September 1997
Scab has growers looking at no-till winter wheat
by Tracy Sayler
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Prairie Grains is the
official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain
Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat,
Inc., and the
Minnesota Barley
Growers Association.
Two words why you don't see much HRW in the upper reaches of the Northern Plains: winter kill. If it can be a gamble near Topeka and Omaha, then it's Russian roulette in Minot and Crookston.
Nevertheless, more northern-area growers are looking at HRW as a hedge against the scab problem.
Joe Ose, who farms with son Tom and his brother LeRoy near Thief River Falls, MN, has about 400 acres of HRW (Seward and Roughrider varieties) this year. It's his first year with HRW, so he did some experimenting: about 230 acres went into last year's barley stubble, 110 acres went into alfalfa sod, 60 acres in spring wheat stubble, and a few acres in summer fallow. He used Round-up for a burn-down before seeding HRW into the alfalfa, barley, and spring wheat stubble.
He did have some disease problems (including some scab) with HRW planted in spring wheat stubble. "It probably would have been better with a fungicide treatment. I would never present myself as an expert on this. It's a learning process. All my life, I just try to learn," Ose says.
The HRW stand that looked the best this year was HRW planted on no-till alfalfa ground. It is the no-till practice that reduces the chances for winter kill. Using a no-till drill to seed HRW into stubble will attract more snow cover, says Ose, and thus provide better insulation from the risk of winter kill.
"We didn't have any winter kill or scab with HRW on the alfalfa or barley stubble. There were places on last year's barley ground where the HRW stands weren't that good, but I think it was because of too much residue in places. So you should make sure the chaff spreader is working right, otherwise you might have problems with HRW germination," says Ose.
The Balstads, Floyd and sons David and Dale who farm near Winger, MN, did the custom no-till seeding of HRW for Ose and other area growers. They use a 30-foot, John Deere 750 no-till set up with tram lines. They seed HRW at 7 1/2-inch row spacings.
Some northern-area growers are seeding winter wheat into no-till stubble this fall in the hope that the stubble will draw snow cover and reduce the risk of winter kill. The earlier-developing winter wheat would then be a hedge against scab in 1998.
"It's a machine where you really have to be careful where you use it," says Floyd Balstad. "You won't have much success using it to seed in weeds that aren't burned down, or mud. But we've seeded soybeans right into corn stalk stubble. For winter wheat cover, probably barley stubble would work best. HRW into wheat stubble will make it more vulnerable to disease. Alfalfa stubble works good for HRW seeding."
Balstad says they usually do their custom HRW seeding from mid August to mid September. "But we're hoping to push that this year and seed HRW into soybean stubble. That may be around Oct. 1. Seeding that late isn't recommended though," he says.
Ose's HRW crop has turned out well enough this year that he's going to have the Balstads custom seed some HRW on no-till ground again, late this summer.
For further information on producing winter wheat, contact your county extension office.n