Frost Seeding: December or March??

Amazing!! The hoopla one can create with a bit of media attention! Thanks to Dr. Duane Falk (University of Guelph) and Rob Templeman (Agronomist, Pioneer Hi-bred), we created the "BLACK HOLE" of wheat planting. The "black hole" of wheat planting refers to the planting time which gives winter wheat the least chance for winter survival. The worst situation for winter wheat survival is to have plants enter the winter at the 2 leaf stage. At this crop stage plants have used up seed reserves and not yet built up plant reserves to help the plants survive winter. In order to avoid plants entering winter at this stage wheat needs to be planted early enough that the crop has been able to store up reserves through photosynthesis or late enough that reserves are still present in the seed. Thus wheat planted after this "black hole" may actually outperform the earlier planted wheat that falls into this "black hole". There is no scientific side by side data to support this concept, but almost every farmer up and down the back roads has heard about it.

The hoopla had many interesting impacts. Some growers pushed soybean harvest harder and earlier than ever before, ending up with all of their wheat planted by October 10^th or before (alright!!). Other growers stopped planting wheat once they thought they were getting into this "black hole" (DARN!). The absolute upside: everyone thought twice about planting date for this wheat crop. Yet another upside is that there are about ten plots out there this fall where we will compare the various planting dates, as long as mother nature gives us a couple more chances to get into the field.

Still, many growers did not plant as much wheat as they had hoped. In many fields, the beans just weren't quite ready. So what is the option now? FROST SEEDING! Consider spring cereals, especially spring wheat or oat, on the frost next spring. This has had some incredible success, and data to support this statement will be included in the next issue of CROPTALK. But the one KEY item that most growers miss to be ready for frost seeding next spring? - the fall burndown with glyphosate!

If you have any chance at all this fall, burndown fields that you even remotely are considering for frost seeding. Remember that, amazingly, glyphosate continues to have activity until temperatures have hit -4º C. Even fields that look clean now often have dandelion, chickweed, and other winter annuals that just hammer the heck out of the frost seeded crops next spring. If you can kill them this fall, you will have much better success next spring.

Meanwhile, if you're up for a challenge, try frost seeding some winter wheat this December.