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remaining residues increase the snow catch while decreasing
wind and evaporation on the soil surface in spring.
“The water you use from your soil, you want to be using
through your plant; you don’t want to be losing it off the
surface of the soil because it’s uncovered,” he said. This
is a factor that affects the diverse, nine-year crop rotation
Kirschenman is moving into. “We’re going to bump up our
cereal acres because of that,” he said. Harvest 2017 drove
home the need for creating good crop residue ahead of
dry years. As an example, he has seen a 25 per cent yield
difference in flax, depending on the quality of residue it was
seeded into. He also suggested that increasing cereals in the
rotation mimics the Prairie grassland ecosystem in which the
fibrous roots of native grasses bind the topsoil. “We’re going
to have two years of winter cereals, two years of spring cereals
as well as corn within that rotation every other year with,
hopefully, a broadleaf intercrop.
“What we’re starting to do on our farm is to look at the
things we can manage that will not significantly impact our
bottom line in an above-average or exceptional year, but will
allow us to preserve yield in a below-average-moisture year, or
even a drought year,” said Kirschenman. He suggested these
actions will include adjusting seeding rates and row spacing.
Another area of attention is timing fertilizer application so as
not to put it all down up front, resulting in a whole lot of plant
that runs out of moisture and having nothing to put in the bin.
“Maybe six out of 10 years we won’t notice a difference.
One year maybe we’ll not be at the top of the yields, but two
out of the 10 years, we’ll be able to run the combines rather
than sit and collect crop insurance,” he said. Taking such steps
to maintain yield will be even more important should those
two bad years become 10, as in past drought cycles.
Zavala noted that soil issues are similar across the province.
Farmers are looking to remedy compaction and lack of
organic material. She suggested that cover cropping alone is
not an answer to soil improvement issues, but may be valuable
when integrated with total management practices.
Following farmer interest in the soil health trend, she has
been running test plots since 2014. The results have appeared
to mirror Kirschenman’s success in improving the quality of the
soil. This cover crop experimentation has involved planting
cocktails of varying species, with the aim of creating major
soil benefits in a short period of time. In 2016, this cocktail
included 32 species, among them legumes, broadleaf plants,
brassicas and cereals and even soybeans. The following year,
the number climbed to 40.
Yamily Zavala’s cover crop experiments have included plantingmulti-species cocktails that have consisted of plants such as oats, triticale, millet, tillage radish, sunflower, field
peas, faba beans and chickpeas.
Photo:YamilyZavala