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Thoughts on Seeding Oats

Seed grower and agronomist Kevin Elmy of Friendly Acres Seed Farm at Saltcoats, Saskatchewan notes that on the occasional (perhaps one in five?) year when a late-seeded crop does end up with favourable quality, bushel weight and yield – that year becomes the bench mark.

Elmy quips, “Of course the guys that seed late remember that one year in five or ten, their oats went 110 bushel an acre and they were 44 pounds off the combine, they forget about the other four out five that they went 50 (bushels) and weighed 36 pounds. It goes back to risk management and I guess the positive (side of) most people’s philosophy (on late seeding of oats) is they don’t need fertilizer and they seed them late, go hand in hand.” So it is, says Elmy that often farmers who seed oats late also end up “skimping” on the fertilizer – particularly nitrogen which is a dangerous practice, even at high nitrogen prices!

The Wild Oat Question

Farmers often say the prime reason they seed oats later is to attack the first flush of wild oats, but at Friendly Acres, “We usually pre-work the land early in the spring to try and get at that flush of volunteers or off-types that we want to get rid of. Then we’ll go in and seed the oats making sure we’re at 21 plants per square foot for our targeted seeding rate and make sure we get them in usually by the 20th (of May) is our cut off that we want to be seeding by.”

What about glyphosate applications? ”What we’ve tried in the last two years (and we’re really impressed with it) is that we seeded the oats and then went in with PrePass* after seeding. Prepass – being a glyphosate plus the active (ingredient of Frontline*.” Frontline comes with seven to ten days of residue, for broadleaf applications.

You Must Learn to Count!

The Elmy rule of thumb is 100 to 140 pounds of seed oats per acre but to accomplish the plant count with accuracy, the key is to know the thousand-kernel weight of your seed oats. “That’s crucial,” he says, “because, for example, our Lu oats our recommended seeding rate for our oats this year is 105 pounds per acre. The Kaufmann is 135 pounds per acre..” – all because of the thousand kernel weight issue.

To explain further, Kevin Elmy notes,” The Lu is like Calibre – a long skinny kernel. The Kaufman is like Derby – a big fat kernel… so (it would be like) seeding your flax and your peas at the same rate. It just doesn’t work.” It also doesn’t work with oats, Elmy says, because with oats, “probably the worst” -the variation of seed size will also then vary the bushel weight. “So the first thing everybody should do is get out and find out what their thousand kernel weight is.”

If you don’t have your own scale, “count out a thousand kernels and take them to your local elevator and drop them on their scale! Or just go buy one for twenty bucks!”

Thousand kernel weight, in Kevin Elmy's mind is unquestionably “the biggest story has to get out there. Because the guys that seed at three bushels per acre ( you have to ask), are these the three bushel based on 34 pounds ( per acre)  of the actual bushel weight or are you guessing at 40? Or what is it?”

Most Sought-after Oat Variety?

Asked what he predicts will be the most popular milling oat variety planted in 2007, Kevin Elmy has a wry comment: “I don’t know who has the rights to it, but it’s something called ‘common’! A lot of that variety going around.” In other words, oat acres will be planted largely from non-registered, non-pedigreed seed. That being the case, it may be a little much to expect or predict a high-quality high-yield oat crop if you don’t exactly know what was in the seed you began with. “With any crop your yield and quality and all the other parameters start off with your seed.”

Not surprisingly, most–planted status changes often. “Derby was king for such a long time but now everybody’s kind of fragmented out and guys are growing Dancer, Pinnacle, Kaufmann, Lu – there’s a pile of oat varieties out there and everyone has picked a different one – so I don’t know now if there is a dominant oat variety out there any more.”

Seeding Oats in Cold Soil

At what temperature can plants begin taking on soil nutrients? “Like any other crop, when you start dealing with your phosphate availability, if you compare, at 20 degrees soil temperature, you have 100 per cent phosphate availability, at 10 degrees you are dealing with about 20 to 25 per cent phosphate availability as compared to 20 degrees. If you start backing off to five degrees you’re dealing with probably 5 to 10 per cent of phosphate availability. So if you are seeding early, seed treatments, especially into cold moist soils, in cold soils it’s going to take the seed longer to come out of the ground, seed treatment is more important, having proper phosphate and potash availability right close to the seed is crucial, and zinc availability will also be very critical at cold temperatures.” And in recent years, experience with any type of reduced or low-disturbance tillage shows the grower is dealing with colder soils, making the phosphate factor even more critical.

