Winterwheat Woes

It s a seed bin more and more producers were backing up to last fall And now they are wondering just how those seeds faired through the winter Reporter Sarah Gustin takes us into one field to do a little crop scouting on winterwheat While many wheat seeds are being planted others are already popping through the soil Blake Vander Vorst Ducks Unlimited Regional Agronomist In somes cases we will have probably some whole field losses because we didn t get the growth we needed last fall to withstand those cold temperatures and the openess we had this past winter It is becoming a big player in our state s Agriculture industry but for some areas experts say this year s winterwheat crop could be in a little trouble Blake Vander Vorst Ducks Unlimited Regional Agronomist We are expecting probably the northwest part of North Dakota to be hit the hardest because that was the frost last fall and so we had the poorest plant development and converaly in some of those areas that is also where we had peas grown and so the growers like to plant behind peas and so the combination of the lack of residues because peas is a low residue crop That will probably be the area to take the most losses Vander Vorst says the Canadian and North Dakota varities such as Jerry Falcon and Bu-tao are provening to be the most hardy He says one key player is making the major difference with winterwheat seeds surving through this year s open winter And that s Standing residue Blake Vander Vorst Ducks Unlimited Regional Agronomist We are seeing losses patchy losses all over the state but those losses seem to be tied where someone went in and worked the field tilled it before they seeded it or for some reason they don t have any standing residue in some locations It seems like if there is any standing resdue the plants are pretty green and pretty healthy Vandervorst says if producers are worried about their stands they should wait at least one or two weeks before destroying their fields He says we shouldn t be giving up on fields north of I-94 as they are probably at least one week behind in development He says there are still living plants below the surface that can survive all they need is a little sunshine and of course a little moisture Reporting for KX news I am Sarah Gustin To give you an idea of just how big winterwheat is in our state More than 650 thousand acres were planted ths fall That is a three fold increase in just two years