My farm is located 50 miles N.E. of Lloydminster or 80 miles northwest of North Battleford. The soil type includes both wooded and grassland soils with textures ranging from loamy sand to clay loam. Our farm size consists of 30 quarters and a 400 plus cow herd with backgrounding calves. This operation is run by my son, occasionally my grandsons and high school neighbor boys plus myself.
Success with zero till or minimum till begins with straw management at harvest time. We remove most of our straw after harvest. We need straw to carry our cattle numbers over winter. Whatever is left after that operation is then spread with a heavy harrow. This should be done as soon as possible after harvest and preferably before anything gets wet. This operation is done at 7 - 8 miles per hour.
The use of chemical in direct seeding is a must if you want results, especially when planting either grass or cereals into sod. We had better results when a couple of crops of cereals were taken off before trying to re-seed to grass and/or alfalfa.
Mother Nature has not changed a lot in the fifty plus years I have been involved in agriculture. When we used to break new land, the theory was the earlier land was broke in the growing season the better the crop was the following year. So the same importance should be given to control the growth on a parcel of grassland to be seeded the following year. A second spray application the following spring will control the growth before seeding. This gives the sod a chance to break down and become available as plant food as well as better weed control.
When planting cereals on this land, we find we need quite a lot of fertilizer. We soil test to make sure because the fields vary so much. We usually use a middle range of fertilizer, as we sometimes may not have enough rain to justify going to the high rate.
We feed on fields in the winter. A heavy harrow is used to spread what is left over after winter-feeding so the fields can be seeded using minimum or zero till.
We have not had any wind or water erosion on any of the land when seeding with a zero till drill. We had custom seeding done using the John Deere 750 drill with a slant disc opener and have used the Flexi-Coil 6000 with a double shoot Barton opener. The Flexi-Coil 6000 had a lot of problems in rocky conditions.
We make mistakes too. One year we had some new breaking on marginal land and we thought we could plant it once and get two years or more production from it. So, we decided on the grass we wanted and put about a bushel of rye with the mixture. The results were not bad the first year, but the rye kept the grass from growing well. The following year we grazed the plot. The grasses should have been pastured lightly and the rye needed the exact opposite treatment. The end result was a poor stand of grass and headed out rye. One more year was needed to establish the grass. Had grazing continued we would have had to re-seed the grasses. Rye makes a poor nurse crop because it is too competitive. We prefer planting grasses without a nurse crop. If a nurse crop is used, cut it early and use it as livestock feed to give the grass a chance to establish before the growing season is over.
Most of our grassland is not fertilized. The reason for this is that most years in our area, we have not received sufficient rain early enough in the growing season to utilize the fertilizers. The second reason is that fertilizer costs has gotten so high that in most years the extra hay can be bought for less than the cost of fertilizer and application.
Be careful what product is used to desiccate forage being grazed or salvaged for feed. Check grazing restriction on any spray you are using. We have seeded alfalfa directly into an old stand of mostly smooth brome and alfalfa without any desiccation. This was done with adequate moisture to germinate every seed. As the season progressed, more and more of the new plants died until almost none remained.
We have also cooperated with the Swift Current Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada Research Station on a research project in our area. The following treatments were used:
Lambert Wourms Site Treatments
The treatment where fertilizer had been broadcasted produced the most forage. The absence of major differences in treatments is likely due to the drought (Table 1).
Yields for the two years and the totals are presented in Table 2 for those treatments harvested in both years. Spiking or harrowing has lowered yields except where fertilizer was added likely due to physical damage to plants. Broadcast fertilizer has resulted in most forage, mainly because of the increase in 1994.
Table 1: Precipitation for 1994-95 at Lambert Wourms.
|
1994 |
1995 |
|
|
April
May June July August September October |
5 mm 56 mm 46 mm 65 mm 37 mm 24 mm 14 mm |
43 mm 26 mm 33 mm 25 mm 91 mm 10 mm 1 mm |
Table 2: Total forage yields at the site on NW-8-54-23w3rd (Lambert Wourms) for 1994-95.
| Treatment |
1994 Yield (kg/ha) |
1995 Yield (kg/ha) |
Total Yield (kg/ha) |
| Broadcast Fertilizer |
3140 |
1590 |
4730 |
| Broadcast Fertilizer, Spike and Harrow |
2240 |
1850 |
4090 |
| Check (no treatments) |
2150 |
1670 |
3820 |
| Deep Band Fertilizer |
2000 |
1420 |
3420 |
| Sod-Seed Alfalfa |
1790 |
1300 |
3090 |
| Spike and Sod-Seed Alfalfa |
1530 |
1160 |
2690 |
| Spike and Harrow |
1380 |
1220 |
2600 |
| Rotary Harrow |
1270 |
1260 |
2530 |
Fertilizer (66 kg Nitrogen + 33 kg Phosphate + 3 kg Sulphur) per ha, applied June 7, 1994.
Alfalfa (Rambler) seeded at 7.6 kg/ha (100 seeds/m of drill row) on June 8, 1994.
Other treatments applied June 7 & 8 1994.
Pussytoes, strawberry, buckbrush, and violet had recovered from any damage caused by the roundup application. In these plots crested wheatgrass seedlings were up to 10 cm high but were much less in evidence than in May. There were few alfalfa seedlings. Those found were up to 2 cm high. The few Cicer milkvetch seedlings found were very small. No legume seedlings were found in areas seeded without the roundup application.
Overall, the various treatments have had no beneficial effect to date, probably because of the extremely dry conditions that have prevailed in spring 1995 in the area.