QUIZ – This Week in Agronomy

Six questions on seed-placed fertilizer and pre-seed weed control.

1. Fertilizer can damage canola seed and seedlings, so the safest is to put nothing with the seed. One exception is phosphorus. A starter rate of seed-placed phosphorus fertilizer can provide an establishment benefit for canola seedlings, especially in cool soils. What does the CCC recommend as a "starter rate"?
2. Some drills put all seed and fertilizer down the same single-shoot opener. Growers in this situation have to be careful with canola seed and seedling damage from that fertilizer. To reduce the risk, growers can use a combination of options: put most fertilizer down in a separate pass, use polymer-coated urea or urease inhibitors, and change opener width to adjust the seeding tool's seed-bed utilization (SBU). Which SBU is safest when using higher-than-recommended rates of seed-placed fertilizer?
3. A situation: Canola seeding is still two weeks away but fields are dry enough to support sprayer traffic. The field has quite a few winter annuals that are regrowing. Should the field get sprayed today? Or wait until closer to seeding when more weeds have emerged?
4. Winter annuals are green and growing on Ian Epp's farm near Blaine Lake, Saskatchewan. Ian shared this photo, taken this week.

What is the weed in the red circle?

5. What are the weeds in the blue rectangle?

6. What is the weed in the yellow hexagon?