Aerial Seeding - Risks and Realities!

When do you plant wheat? When the soybeans come off! But with an extremely late soybean crop, many growers are considering other options to plant wheat earlier. One of these options is aerial seeding.

Throughout the 1980’s and even into the 1990’s, 5,000 to 10,000 acres of wheat was aerial seeded in some years. This practice disappeared as no-till wheat planting became the norm. Is it time to revisit aerial seeding to get some wheat in the ground?

Early planting equals higher yields. Research throughout Ontario has found that every day wheat planting is delayed after the "optimum" date, yield is reduced by 1.1 bushels per acre! Theoretically, that should give aerial seeding an immediate advantage. However, leaving the seed on the surface has some inherent disadvantages.

Trials by the Lambton Soil and Crop Improvement Association in the late 1980’s found an average 10% yield reduction with aerial seeded wheat compared to no-till seeding, when it was possible to get the wheat seeded later in the fall. However, in some of the trials it was never possible to get the wheat seeded as soil conditions were simply too wet. In these trials, aerial seeding gave a 100% yield increase!

What to do? Personally, I am not a big fan of aerial seeded wheat. However, if you are going to try some, here are the recommendations and "watch out’s" to help make it work.

1. Increase your seeding rate to 2.0 million seeds per acre.
2. Red wheat works just as well as white wheat. All the hype about which will germinate fastest is just coffee shop "drabble"!
3. Fly or broadcast the wheat seed into the soybean stand BEFORE you have 10% leaf drop. The leaves need to fall on top of the wheat seed to act as a mulch. Call the plane about the time the first leaf falls.
4. Don’t worry about clipping the tops of the wheat plants when combining the soybeans. This has not had any negative impact.
5. Watch for slugs. Slugs love wheat plants just as they germinate. You will find intact kernels on the ground with just the germ end "popped" out by the slugs. This will significantly reduce the stand on the headland. You will likely need to thicken up the outside 20 or 30 feet with the no-till drill after bean harvest. In severe cases, the entire field can be decimated.
6. Frost heaving is an issue. With the entire root system on top of the ground, aerial seeded fields are at far greater risk if frost heaving becomes an issue next spring.

Despite all the warnings, aerial seeded wheat can work. If you give it a try, be sure to let us know how it turns out next harvest!