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Blair took a boot stage cut on the hybrid fall rye off on May 26th,2025. The boot stage cut is where a producer will get the best quality out of this forage. KWS Serafino took this cut, with KWS Aviator and Inspirator finishing right behind. Next cut will be taken in the next week at the milk stage, which is where you see your best tonnage.   
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We have a number of varieties we will be dropping from our lineup and directly replacing them with a new variety thats better. Because these new ones are such an advantage and have shown well on our farm we have a list already started for some of them for fall sales for the 25/26 season. This is not an extensive list but some of our major crops and varieties in CWRS, Durum, Pea, Barley, SWSW & GP Wheats: A friend shared some intercropping research with me, and it made me think that a flax faba cover crop early spring / fall crop blend ahead of beets might show some benefits? It's very different situation and more of a cover crop, but if you are looking to provide some cover between the rows for erosion this could be interesting?
Additional UK research on cover crops ahead of sugar beets: https://bbro.co.uk/media/51151/23-8-cover-crop-update.pdf I enjoyed this episode of the What The Futures podcast where Chuck and Dennis talk crop trends, market outlook, bright spots and challenges. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/what-the-futures/id1715185428?i=1000709527415
We keep expanding our variety offering, and customers and we ourselves ask why do we carry so many varieties? There are a few reasons
 Agriculture in the recently changed global economy. Peter's YouTube video showcases the big changes that have happened and how much risk some sectors of agriculture trade is currently in https://youtu.be/Y_jtHIezOqU?si=jKOMT3K0WB_JLY3V
I like to look into other areas for research to see what we can learn or modify for use here. I came across this practical field scale learnings using covers in Ontario and the success and failures of it.
 We had a customer compare untreated winter wheat vs a fungicide and insecticide treatment and the fall results showed a big difference in stage. Below is a picture from May 19 showing the difference in the same field. (Davis McCarthy of Simplot) I really think there is value to fall crop seed treatments for establishment & winter kill.  We have had one person with bacterial blight in a barley crop, the lower leaves were yellow and streaky and wet - there is no registered control. This problem has been around for many years but there are seasons where it shows up and becomes a problem.
Links to information on this problem: AB article , MB article Tuesday June 24th 2025
Location: 0.5 Miles West of Enchant on Highway 526 or: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RA4jnz4SCgWB943c6 9:00 am - Refreshments 9:15 am
1:30 -3:30 pm
We have about 50 pickups remaining to complete the season, so it has slowed down to about 5 people a day now or less.
What went well:
Mixed grain has been added. This means that cocktail crops with two cereal crops making up the majority of the plant stand (35 per cent or greater) will now be eligible for coverage as a cocktail crop. The primary crop is the one highest in population. The limitation that no uninsurable crop may make up 20 per cent or more of the plant stand has also been removed.
This information and more changes here. These changes allow for more cover crop options! We can blend cereals such as forage oats, smooth awn barley, awnless triticale, fall rye, fall trit (both in spring time) as well as grasses, alfalfa, clovers, brassica's, millet, sorghum, and more! Take a look at our pre-blended items we carry for polycrop/cover crop blends https://www.stampseeds.com/poly-crops--cover-crops.html (we do have to order these in, so plan early please) Forages is a broad group and is a large % of our sales. From Alfalfa and Grasses to Fall Triticale, Polycrop blends and Corn. Blair wrote a nice blog post showing some options in every forage type: https://www.stampseeds.com/blog/cover-crops-and-forages
What is a Polycrop? Polycrop is a trending name for cover crop forages that have a diverse blend of crop types to allow for diversity of growth and regrowth. We offer custom blends of these Click for more info on Polycrops from the Beef Cattle Research Council Polycrops & Forages Polycrops have trended in wording but basically its cover crop blends renamed :) Sales have been stable to trending upwards over the years and sometimes on larger orders we have blended in a cereal with it (smooth awn barley. awnelss spring triticale, hybrid fall rye or fall triticale and more!) Alfalfa, Grass, and more is also available:   I sure like the current Plant Growth Regulators, they allow irrigation to happen at and before flag leaf so watering can be reduced during flowering.
We had some crops last season where we used 2 PGR's such as AAC Schrader Durum, Trical Surge Triticale (forage specific but we are taking for seed), CDC Haymaker oat seed production When doing two passes (our experience is with Manipulator) we have done:
Always talk to your buyer/end users to be sure there are no issues before using, but I am not aware of any issues in the crops above. You may be a farmer, working for industry / farms, or have kids entering the agriculture world. Upstream Ag - Outcomes in Agribusiness
I sent this link to my daughter, and I had to ponder on some points for myself as well! When I came back to the farm after College / University in 2006 I had to figure out how I fit into the farm world and for me it was attending every event I could to try and learn as much as possible and eventually people started asking me questions :) My challenge now is to get better at what we do while scaling and to build the team that can do it together! Seeding rates are always so different between farms. This document shows some research done about 15 years ago by crop type on irrigation. Info here
We generally seed on the high side as we don't want tillers =
One day we will have better recommendations by the variety, for now this is as far as we are! I still like 32-40 plants on durum and 40 on all spring wheats. In the Brooks area and to some extent our area there has been some fields with some random areas of patchiness. I thought it was insects like wireworms / cutworms but did not see much in the fields I was in. In our fall triticale field the drier areas on sandy land seemed to be worse (it has been a dry spring)
Maybe it was snowdrifts impacting the crop or not impacting it, as it's not necessarily the low areas on this fields that have thin areas. Fall rye did fare much better. A few reports of cutworms are emerging: https://x.com/cronk_ag/status/1917713787706356111?s=46 This problem seems to be growing and can impact most crops, so we may need to consider using more Lumivia seed treatment as the insecticide component. (it is more expensive) There is a live cutworm reporting tool: https://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app68/listings/cutworm/cutworm_map.jsp If you want control options or thresholds: https://www.alberta.ca/cutworm  Of course we need to guess what crop types and varieties will be needed for next season and 2-3 season from now. Here is a % chart of total acres of seed (not target seed needs) Interesting notes:
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AuthorsBlair Balog - Seed Specialist at Stamp Seeds Archives
June 2025
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