Wheat - Pay Attention to Detail!

WHAM! After one year on top of the cash crop heap, wheat is falling right back down to the bottom rung of the "favourite crop" ladder. Don't fall into the rut of treating wheat as a rotation crop with "no money, no management". Paying a little attention to detail can tell you mountains about your management skills, and whether there are more potential bushels and profit out in that field than what you are going to harvest.

Plant Count Guidelines

Ask yourself "how many times have I measured off 17 feet, 5 inches of corn row and counted plants to know the population?" The answer is likely "lots"!! Have you EVER done that in your wheat crop? My bet is "no". Why? Well, perhaps partly because you didn't know what to look for. So let's fix that!

Some general guidelines for you to follow are below. It is assumed that everyone is in 7.5 inch rows, as virtually every no-till drill is set on this row spacing, and no-till cereals simply make sense.

• 20 plants/foot of row in wheat (17 plants/foot in barley, 14 plants/foot in oats)
• 50 stems/foot of row (main plus tiller stems at late-tillering stage)
• 38 heads/foot of row
• 16 spikelets/head
• 3 kernels/spikelet

These counts are a minimum for high yield potential. As you move through the growing season, these counts can be a good indicator if you should push that field for higher yield, or if you should limit inputs and cut your losses early.

Planting Depth

If you don't measure up, start looking for ways to improve your yields. Start with planting depth and emergence. Research in Manitoba by Gan, Stobbe and Moes showed that wheat plants emerging early (Day 1 to Day 3), yielded 1.4 times higher than plants emerging from Days 4 to 6, and 3.2 times higher than the yield of plants emerging late (Day 7 to 9). There is significant yield gain and variability in that data!

Starter Fertilizer

Next, check your fertilizer application. Seed-placed starter fertilizer will aid in plant uniformity. Phil Needham, a leading wheat consultant in the US, says his growers would stop planting rather than plant without seed-placed phosphorus. Big yields need that attention to detail.

There are lots of other causes for poor uniformity - including residue distribution, planting speed and moisture. Whatever the cause, you now have the tools to assess your performance. Get out there, walk those cereal fields, and see just how close your management comes to perfection