Winter Wheat, Farmers Market, & Canada Thistle Bio Control.

County Agent News

Dan Folske

September 26, 2010

Winter Wheat

Still thinking about winter wheat? Late seeded winter wheat is more likely to winter kill and generally loses some of it’s yield potential however it can be successful. Major considerations are winter hardiness and winter cover. Choose the most winter hardy variety you can. Direct seed into standing stubble, if possible. If seeding on prevent plant acres choose fields with the greatest amounts of standing residue. Weeds which were allowed to grow before being burned down with herbicide can provide good cover. Hard wheat or durum stubble provides excellent cover but make sure there are no green plants for wheat streak mosaic and wheat curl mites to survive on.  Pea stubble or lentil stubble is poor cover for winter wheat. Canola stubble is great from a standpoint of  breaking disease cycles but may not be enough cover during a very cold, open winter.

Farmers Markets

Most of the Farmers Markets are wrapping up their season this week. The hard frost was hard on many vegetable plants but some growers were able to protect some plants and most vegetable growers still have root crops like carrots and beets.

I’ve noticed my cabbage is doing better since the frost slowed down flea beetle activity too.

Canada Thistle Bio-control

I received a lot of phone calls last year about the Canada thistle stem mining weevils which were in the news last year. They are not yet commonly available but I did get 3000 of them through the ND Dept of Ag last week. These three releases of 1000 weevils each have been put out in the Bowbells area where I can monitor their survival next year and hopefully collect and move them to additional locations in a year or two