So I am going to grow wheat organically?

Is that the university link I posted and that got deleted for mod review? I'm not going to bother looking for the link again under the circumstances but the reason I posted that university link was because Dale says he wants to know how to keep the weeds down and improve the soil organically. It had some other good information there too. I don't think they were talking about large scale crops though and I agree with you it wouldn't be practical to mix crops when you're planting hundreds of acres to sell commercially.

I think if a farmer wants to grow organically at the same time as improving the soil and keeping weeds down he's going to have to make his own home made fertilizer and do companion planting. That IS what a lot of organic farmers have always done and still do.

The 400 acres, includes some hayland, some pasture land, and a piece of land, that due to flooding along a lake, I have been unable to farm for about 8 years.

Yes, I would like to take advantage of the potential for organic certification, which it would be ready for. If I do seed it to conventional crops, I ed up with an automatic three year wait period. I honestly have been researching whether there is a decent way to make this work on my farm. IE. Rotate out of hayland, into organic for maybe three years, and the back to conventional, until its turn comes up to repeat this rotation after a few years as hay.

What I currently do, is spray the hay in the fall with glyphosate, and zero till into that the next spring, with awesome results, and amazing soil preservation. There is NOTHING, like soil that has been in hay, and all that root mass has rebuilt the soil, and maintaining the structure and aggregation and fertility by not tilling it.

However, IF I could use tillage to take out the hayland, and then make two or three times the revenue off that land, by using organic methods, it may be worth the temporary soil massacre that those methods would entail.

It takes a lot of tillage to wipe out grass and alfalfa, and small trees. But only a liter of glyphosate. Some of my best crops have come no tilling into long term hay.

Honestly with the rest of your "story" it will be a literal ton of work to "till" it out. I'm not sure it is worth the hassle. Good luck on your tough decision.

Not all the time. Sometimes you make something and start selling on or two, and then many.

I know someone or three or more that did it. In business.

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That doesn't work well up here. We work on a 180 day growing season and corn isn't a great option unless it's a hybrid and under a lot of irrigation.

Hi WR and Farmer Dale,

I am a good researcher but don't know anything about growing wheat on any scale because where I am from (GA and AL) I have never seen any kind of wheat being grown.

That said I also don't have a clue about Sak's weather, so I tried to find sources that were close to Canada or inside Canada. So that the weather would be "similar" or at least not Alabama weather - lol..

If I were you FarmerDale, I would do a test plot on maybe 30-40 acres.
I would do the same things that you would do if growing a "regular" plot. I would get the soil analyzed and then would add the nutrients that is required. Now back in the "day" I was in a study that utilized wastewater as a provider of nutrients for growing hay and grasses (sod). That seemed to turn out good, but I do not know how that would work with wheat, but there is an endless supply of such down here in the US.

I know you have some manure, but even I know that isn't the end all be all and would not be enough to grow much wheat on 400 acres. I believe that chicken litter is very high in nutrients, but not of much use if you do not have commercial chicken houses available. Probably you will need to research those soil amendments that are "close" by. Even seaweed has shown to enrich soil and many organic farms near oceans use that as fertilizer.

As far as market goes, you may need to either contact an organic cooperative or go solo. I seem to remember many on this very board who were interested in wheat berries..perhaps you may want to supply people individually by the 50 lb. bag? I know, I know..shipping, what to do about shipping? Well you hire a truck..lol..so simple - but I bet if you shipped a truckload to a central location...that might make shipping feasible?

Things to think about for sure. I know it can be done because people are doing it..the how..that eludes me as I buy organic wheat berries and flour, but do not produce it. However, the amounts for sale in "organic" stores is on a commercial level so someone out there is "farming" organic.

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Be yourself - no one can tell you that you're doing it wrong!

I have some pretty big machinery, it wouldn't be all that bad, honestly. Fuel bill would suck! I just worry about fertility and the ensuing weeds, and the massive soil degradation that comes from the amount of tillage necessary to KILL the grass and other perennials.

I am fortunate in that I have ALL winter to research, and I do have alternative uses if need be.

I must have missed the questions about waitressing and doctoring in the Homesteading Questions forum. If I saw them, I would be annoyed by those also.

I have nothing against Dale. I have come to his defense many times when he was being attacked by misinformed "organic" people. I also make my living from agriculture and I am also a homesteader. My landholdings are probably quite a bit smaller than Dale's but in the same league. I think I remember his farm being right about double the acreage of my ranch. I just don't think it's appropriate to think that because others post baiting questions trying to belittle professional farmers, that the professional farmers should do the same to them.

But I've made my peace with Dale. I'm just defending myself now from the people who think I was wrong to point out that 440 acres of commercial ag is NOT homesteading.

We never were not at peace, my friend!

You know you're gonna have to use tillage to kill the existing grasses, no-till just isn't an option organically for something like this. Down here in the States, there are several sources for pelletized chicken manure. It's fairly high analysis, reasonably transportable, and can be spread with conventional dry fertilizer spreaders. That's what I would try to find in your situation.

I don't know if you have a swather and pickup head, but that would probably be worth having if you actually do try organic wheat. If you get too many green weeds in the crop you can swath it a bit early and let the weeds dry down before combining. (and hopefully before the weeds set seed)

I'm sure your climate is different in many ways, but the guys in Minnesota seem to be able to get away with massive tillage on a regular basis. It might not be as destructive as you think, particularly if you've got as much plant cover as it sounds like.

Just some thoughts.