So, in this context, is seeding depth an issue? That’s a matter of what we would call common sense, says Elmy, “seeding to moisture instead of seeding to China. This is a battle we always have with people seeding forages with oats as a carrier, it never works because if you seed to where the forage should be seeded (less than half an inch) the oats don’t do well, And if you seed where the oats need to be seeded, the forage doesn’t do well.”  The bottom line, being that seeding depth will be another of those factors which vary from year to year from farm to farm.

Bean Counting To Fertilize Oats
 
Friendly Acres is in a rotational change mode, but the rotation for oats this year will be canola and then the oats. For the next few years it’s going to be summerfallow/soybeans and then the oats. On canola stubble this year the target, based on soil testing, is 50 pounds of N, 35 pounds of P and 35 pounds of potash, per acre. Soybeans will be double-inoculated but planted with no fertilizer added. That’s because, “a 35 bushel soybean crop will fix about 250 pounds of N.” And Elmy forecasts the beans will leave about 35 pounds of nitrogen in the soil after harvest. “So basically we’ll be looking at adding maybe 25, maybe 30 pounds of nitrogen on our oats,” being grown this year on 2006 soybean stubble.

Oat Roots -- Something Special

The root structure of oats appears to be one of the reasons the crop has grown its own reputation for resilience and reliability even under adverse conditions.

“If you look at the rooting structure of barley, versus wheat versus oats,” Kevin Elmy notes, “barley has the weakest structure, wheat is kind of moderate and oats has the most aggressive rooting structure so they are able to go out and utilize whatever is in the soil. So if there are some nutrients in the soil oats can get it. By growing a crop like soybeans, or peas to a lesser extent, you’re going to be moving a lot of the nutrients from deeper in the profile up to the top part of the soil structure, and being able to utilize them.” That includes recent years of high rainfall in eastern Saskatchewan, Elmy notes.

All of the above means that at Friendly Acres they are “just changing our rooting patterns, our crop types, our plant types to better utilize what’s in the dirt”. To underscore the idea, Kevin Elmy suggests it would be good practice for all growers to dig up a few plants every year to examine the root systems. Healthy roots, he says, make healthy plants, “and if you have stubby little roots that don’t occupy much of the soil you’re not going to get much for yield.”

As a footnote to the root discussion, Elmy suggests one of the prime reasons oats can be grown across such a variety of soil zones and moisture conditions, is the rooting issue. “Because of the deeper rooting structure, oats can be successfully grown into drier areas.”

Researching the Seed-Early Equation

Nearly any discussion of seeding cereal grains on the Canadian Prairies includes an examination of best-case early-seeding information – in other words – early is better than later. But growers know, and research confirms, that old adage, “It all depends on the year”.

Having oats in the ground by May 15 is likely vital to farmers who want to harvest a good test weight oat in south east Saskatchewan. That is the view of researcher Bill May at Indian Head. “The areas that start with a very high test weight to begin with, they can get away with seeding a little bit later and still come off with a very good test weight, but…when you get down to Indian Head, we have to be seeded by May 15 to consistently produce oat with good test weight,” he advises. North and east of the valley area “they can slide another week and still get a decent test weight – but if they can seed earlier they’re going to benefit from a higher test weight.”

May notes further, “Once we hit the first of June then our yields will start dropping off fairly dramatically, but first test weights go, and then yield.” The southern Manitoba oat growing areas into the Red River Valley are on a similar time line to the Indian head area. “The later areas would be the north east in Saskatchewan and then into Alberta, they’d be a little later seeding, is my perception,” he says.

For farmers who may attempt to delay seeding as wild oat control, May says, “I understand where they’re coming from to do that…I just feel that, as I look at my research, that you are better off to go early and ensure that you have that test weight because if you have a little bit of wild oats, you may not get downgraded or you could clean them out. But if you have low test weight and you really have to clean to try to get it back (it’s a problem), so I’d rather worry about dealing with a little extra wild oats than the lower test weight I run into when I delay.”

In trials at Indian Head, Saskatoon, SK and at Morden, MB, may says, to consistently get the wild oats it was necessary to delay seeding from mid-May to the end of May, “...and you can take a really big hit on yield and quality when you make that long a delay.” He agrees that “some guys may have a system that lets them get those wild oats coming sooner, and that’s great if they can. I’m just concerned…I just did the experiment so that I could show that, yes, you can go early and use high seeding rates to compete with the wild oats and maintain that test weight and maybe take a bit of that yield hit if you really have high wild oat densities, but still in all, you’re further ahead because you maintain your quality.”

