Home / Canola Watch / Harvest and Storage / Page 13
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Default to waiting. Don’t make a snap decision to swath. Before taking any harvest action, start with this sequence…
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Combine losses vary throughout the day. If using the same combine settings all day long, losses in the morning and evening could be significant if the combine is set for easy-threshing afternoons. Or losses in the afternoons could be higher if the combine is locked in for those tough-swath times of day. Checking for combine losses under various conditions will…
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Swathing later will increase yield because more of the later seeds in side branches will reach maturity and contribute to yield. But what if harvest is moving slowing and the priority shifts from highest yield to just getting the crop in the bin?…
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Canola fields swathed at 60% seed colour change (SCC) on the main stem can yield 8% more than fields swathed at 30% SCC. That’s according to Canola Council of Canada research from the early 2000s. The yield difference could be even higher with lower plant populations because with fewer larger plants more of the yield will be in the side…
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Frost on pods can stop plant development and lock in green. It can also cause pods to split. However, a light frost may have no effect at all, and the crop will be better left to mature fully before swathing…
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Ideally, growers will want to put canola on aeration as soon as it comes off the field. Cooling hot grain within the first 24 hours is important for safe long-term……
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The best move is to stay out of bins while they’re being filled or emptied. Usually the only time a person feels the need to enter a bin is if grain is bridged or crusted. This can be a very dangerous situation, especially if a wall of grain is released and buries a person. CASA provides these bin-entry basics…
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Pre-harvest scouting is a great opportunity to identify late-season insect threats, disease outbreaks and severity and weed escapes. While in the field, you can assess crop stage and harvest timing, and do an end-of-season plant count. Here are a few specifics to look for…
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Canola fields with large areas at different stages lead farmers to ask the inevitable harvest timing questions: When do I swath? Should I leave it standing for straight combining?…