The crop that winter grew.

By Jennifer Barber

If you’re going to be successful growing winter wheat on the priaires you’ll have to take to heart the old adage that timing is everything. Get your crop into the ground on time, and the rest of the production cycle can easily be fine tuned with a little knowledge and experience.

And experience is what Kent Erickson has. He’s a fourth-generation farmer near Irma, AB, whose family has been growing winter wheat for 20 years. In his area of the prairies, winter wheat has to be in the first week of September. He adds that growers who are reluctant to grow winter wheat usually have a hard time with that concept.

"A lot of guys can’t imagine dragging the seeder out in the middle of harvest," he says. "But as I see it, that’s when you have more time to seed. Harvest stretches from August to October, but you have only a few weeks to seed your entire farm in May. So in terms of time and equipment management, we have more time in the fall than in the spring."

The Ericksons added winter wheat to their rotation to change their weed and disease spectrum. Winter wheat competes with winter annual weeds, has reduced disease pressure, and means a year without a spring burnoff.

Over the years they’ve learned the keys to a good crop.

"We seed our winter wheat very shallow, usually into canola stubble" says Kent. "If it’s just under the ground it takes advantage of all the fall moisture. You don’t need much growth for it to successfully overwinter in Alberta. If you seed too early and get lots of germination, that’s just wasted plant energy since those leaves don’t come back in the spring."

Warren Kaeding runs a 6,800 acre pedigreed seed operation near Churchbridge, SK. He learned about winter wheat as an ag student and has been growing winter cereals for 25 years. The high yields he gets from winter wheat make it an attractive crop for him.

"We’ve always had decent yields, even in years when rust was an issue," he says. "The varieties available today yield at least 20 per cent over spring wheat. We seed our winter wheat at a heavy rate and we get the most out of the crop that way."

Unlike Erickson, he usually seeds winter wheat into pea stubble. While canola is often listed as the most common rotational crop with winter wheat, they get enough snow cover in his region to trap significant moisture in the shorter pea straw.

"We straight cut our peas. That leaves a four inch stubble, which is all we need for successful overwintering," he says. "We were having trouble getting canola off on time and we’ve had a lot of success with peas. We even seed into alfalfa stubble, which also works because we get enough snow in this part of the province."

Since alfalfa leaves behind more soil nitrogen, he has to modify his fertility program during that segment of the rotation. He always soil tests before seeding winter wheat, then usually puts down an NPK blend with the seed and dribble bands nitrogen in the spring as early as possible.

Rick Rutherford is another long-time winter wheat producer. He’s been growing the crop on his pedigreed seed farm in the northern end of Manitoba’s Red River Valley for 15 years. It gives him a hedge against bad weather. He also believes winter wheat has really helped keep him ahead of the fusarium risk.

"Winter wheat flowers very early so it doesn’t really allow the disease spores to spread," explains Rutherford. "Basically, for us, the earlier the better for all aspects of growing wheat. The earlier we get it in, the earlier it’s growing in spring and the earlier we can get it off in the summer."

In his area he regularly sees winter wheat yields in the 100 bushel/acre range. To make winter wheat rewarding, he says, growers can’t skimp on inputs. In the spring he applies ESN (controlled-release) nitrogen along with his fungicide to give his crop an extra pop.

"It’s not uncommon to have a late-July harvest in this area," he says. "We harvest winter wheat one month and sell it the next. We can usually sell it before we’ve even harvested our spring-seeded crops. For us it’s the ultimate seed crop." FF

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