May pegs seeding rate at 250 plants per square meter as a minimum, but prefers 300 for an early maturing and more uniform stand. For heavier wild oat pressure he thinks a “good standing cultivar” can stand up to 375 plants per square meter doesn’t hurt. Most current varieties, he thinks, have that standability.

Because there are so many good cultivars, May doesn’t see any over-all “farmer favourite’ oat variety, “So I think growers can be picky and decide what market they are going for, and select their cultivar from there.”

The Nitrogen Question

On the question of nitrogen rates with oats, May has done some research. “The biggest risk as we increase N rates above, say, 55 pounds an acre of actual N is that we are starting to push test weights down consistently and we don’t get a consistent yield increase from those higher N rates…and I will feel comfortable with guys going down to about 30 pounds an acre…but not much below that (of actual N).”

May notes that his recent trials at 100 KG, 60KG, and 20 KG (again actual N) consistently, for several years in a row, the 20KG (about 18 lb per acre0 just isn’t enough to produce a competitive, high-yielding, form crop.

The Red River Valley may be an exception here, and May thinks saturated soils likely need higher nitrogen rates, “but if you’re a direct seeder and you’re not dealing with consistently flooded, saturated soil ( giving a lot of nitrogen leaching) I think that’s a fairly consistent recommendation.”

As for hitting the top end of nitrogen application, with current high prices, is there any risk of someone putting on too much N? “Well the reward certainly is not there. We want to make sure we have that test weight – that’s king – that’s what we get paid for, is to ensure we have test weight…we need that CW#3 grade to ensure that we’re in the money!”

May currently is taking part in a look at nitrogen response in oats with long term versus short term no-till cropping, comparing ground in no-till for four or five years, as compared to 10  or 15 years no-till. May also mentions an experiment with flax which is showing some “re-cropping effects” comparing oats to other cereals on flax yields.

May also is involved with a long-term winter wheat, flax, oat rotation with  three levels of N – 100 per cent of soil test recommendation (in oats that’s 100 kg/h), 60 per cent (54 to 55 pounds in oats – and part of May’s recommendations) on down to 17 or 18 pounds per acre. An interesting twist to these trials is self-seeding black medic as a companion crop – technically a weed, but also a nitrogen-fixing legume, which adds biomass plus the nitrogen. The point is to see if there is a significant long-term increase in residual nitrogen.

Phosphorous for Oats?

One of the Bill May studies looked at phosphorous to help tame oats compete against wild oats early in the season. On soils low in phosphorous there was not noticeable improvement in wild oat competitiveness, especially in comparison to increased seeding rates, but when tests called for phosphorous a small response to seed yield was recorded.

Similarly, with sulphur and potash, unless called for by the soil test, May doesn’t see the “big bang for your buck!” Keep an eye on it, perhaps try a test strip with the air seeder if you have variable rate technology, is his comment.

Does it seem to Bill May that oat is the crop that, because people seem to grow it almost anywhere and anytime, that it could a Rodney Dangerfield Crop that “just can’t get no respect”?

He’s cautious with the answer, noting that major oat use in this country originally for feeding the farm horses, and people might stick it in any time, but today, “if you are selling it off the farm, your yield can be cut in half if you delaying seeding from May 15 to, say, June 15..” yield could drop from 140 bushels to 70!

To look more at Bill May’s work, check the Indian Head Agriculture Research Farm web site at www.IHARF.ca
More about fertilizer applications in oats.

Dr. Ramona Mohr and Dr. Cynthia Grant, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), Brandon, Man. with Bill May, AAFC-Indian Head utilized a $54,000 grant from the Western Grain Research Foundation Endowment Fund on a three year study from 2000-2003.

Their study was aimed at understanding what nutrients oats require and focused on “the role fertilizer plays in the growth, yield and quality of oat”, an area previously badly lacking.

Findout more here: www.westerngrains.com/endow/2000_07.html

FAQ About Oats

You can find helpful information about growing oats at the Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food web site.

Choosing Oats for Milling

Millers definitely do have a list of recommended varieties for milling preference. In the case of Grain Millers Canada, in Yorkton, SK, Terry says it’s not an entirely exact science, ” but we may hand a farmer a list vaguely in order of approval”.

