Winter Triticale Challenges

A number of customers, and us included, have had some challenges with winter triticale this season. On our farm it was not tied to variety as much as it was to lack of cover (potato or lentil ground) small size going into winter. We are keeping 70% of our winter trit acres and where it was seeded early Sept or had more stubble it seemed to do better over winter. This was a tough winter with a large number of temperature swings in and out of dormancy. The hybrid fall rye fields look amazing, and winter wheat looks good as well. (lower picture)

This link has a video of me in a fall trit field a week ago talking about assessing the crop.

Below left is a picture of how patchy it can be. A thin stand with only 12-15 plants is ok, but the challenge is where there are large spots with nothing that will fill in with weeds and not yield.

The below right picture is showing the white roots of a healthy plant in the spring vs. its neighbours with old roots only and no white new roots.