- Author: Konrad Mathesius
- Author: Gabriele Maier
- Author: Josh Davy
- Editor: Mark Lundy
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Looking a little dry out there?
Dry conditions mean it's good to be cautious about nitrate toxicity in forage crops, particularly small grain hay, grasses, and anything weedy! Nitrates can harm or even kill animals. Growers should test forages and stay vigilant.
Why are dry years more of a concern for nitrate toxicity? Drought conditions in California this year are the worst they've been in decades. Many growers are considering cutting their grain fields for hay, however, that may cause some concerns for ruminant livestock if forage nitrate (NO3) levels are not monitored closely since drought stress can cause nitrate accumulation in forage...
- Author: Konrad Mathesius
- Contributor: Thomas Getts
- Contributor: José Luiz Carvalho de Souza Dias
- Editor: Brad Hanson
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Concerns about a growing resistance to herbicides
In Mediterranean or arid climates, particularly in areas with marginal soils, crop rotations are often limited to a narrow range of hay, pasture, a handful of winter legumes, or rainy-season grasses. Arid conditions and weathered soils drove Australia's rainfed grain growers to adopt no-till strategies earlier than their counterparts in California. While beneficial from a water use perspective, successful no-till systems depend on herbicides to control weeds that were traditionally kept in check with tillage.
Dependence on herbicides alone in these systems has resulted in weeds with resistance to multiple modes of action. In Australia, there is one...
- Author: Rachael Freeman Long
- Author: Sarah Light
- Author: Roger A. Baldwin
- Author: Daniel H Putnam
Growers frequently celebrate the presence of wildlife in their alfalfa and grain fields, providing valuable habitat as well as economic returns.
But sometimes it's just too much of a good thing.
The sight of thousands of geese foraging in agricultural fields is spectacular and a natural wonder, until they start devastating your crop. This winter, snow and Ross's geese have been eating farmers out of house and home in the Sacramento valley, devastating wheat, cover crops, and alfalfa fields.
Millions of Guests Arriving for Dinner. Geese foraging by the tens of thousands are capable of consuming 30 acres of crops in just a few hours. They strip leaves and stems of alfalfa...
- Author: Taylor Nelsen
- Author: Gabriel Rosa
- Author: Justin Merz
- Author: Mark Lundy
Weather patterns are highly variable across the state of California. They change from year to year and across locations. While parts of the state may be experiencing drought conditions this year (Figure 1), each location can have dramatically different weather. For growers and agronomists, location-specific weather information is essential to understand plant growth and water use. It is also important for planning field management activities such as fertilization and irrigation.
We have created a new interactive website where users can access their location-specific precipitation and temperature data:
- Author: Konrad Mathesius
- Author: Taylor Nelsen
- Author: Mark Lundy
Seeding rate is an important consideration for small grain growers at planting. There are a number of agronomic factors that help to determine the ideal seeding rate such as whether a field will be irrigated, the potential for weed pressure or lodging, the planting date, crop type, and seed germinability. In addition, there can be a large range of seed weights among different small grain varieties and from one seed lot to the next. To achieve full yield potential under irrigated conditions in California, 25 to 30 plants per square foot is a good target density for wheat. As a seeding rate this translates to approximately 1.2 million seeds per acre with a seed weight of 40 gram per thousand seeds. However, adjustments to the seeding...