He notes several varieties developed in recent years which “work better for our mill”. Those include CDC Dancer and AC Furlong. But Tyson is also quick to note there are several varieties upon which the company has not yet been afforded the opportunity to do a “variety specific run”. He notes, “Until we do that we don’t put our full stamp of approval on them, but I can say (some of them) look real good – and those varieties include CDC Weaver, CDC Orrin and CDC Legget.”

When a new variety is registered, the first step for a miller would be to have some of it grown on contract for evaluation. ‘When it works for us, we’ll bring in anywhere from three hundred up to 800 tonnes and do a run – a complete clean out and an IP (identity preserved) run on it… measure groat yield and how it performs in the mill, as well as go forward and get some nutritional specs on the product itself.”

On the other hand, Tyson notes there is no “hard and fast number” on advising farmers what to grow. “We don’t stipulate that those particular varieties are what has to be grown by any means, in order to do business on a forward contract with us. We certainly try to steer guys towards them. I could say without any basis in science that, anecdotally, we’re certainly making strides in grower acceptance, or grower uptake of Dancer acres. Furlong  has been a little bit of a slower ‘sell’ , and I think that relates purely back to its tan coloured hull.”

On milling quality – plumpness is an obviously desirable oat quality, which is measured in several ways. “We do a thin-count test and we also do a test weight, of course, that will in general kind of tell you that story on plumpness. The other things that we do to ensure that test weight isn’t obscuring the quality … is to do a groat-yield test on our de-huller.” That test involves taking 100 grams of a sample, running it through he de-huller and weighing what’s left of the groats, and factoring what percentage of groats are small or broken. That’s important, says Tyson, “…because in fact some of these newer, bigger, plumper varieties tend to have slightly distorted test weights.”

Furlong, says Tyson, is an example of his point, with a seed long in shape, “And it doesn’t fit and pack nicely into the test-weight cylinder, so you could end up with a very plump, heavy Furlong kernel that actually shows a light test weight …There are a few varieties out there that are more given to that kind of a problem, so as a miller we use the groat-yield test as a fall-back to sort of correlate our test weight problems.” Grain Millers’ experience shows that both Furlong and AC Boyer may present similar challenges, and may show a lighter test-weight, despite having good quality.

Agronomy is, of course, important on the farm, but it’s also an issue to millers. Grain Millers does not have a licensed agronomist on staff. “Basically, I’m the guy, from doing what I do and learning over the years from experience we can feel comfortable giving some advice, always prefacing it with the fact that growers likely should check with a certified agronomist – but yes we are often asked about seeding dates and seeding rates, as well as variety and other agronomic practise such as fertility rates.” Tyson says, if rust is a consideration, he may suggest a farmer use a fungicide, if, for example, AC Morgan is the cropping choice.

And seeding date? The standard rule of thumb applies.” Over the course of years we’ve just shown it time and again that earlier seeded oats tend to make better oats for us, and more often than not you would relate that back to beating rust pressure and usually having slightly cooler weather while the kernels are filling.”

Variety Choice: The Organic Factor

Grain Millers is a major handler of organically grown oats too. Pinnacle, Terry Tyson notes, is not a variety well suited for organic production, if later seeding for wild oat control is part of the cropping plan. Pinnacle may also be more susceptible to rain damage, than other varieties may be.  (One alternate solution if seeding Pinnacle as organic oats, Tyson suggests bumping up the seeding rate and seeding early – “which again is not really the way organic guys approach seeding their oats.”)

The later maturation of Pinnacle and its weathering factor are not a good combination, even for “conventional” farm practice. “I mean we’ve got producers growing Pinnacle organically, and sometimes quite successfully) but I think you’re kind of rolling the dice more than you need to, there.”

On the organic side, Grain Millers would encounter more acres of AC Boyer, a factor which Tyson thinks may be related to seed availability. “Organic seed regulations,” he says, may be ‘onerous’ when you’re trying to switch varieties.” I get as many calls, probably form organic growers as I do from conventional when it comes to that (variety) question…but, at the end of the day, I think we steer less people, organically, because they end up growing what they can find.”

Tyson also agrees that kernel weight is a very important consideration at seeding time and agrees that growers ought to carefully monitor seeding rate calculations.

--First published in Oat Scoop, the POGA newsletter, May 2007