Geese have been heavily foraging again in small grains and alfalfa fields this winter. Drought conditions led to heavy geese damage to Sacramento Valley fields in 2021. Why are they feeding heavily on crops again this year? Rice plays an important role in providing foraging habitat for geese. With acreage in the state down by about 50% this past year due to drought conditions, there's not enough feed to sustain them. In addition, feed shortages in the Klamath Basin, a major stopover for geese in their migration south, means more geese are coming into the Sacramento Valley earlier and hungrier, causing them to move out from refuges.

Fortunately, wheat...

The growth stage of a crop is a critical piece of information for growers and agronomists. For small grain crops like wheat and triticale, many field management decisions are sensitive to the stage of crop development. These include irrigation, fertilizer additions, herbicide and pesticide applications, and harvest timing. In addition, the planting date, the amount and timing of rainfall and/or irrigation, and cumulative seasonal temperatures all impact how rapidly a crop emerges, develops and matures. Because of the extreme variability in winter weather in the state, rates of development for small grain crops in California are not always consistent from year-to-year and farm-to-farm. This can make precision management and planning more...

Although much of this year's wheat has been planted, the cost of fertilizer and an unpredictable rainy season mean it's never a bad time to learn more about how to improve nitrogen management in small grains.

Join us for nitrogen management seminars being offered in the northern San Joaquin and the southern Sacramento Valleys. The seminars will cover a range of topics related to the use of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Management Tool for California Wheat. Lunch will be provided. 

Over the years UC agronomists have had considerable success using the Webtool and working with growers to

Cereal rye, triticale and oats are commonly used as cover crops in the Salinas Valley in fall grown (Aug/Sept to Oct/Nov) and overwintered (Oct/Nov to Feb/March) planting slots. A key issue for growers is when to terminate the cover crop. This boils down to availability of equipment or breaks in the weather. Those types of issues are unavoidable and usually take precedence in decision making. In this article, we describe the various stages of cover crop seed development so that growers can let their cereal cover crop grow as long as possible without the risk of it producing seed that would become a weed in subsequent vegetable crops. This will allow the carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratio to increase as high as possible to maximize the input...