If something serious were to happen to you, your family could be left without their loved one. With today’s technologically complex equipment and numerous distractions, several things can pull your focus away from the tasks at hand. When this happens, injuries such as slips and falls, being injured or killed from moving trucks, equipment or an overhead hazard. Read more
Consider all of the risks of pressure washing and what steps you need to take to protect yourself and the others around you. While the main hazard considered is the pressure of the water, there are many more secondary hazards that could lead to the actual injury. There are many different types of injuries that can occur while using a pressure washer. While the pressure of the water can be considered the biggest exposure to risk during this work task, there are certainly many more hazards to be considered.
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For unseeded fields, the key benefits of cover crops are weed suppression, soil protection from sun and rain, and building organic matter. They can also be source of forage and bedding.
When selecting a cover crop consider the cropping system needs, herbicide or fertilizer previously applied and resources that are readily available. For example, carrying over treated soybean seed is not considered a good practice in Ontario due to the potential for significant decline in germination. Treated soybean seed can make a good addition to a cover crop planting.
Control the cover crop two weeks prior to seeding winter wheat.
Alternatively, there is the option to plant nothing, and leave the field bare. Weeds would be controlled through herbicides or tillage, but both of these options cost money, won’t protect the soil from rain and sun damage and are less effective at managing weeds than cover crops in combination with herbicides.
Cover crops planted in early July have the potential for significant top growth by fall and in the case of radish, seed set. Manage cover crops or terminate to avoid seed set and potential weed problems next year.
All of these cover crop options will respond well to manure application and will scavenge nutrients.
Almost anything can be grazed. In addition to the above options, consider adding forage brassicas (rape, kale, turnip, radish, etc.) to a mix for increased protein. Brassica leaves do not dry and store well; most producers do not have equipment to harvest roots for storage. Crop residues can provide good grazing for mature animals with low maintenance requirements. Avoid hairy vetch, buckwheat, and mustard in mixes to be grazed.
If straw is needed for bedding or as fibre in feed rations, any spring cereal can produce straw. Spring triticale or rye will produce more straw than oats while barley will produce slightly less. Spring cereals seeded this late in the season do not tiller well. Seed at 75 to 80 lbs/acre. The crop will need 30 to 50 lbs of actual nitrogen to achieve good growth. Plan to desiccate ten days after heading to prevent grain formation and aid in baling.
How you plant the cover crop will also depend on your goal with the cover crop. If you are looking for cover crops to provide forage use a drill to seed to ensure even placement and faster more consistent establishment. If the goal is to get soil covered quickly, broadcast seed and use light tillage to cover the seed. It may seem to be faster to just broadcast seed but this leaves germination dependent on surface moisture, which can disappear quickly in summer conditions. Herbicide residues may be of concern in some fields. The following link provides more information on cover crop sensitivity to herbicide residues https://www.country-guide.ca/crops/pest-patrol-planning-for-cover-crops/.
Cover crop seed availability can vary regionally, check with local suppliers or find a supplier at http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/resource/covercrp.htm.
Source: OMAFRA Field Crop Team Field Crop News
Source: · CBC News ·
Rice is grown in Asia, Africa, the southern United States — and if Ontario FangZheng Agriculture Enterprise has its way — one day across Chatham-Kent.
On Friday, the company held an open house to celebrate the successful planting of its first-ever experimental crop of medium-grain rice, grown on a hectare of land on a roughly 29-hectare farm located off Queen’s Line on Drake Road.
Farm manager Wendy Zhang, who recently graduated from an agricultural masters program at the University of Guelph, said that the unusually wet spring that has concerned many local farmers actually helped her crop in a way, since rice is grown in wet conditions.
“I kept saying to my farmer friends, “I’m happy [that it’s raining today] — I save money on [gas for my water pumps!]”
Zhang explained that the goal is, once commercially viable, to export the rice internationally, particularly to the Chinese market.
“Canada has got a very good reputation in the international market with food quality and safety control,” she said. “We want to produce high quality, clean rice … in Canada we can ensure that.”
Tap on the player to hear reporter Jonathan Pinto talk about his visit to the farm on CBC Radio’s Afternoon Drive.
When asked if the current tensions between Canada and China may put a damper on Chinese demand for Canadian products, Zhang wasn’t concerned.
“As a Chinese citizen who lives in Canada, Chinese people [have liked] Canada for a very long time,” she said. “There’s something happening right now [between our two countries] but I truly believe it’s a temporary thing.”
Zhang also noted that her company is a private enterprise not controlled by the Chinese government.
University of Guelph professor John Zandstra, who has been providing assistance to the project, said he was initially skeptical of the idea of growing rice in Canada.
“I kinda laughed at first,” he said, explaining that he thought of rice as something only viable in the southern United States. “[But] when they got explaining where they grew it [in China] and when I went there and saw it, [I thought] ‘well yeah, this might work.'”
Gus Kotsakis, an industrial and commodities sales manager at Dainty Foods, which operates arice mill in Windsor — the only of it’s kind in Canada — said when he was first approached by Zhang, his company also didn’t think growing rice in Canada would work.
He was impressed with what he saw on the farm Friday.
“I’m going to bring pictures and everything that was discussed here,” he said. “I think it’s great news for the area. We look forward to working with them long term as a partner on this project, where we could help them with milling and processing the rice.”
This year’s crop will be harvested this fall, with the rice used to seed a larger crop for next year.
While there are still a few regulatory hurdles before the crop can become commercially viable — the government, for example, doesn’t have any approved fertilizers and pesticides for rice because the grain hasn’t been grown here before — Zhang is confident those issues can be quickly addressed.
“We want [commercial harvesting to] happen next year,” she said. “We have the passion to do it.”
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