were no outside inputs. So I think what gabe does makes sense in terms of soil building. But it happens much faster because animal density is controlled better than natures slow game.

It’s my favorite topic almost, how soil was originally built over time, with zero outside nutrients. After glaciation, the parent material would have been all basically the same in terms of organic matter. Zero. It’s fascinating to me.

[WiltonRanch]

Crop report here in nw sk. Yields all over the map. My wheat yields 50% of normal. Some guys 90%. Heard some early canola off being a pleasant surprise but lots really thin crops in the hills. Weird surprise for me and others is barley. You’d think it’d suffer the most but it’s about an average crop. Oats are a disaster maybe 25% of normal. Only oats I seeded was for forage and some grass breaking. The breaking looks fine but forage yield was 1/3 of average. Had some barley seeded in same field I baled and it was 2/3 of average. Had a few inadvertent seeding rate experiments, there was no difference in stand. When it shakes out I surmise canola yields in the general area will be 50% normal. Some good fields will be close to average but the hills will have some single digit yields. Rained out finally. Not much but rained out.

[furrowtickler]

Canola really suffered here from lack of subsoil

Wheat 60% ave , fairly consistent
Peas 40-50 %
Canola 10-35% ave all over the map
Barely 30-40%
Lentils 10-50%

Some small pockets of better yields across the board but in general it was mostly subsoil moisture.
If you were wet the past few years yields are much closer to average.
If barely enough rain the past few years yields are dismal for the most part . Mostly east of here to Blain Lake

Also the first big rain at the end of May making huge difference
Areas that got 3 in are decent 60-80% averages
Here 1.5 in , 25-60% averages
East of here .5 in , 0-40% ave at best

[seldomseen]

Most of my canola is off and yield about 4o% of normal. I think there is more going on with this years canola then just drought. After I got the flea beetles cleaned up we had good moisture and warm temps but my canola just sat hardly growing. We had rain forecast in the middle of June so I floated on 150 lb. fines. Right after floating we had a half inch rain and I expected my canola with rain and fert would have jumped in size but no! It just sat and hardly changed. I have had other years that were just as dry and dryer than this spring and canola would grow normal. Just not sure what the problem is this year.

[WiltonRanch]

Canola really suffered here from lack of subsoil

Wheat 60% ave , fairly consistent
Peas 40-50 %
Canola 10-35% ave all over the map
Barely 30-40%
Lentils 10-50%

Some small pockets of better yields across the board but in general it was mostly subsoil moisture.
If you were wet the past few years yields are much closer to average.
If barely enough rain the past few years yields are dismal for the most part . Mostly east of here to Blain Lake

Also the first big rain at the end of May making huge difference
Areas that got 3 in are decent 60-80% averages
Here 1.5 in , 25-60% averages
East of here .5 in , 0-40% ave at best

The heat killed it here. We had enough rain but too much evaporation.

[WiltonRanch]

Most of my canola is off and yield about 4o% of normal. I think there is more going on with this years canola then just drought. After I got the flea beetles cleaned up we had good moisture and warm temps but my canola just sat hardly growing. We had rain forecast in the middle of June so I floated on 150 lb. fines. Right after floating we had a half inch rain and I expected my canola with rain and fert would have jumped in size but no! It just sat and hardly changed. I have had other years that were just as dry and dryer than this spring and canola would grow normal. Just not sure what the problem is this year.

Same here. Was it trying to root deeper then got baked from heat?

[furrowtickler]

The heat killed it here. We had enough rain but too much evaporation.

Well it’s interesting combining canola off and on here , low spots are running very well plus . But very very few spots . So I find it’s more subsoil .
Heat absolutely fried certain areas but low spots or areas that had big snow banks still produced extremely well considering the heat

[Herc]

Well it’s interesting combining canola off and on here , low spots are running very well plus . But very very few spots . So I find it’s more subsoil .
Heat absolutely fried certain areas but low spots or areas that had big snow banks still produced extremely well considering the heat

Same here. Low spots are 50+. Two rains in the heat it would have produced a bumper crop. Low spots it was able to pull up the necessary water. Everywhere else especially the compacted cart tracks it could not. We had literally zero heat blast in the low spots, and it did 99% of the flowering in the heat. Goes to show how much of a weed this plant has become.

[WiltonRanch]

Well it’s interesting combining canola off and on here , low spots are running very well plus . But very very few spots . So I find it’s more subsoil .
Heat absolutely fried certain areas but low spots or areas that had big snow banks still produced extremely well considering the heat

I thought my wheat would be like that but we had a 2” downpour shortly after seeding which flooded low spots which drowned it out. Mid slope appears the best and well drained lowlands. Canola though appears to be great along treed headlands and low spots. Hilltops is brutal. I just can’t understand how barley is an average crop. I’m well above my crop insurance guarantee. Weird