2023 WSU Dryland Research Station (Lind, WA)

        WSU's Dry Land Research Station at Lind, Wa. is recognized as having the lowest annual precipitation of all the State and Federal dryland research facilities in the US.  It has a 105 year existence.   The 101 year average is 9.61" per year.  The lowest annual rainfall was 4.36 in 1977, and the highest annual rainfall was 22.71" in 1948.  The 2023 crop year (Sept--May) total is 7.42".  The take home points for me this year (June 15th) are the following:

    --Staff:  The Lind Station has a new Director, Dr. Surendra Singh, a new scientist, Dr. Shikha Singh, and a new Technician, Steven Jaurez.

     --Winter Peas:   There is an attempt expand the normal rotation of (winter wheat - fallow), by introducing winter peas into the rotation.  Current research has shown:  -- providing inoculant increases the yield an average of 6.6%, --discovery of a bacterium that surpasses diseases in peas,  -- discovered a bacterium that develop super sized nodules on pea roots,  -- pea pod weevil are present with no past history of growing peas in the area.  As a result research is ongoing to find resistant varieties to the pest, -- the plots were very short on residue.  The researcher stated that even a small amount of residue in row with the pea made a significant improvement in winter survivability, -- the microbial community was different for different pea varieties,  -- all variety trials were moment seeded in late October.

    -- Endangered Species Act (ESA):  New forms of regulation are being foisted on farming activities in the state.  Some of them may effect agriculture in our area.  I'm including two pic's of a brochure handed out offering some explanation.  It includes a website that we need to become familiar.  

-- Russian Thistles:  are a major pest in low precipitation growing areas.  Currently all control applications of Spartan, Charge, Fierce, and Metribuzin on the plots looked good.  Researchers will be looking for control differences when rain arrives.

2023 McGregor Research Tour

    I always find this to be an interesting tour.  Cat and her crew do a good job.  Take home points for me this year (June 13th)  are the following:

    --Canola:  A large trial plot with a number of different cultivar from different companies.  The plots all looked good, well into flowering.  The plots, visually, looked significantly better than the canola field that bordered the plots.  The field was streaky with, generally, thinner stand with fewer flowers, and the streaks being shorter and flowers turned white, and I didn't notice pods developing.  The cooperator prepared the field and plot area the same, applying 80ppa N, 10ppa S.  The field was seeded at 5ppa of canola seed.  The plot was seeded a week later and had an additional 5gpa of Kickstart for fertility, and was seeded at 6ppa of seed.  That is a lot of seed.  My preliminary information indicates that the Kickstart was the only difference, other than the type of drill used.  I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of Kickstart showing that much difference, but it was obvious right to the border that encircled the plot site.  Maybe waiting a week later helped the plot site.  Foliar feeding has shown some potential benefit, with the best timing being early rosette stage before rapid biomass increase.   [ Earlier, I conversed with Brian Caldbeck, of Caldbeck Consulting.  A couple of useful comments were: --1) he likes 6-7 established plants/sf, and not to count emerged plants because some will not survive.  --2) space the seed out.  When seed clumps together only one or two seeds will germinate.  The others just sit there doing nothing.  --3) hybrids tend to divide out as tall with slender branch spread and shorter with wider branch spread.  He prefers tall/slender on 7"-10" spacing and short/wide on 10"-15" row spacing.

--Wireworm:  They infest a lot of crop acreage and can do damage to yield.  Wireworms are the larva form of the Click Beetle.  They emit a clicking sound, and are highly attracted to the color of white.  An easy check is to park a white pickup in/by the field you are scouting, --if they are there, they will be all over the pickup.  Wireworms prefer soil temperatures in the 55-75ºF range with moisture.  They dive deep when soil temperature reaches ≥ 80ºF.   McGregor has found that a lot of perceived chemical damage is actually wireworm damage.  Wireworms are more widely spread then we realize.  Click Beetles survive in grasslands and crop residue.  Natural predators are: rodents, birds, bats, frogs, lizards, predatory beetles, predatory wasps, predatory mites,  Lacewings, spiders, and preying mantises.  Seed treat with Terassa is quite effective for control.  

--Seed Treats:  Terassa seems effective for wireworm control.  Systiva seems effective for Rhizoctonia.  Relenya seems effective for Bunt Smut.   The Guardian Blend controls 20 diseases, but not wireworm.

--Fertility:  Zinc is best applied to seed compared to in row, side band, broadcast.  Zinc is the #1 limiting micronutrient in Pacific Northwest.  Nitrogen applied at Tillering stage is best timing; however, stabilized N applied at time of seeding has given best yield.    Use foliar feed for needed elements found through SAP testing at flag leaf stage.

--Wheat:  Early-Late seeding.  Best yields appear to develop when seeding early with a late maturing cultivar, and when seeding late, choose an early maturing cultivar.  Winter wheats:  Shine is highly susceptible to dryland foot rot while Blackjack is tolerant to dryland foot rot.  M-Pire has high tolerance to grassy herbides.  --with an awned wheat, awnes indicate developing kernel.  A stubby(short) awn is questionable for development.  An exercise Cat had us do related to early-medium-late seeding of winter wheat.  Seeding dates for the same cultivar was Sept. 15th, Oct. 15th, Nov. 15th.  In all cases the heads were very similar in development.  The main difference was the number of tillers.  The lesson here was, plant higher seed rate as you go farther into late fall to compensate for lack of ability to tiller.

--Herbicide treatments:  This trial consisted of some common herbicides with different mixes and sprayed across several cultivar types to see the crop reaction.   Effectiveness of the treatments varied.  It was pointed out that Clethodim, Paraquat, and Glyphosate needed water conditioning to improve effectiveness.

