Does it work to plant green into cover crops for corn? Five unique Ontario fields in 2023.

A planter operating in a field with tall vegetation.

Planting corn directly into a living cover crop before it is killed by herbicide or tillage is not something that would have been considered 30 years ago. However, with advances in planter technology, herbicide options, and a greater awareness of cover crop benefits to soil health, more growers are doing it. According to the 2022-2023 […]

Read More…

SHAP: Soil Health Assessment & Plan In-Field In-Office Match SHAP to your needs Assess Benchmark 5 Key Soil Health Indicators Improve Find Potential for Improvement Adapt Take a Flexible approach Interpret Use the SHAP Score Calculator to compare your test results to a database of results from similar Ontario soils. Use this benchmark to identify […]

Read More…

Fall cover crop termination vs. planting green on a clay soil: Trial results

field of young corn

This article shares the findings from a 2021 on-farm trial that compared fall cover crop termination with planting green. It was conducted near Hagersville, Ontario, as part of an Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association Tier Two project. Highlights To watch a short video with in-season footage from the trial, click below: Background Information on […]

Read More…

Organic No-Till Soybean Production: Making it Work in Ontario

soybean plants with rye mulch below

Growing cover crop-based organic no-till soybeans requires a different system approach than for standard organic production. Three years of extensive research trials in Ontario have guided the development of four key best practices for growing no-till organic soybeans following a cereal rye cover crop. This tip sheet is designed to provide practical advice for Ontario […]

Read More…

Visual Evaluation of Soil Structure

Soil structure is a key indicator of soil health. The Visual Evaluation of Soil Structure (VESS) provides a simple framework for quantitatively scoring soil structure quality. It requires only a shovel for extracting a block of soil and a scoring sheet for evaluating it and can be performed in about 10 minutes with a little […]

Read More…

New Strip-Till Factsheets for Ontario Farmers

front page of factsheet showing title and field of corn

Did you know that there are two new resources on strip-tillage in Ontario? Earlier this year, OMAFRA released two factsheets on strip-till with information specific to Ontario’s climate, soils, and farmer experiences. The first factsheet, called Strip-Tillage in Ontario: The Basics, provides an overview of strip-till, how it works, crops it’s used for, its benefits […]

Read More…

National Soil Conservation Week, 2022

no-till soybean field with residue and some slope

The week of April 17-23 is National Soil Conservation Week this year. As the Soil Conservation Council of Canada says, soil is a big deal. It’s the foundation of agriculture. It’s a precious resource and, as I’ve written before, can easily be lost and degraded. To mark this week, I wanted to share some resources […]

Read More…

What’s Next in The Strategy to Reduce Soil Compaction: Observations on the Value of CTIS

This article was written by Alex Barrie, OMAFRA Soil Management Engineer, and Ian McDonald, OMAFRA Crop Innovations Specialist As discussed in the previous article (available here), as long as we are putting heavy implements on farm fields, soil compaction is a significant possibility. Lots of factors impact the severity of threat, like load, tire configurations […]

Read More…

Building Resilient Soils

  For many Ontario farmers, the 2021 season has been a weather roller coaster. Throughout much of the province, the season started out extremely dry, with some regions receiving less than 20% of normal precipitation for the month of May (Figure 1). Late June brought relief for many parts of Southern Ontario, with regular rainfall […]

Read More…