yellow mustard - production tips needed

[poorboy]

I am thinking of signing a production contract for yellow mustard as the guaranteed price is very good and it has about the same crop insurance coverage as canola for me. However, there are a couple of things I am not sure of.

Some people say that the crop after yellow mustard is very poor not a great crop like you get following canola, any one have some advice on this?

In doing an internet search on yellow mustard, the us sites say that putting any fertilizer with the seed hurts the germination big time, where as the demeteragro site and other canadian sites say you can safely use 10 N and 20 P with the seed. I am confused as to which is correct.

If you have crop insurance coverages of 1.2 on barley, wheat, and canola, do you think that eventually your yellow mustard coverage would increase to 1.2 also, or it hard to get good crops with yellow mustard.

Thanks for any help!!

[lef]

We grow yellow mustard. We seed with a hoe drill and out fertilizer with the seed. We put 75 pounds of 11-52 down the tube and with that we have some sulfer but I am not sure how much, maybe 6 pounds. The N we use is annhydous ammonia at about 50 pounds.

We farm about 70 miles south of Regina, sk.

Lorne

[poorboy]

Do you use treated seed and put on about 10 lbs per acre? Some people seem to seed only about 6 lbs/ac and do not treat the seed and others seed up to 12 lbs/ac and use the seed treatment. There is a huge difference in cost between the two systems.

What would an average yield be on your farm?

[lef]

We have used both certified/treated and common seed which was untreated. We seed at about 10-12 lbs per acre due to the fact that yellow mustard does not seem to bush out like canola. We have not experimented with under 10 lb/ac although I think that it would be worth a try on a small acreage for the first time.

We have even broad cast seed with a valmar on a heavy harrow when it was to wet to seed with the drill and got about 13 bu./ac compared with 17 bu/ac that was seeded with the drill. The broad cast field was not given any fertilizer with the seed but it did get the same amount of N. Out personal oppinion is that we would not do that again.

Our average yield over the past 5 years is about 16 bu/ac. We like yellow mustard because we straight and yellow mustard seems pretty good for not shelling out.

[poorboy]

Thanks for the info.