--RO Water:  Like last year, I think Cat used distilled water in 2023 and called it RO (reverse osmosis) water, but it's not!  McGregor's interest in RO water came about because of the buzz around a few operations using processed water and cutting chemical rates.  The trials looked poor and their warnings about escapements and potential for developing resistance are valid.   In 2023,  there are 9 active water processing units serving ~ 14 farm/ranch operations in eastern Washington and northern Idaho.   Since 2020 a group of us have been looking into the Pursanova Water System.  This system first filters the water, then run it through a reverse osmosis (RO) unit, and then on through "structure" tubes containing beads of specific types of ores.   These are not random rocks.  For more information about water see my posts on "Pursanova -- RO/S Water" by clicking on the "water" label.  There is a lot more to water than we generally recognize.

DWAYNE BECK - CROP DIVERSITY & INTENSITY

      THESE  SHOULD  BE  VIEWED  SEVERAL  TIMES  FOR  AN  UNDERSTANDING

Click on the URL for topics of  NEW AG!    ---->    D. BECK 55:34 Presentation

 No-Till Guru  (Dwayne Beck)  55:34min presentation at the 2019 National No-Till Conference is a great audio/video on making new agriculture practices profitable.  I brought this up from a December 2020 post.  Everything said in this presentation is current today, June, 2023, and more meaningful for some of us who are trying to follow the principles for successfully regenerating our soils and maintaining yields.  The first ~ 18 minutes are about South Dakota, and the Pierre Research Farm.

Click on URL for, "Cover Crop Estabishment and Grazing".  --->  D. BECK 48:08 Presentation  

        No-Till Guru (Dwayne Beck) 2017 presentation talks about Cover Crops and factors to consider when raising them like purpose, and cultivar selection.   Some repeated information in different words.  If I would have found this earlier, I would probably have done better, and be farther along with cover cropping.                                                                                

6/6/23 WHEAT COLLEGE

    Mostly an interesting meet.  It would have been better if the venue (Palouse Empire Fair Grounds Community Bldg) had better acoustics-sound system for those of us with hearing issues.  Sound is slightly off, reverberating, making a lot of words indistinct.  

    --Ted Labun from Canada speaking on "successfully growing dryland wheat".  My main interest was his comments on canola, after his talk.  Points he made: --different hybrids with, some growing tall with narrow branching, and others growing shorter with wider branching.  The first he likes seeding in 7" rows, and the latter in 10-14" rows.  --he likes plants every 6-7" along row.  --where a clump of seed drops, only 1-2 seeds will germinate.  The others do nothing.  Spacing out seed allows for reduction in seeding rate.  Instead of 400,000spa, you can go down to 250,000spa.  --he likes the wheat-canola rotation.  --his pics showed a lot of residue (flat) on the ground.  --he likes a black slot where residue has been moved to the side for seed to emerge.  He could not tell me if there are issues with growing canola in tall standing stubble (possible light interference).  His talk indicated he was more familiar with minimum till practices, compared to no-till. 

    --Pic below:  Aaron Esser promoted his color coded crop/field chart with chemistry groups used by year.  

This is a great tool for quick one page visual reference of chemistry when endeavoring to reduce weed resistance.  The problem I see is that his colors don't show enough contrast for some crops he has assigned.  We should develop this for our operation.  He likes using Liberty Link canola instead of RR canola.  It is an opportunity to reduce one or more applications of glyphosate in the rotation. I think it is a given that most of us use too much glyphosate and should look for alternatives where possible.

    His studies show that cultivar genetics was a better tool for disease control than applying fungicides.  From my biological farming study, fungicides are particularly bad for beneficial soil fungi, so it's preferable to avoid them when improving soil health is a goal.

    A new management tool he unveiled today was charting by field weed species, ranking them by worst as they impact crop yield.  *This suggests that we should not try to kill every weed in the crop/field.  *Changing that mindset toward weed management programs will likely reduce chemical applications, reducing potential weed resistance, by targeting weeds that impact crop yield.

    --Rick Wesselman from Syngenta talked about plant roots.  Roots are the foundation for the plant.  Healthy root system makes for better yield.  Seed coatings are being developed that enhance root growth early in root development.  Our operation is looking into these type products.  This year we have applied biological material to all our seeding either by seed coat applications or in-row with the seed.

    --Rachel Wieme from WSU gave information and demonstration about soil pH and why it matters for crop production.  She showed how varied the pH is by taking readings along a 12" soil probe sample.

       Several people in the group remarked that they were introducing cultivation back into their no-till operations because of their finding soil stratification of nutrients and pH.  *From a soil health aspect this is going backwards.  In our environment, growing sufficient biomass to move the needle on soil health in a positive direction is difficult.  *No-till, in and of itself, is not sufficient.  *No-till dramatically reduces the loss of SOM, and corresponding, slows the rate of deteriorating the soils health.  *Cultivation in any form accelerates the loss of soil organic matter, surface biomass, and soil structure.  *Natures plowmen (worms) disappear with cultivation.  *They need food on the surface, and in the form of soil organic matter.  *Along with food, they need undisturbed ground for reproduction.  * Worms, both vertical borers and horizontal borers breakup soil stratification by moving material around in the soil profile.

    --A spokesman from Altitude Agri Services gave a talk, and demonstrated a T30 agriculture drone.  This is new technology to agriculture and there are a lot of questions.  He stated that a drone set up with two extra batteries, charger and generator) costs between $30-40 thousand dollars.  I didn't hear him talk about licensing.  We have been looking into this technology since January. 

  *The T40 (pictured here) became available in the fall of 2022.  Licensing for legally flying these heavy drones is a pretty straight forward process, but is time consuming and can be expensive depending on how you go about it.  *There are individuals and companies scrambling to set up training/licensing programs.

(*my thoughts interjected into the info. presented.)