Crop regrowth eats up nutrients

I just called Bill Vant Erve, crop production solutions rep with UFA in the Grande Prairie territory. I've never talked to Bill before, but I wanted to chat about article ideas from Peace River country. He was heading into a dead zone for cell phone coverage, so he was kind enough to pull over to the side of the road and give me a few minutes of his time.

One topic that came up was the big issue with canola regrowth. Bill says there were some fields of canola that regrew so quickly after harvest that they were in flower. It's all dead now with the killing frosts, but the depressing thing is that those plants sucked up a lot of the reserve nutrients in the soil.

Bill says many growers, even some zero tillers, took a discer to the worst fields. "They're worried that it will be too much growth to direct seed into next spring," he says.

Yes, discing up the regrowth will return nutrients to the soil, but that "green manure" won't release all its nutrient until after the 2009 crop needs it, Bill says. So that probably means a higher-than-expected fertilizer requirement. Spring soil tests are in order.