'Making Winter Cereals Happen' may sound like an off-beat title for an article on winter cereals in rotation but there's a good reason for the title. Regardless of how much information is provided on technical matters, the biggest, most important factor in using winter cereals in rotation is simply to make up your mind and make it happen.. Winter cereals are not going to work if left up to chance. You have to plan well in advance, you have to be organized, and then you have to make it happen.
Planning is the key element to any crop rotation, but with winter cereals you have to place more emphasis on the time management portion of your plan. The single most important step in making winter cereals happen is the planting of the spring crop on the field where your winter crop will go. Although planting fall rye on summerfallow and winter wheat and winter triticale on chem-fallow is a recommended practice, this article is entirely focused on stubble planting as I am not a fallow enthusiast.
While the exact date varies by location, September 1 is a good planting date to shoot for over most of Saskatchewan. Having a field ready in time might happen by accident but it happens a lot. It's better if it isn't left up to chance. That means seeding the spring crop early and planting crops that will mature in time. Good choices are barley and Polish canola sown first thing in the spring. Flax can also work if planted in late April or early May. Research by Guy Lafond at Indian Head has proven that flax is very resistant to spring frost and flax will mature in time if you plan it that way.
The time management doesn't stop with crop selection. It also helps to arrange your spring planting so harvest is staggered somewhat. If your early maturing crop is sown early in preparation for winter cereal seeding and then you move to a later maturing crop, you can end up with a window of time during harvest to plant your winter cereal.
The next step in managing time for winter cereals is to get your seeding equipment ready for seeding immediately after seeding. Now that's not a type-o. If you make sure your seeding equipment is serviced and repaired after you finish normal spring seeding, it will only need a quick check-over in the fall before it goes to the field. The harvest period is busy enough without having to include drill maintenance and repair.
The hardest part of time management for winter cereals comes when the great spring plans don't work out and you find yourself in harvest mode and its seeding time. Sometimes compromises can't be made and harvest operations have to come first. After all, getting this years crop in the bin tends to be a bit more important than planting next years. One method of overcoming this is to seed when it's too tough to combine. This works well if you're not using your tractor to pull the pull-type combine and if you can muster the mental energy to be doing two main jobs at one time.
Some other time related items you will want to consider are:
Making winter cereals happen on your farm will take some effort. In my experience, the first couple of times can seem overwhelming. But once you get it figured out, the whole process becomes automatic and surprisingly easy. Not only that, but the biggest part of time management comes the next year when you start the winter wheat harvest before anything else is ready to go.
While time management seems like an obstacle to making winter cereals happen it really isn't one at all. It's one of the very large benefits of fitting these crops into your rotation. I haven't even mentioned that you don't have to worry about wheat midge, that spring annual grassy weeds (wild oats, etc.) aren't much of a problem or that you can get some very large yields of both bushels and dollars with winter cereals.