Hey Dale, when I read your post I couldn't believe people took it seriously 70 bushels eh!
I wish we could grow that conventionally here. Lucky to break 35 bushels without irrigation. Guess you have all the rain! Don't know if you have enough rain to do "conventional" tillage though, you could very well ruin your 440 acres in a couple years of heavy tillage. We are still working on adding organic matter to our land decades after heavy tillage and removal of straw stopped.

Anyways I do have a friend who makes about 70 bushels worth of money from his organic wheat. The key is, he owns a small seed cleaning plant, and effectively cleans for free. Then he cleans his cleanings to segregate valuable weed seeds He can sell the organic wild oats (which are a large proportion of the crop, of course) for almost $10/bushel, they go into organic cattle pellets etc.

If you are serious about trying organic, I would suggest the route of minimal weed control and heavy cleaning. Neighbours will hate ya though!

Best organic termination method I know is massive overgrazing. But 440 acres, you are going to need half the cows in the RM to get it sufficiently trampled into a feedlot-esque mud hole... but you will get a bunch of nitrogen fert for free.

Good luck if you are serious, I hope to hear good results. We all want to park our sprayers, save big $$ and see organic succeed, but my RM map this year now shows zero organic quarters now - not so great.

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To be certified organic, this is an all or nothing endeavour.

If famerDale were to separate 40 acres and farm the balance conventionally, he would then have to wait a period of time and meet specific criteria to have the balance certified as organic.

Quite honestly, I tried raising certified organic beef and the information available is conflicting, being certified is complicated and and the increased mortality rate I anticipated when certain meds were not allowed made me reconsider.

Thanks for sharing. Yep we have a couple swathers, good point there. The trouble is we have such an undeveloped animal industry, (in the large scale barn type, like poultry and hogs), that animal manure in any quantity is hard to find.

I would wonder if it is even "legal" to use manure from a "factory farm". I would have to check that out.

Regarding tillage and destruction of soils. When I started farming, the soils I work on were beaten down, from years of excessive tillage, summerfallow, and were inherently "mined" to the point that nutrient release was going down fast. Organic matter had been dropping dramatically since settlement, because of excess tillage. Gulleys from erosion were rampant, and I spent much time and money replacing eroded washouts. Since I started no tillage, back in the late 90's, the soils are like a new entity. They are FULL of life, they are supplying more nutrients, the organic matter is going up slowly. The soil tests show my nutrient supply is getting more dynamic. All the root channels and earthworm burrows stay intact, and so the drainage is better. Erosion simply does not exist any more.

That is my tillage fear. I see where I came from, and worry about wreaking havoc on what I have built in 15 years of zero tillage.

But coming out of hay land, yes, it may be more neutral, because of the root mass etc. My rotation would look like this, or something like it...

Hay.
Wheat. Or oats, barley, rye. ( organic)
Peas or faba beans. (organic)
Flax (organic)

Back to conventional for several years, then back to hay. Repeat. I may consider switching the wheat in the first year with the legume, followed by the cereal, then maybe buckwheat.

My point is, I would only be organic for a few years on each field, only every several years, so as to avoid the soil mining, the weed issues, etc.

I'm guessing that companion planting in this case would be a cover crop. How do farmers separate one crop from another at harvest? There was a time when elevators would screen seeds for farmers but that was mostly to remove millet and such from grain crops but I would think it might be costly.

That is for sure an issue. There are tools for the job, but yeah, these things are not cheap. Not by a long shot.

I have grown oats and peas many times. Ran the oats over the fanning mill and sold as horse feed. Peas are run again and bagged for seed. Also barley and vetch, barley went for brewing and vetch for seed. Both leave heavy screenings for feed. My Fanning mill cast me $100.00 and I could run about 50 bushel an hour.

I would never plant wheat after pasture or another grass crop unless I summer fallowed 1 year. Hard to get and keep grass out of wheat. Normally I would plant a row planted crop like corn or vegetable so I could cultivate the grass out. Plant a broadleaf for silage or plow down and then plant wheat that fall....James

I did a simple google search of "organic wheat production" and found plenty of information from seemingly reputable sources (universities), so perhaps spend 5 mins and you'll get what you need. I didn't come across anything Biodynamic as you have claimed.
Biodynamic is NOT aka Certified Organic. So you were barking up the wrong tree if you came across anything dealing with moon patterns.

I have spent more than 5, and pobably closer to 10 HOURS searching for tangible application rates of nutrients, and weed control in organic crops.

The people preaching about the moon and pig spleens, were leaders in the Saskatchewan organic community, on sites designed to aid organic farming. They, IMO have far more clout than the University sites, because of the practicality they should have from actual hands on farming.

It is a mindset of most of the organic folks I have talked to, and often they forget the plants need 2 lbs of N an acre to make a bushel of wheat...

The University sites I have seen, often are very vague, and none so far have had trials or suggestions on where or how much organic fertilizer to apply.

The trials include rotational trials, plowdown trials, and green manure trials, often, with absolutely no actual numbers of lbs an acre.

Maybe there simply needs to be more funding for actual research? I would hope they would be trying various organic fertilizers, in granular, or liquid form, so they can be applied easily with normal machinery. If organic was really taking off, we should have organic fertilizer more easy to come by.

I mean, a plowdown of vetch is not going to supply all of the nutrient needs of a high yielding crop of wheat, you know what I mean?

ETA: The other thing, is that organic wheat production articles in say the Netherlands, is not going to have much good info in it for Saskatchewan. Neither are organic wheat growing articles from Ohio, or even Minnesota.

why not call Arnold Schmidtin in Maple Creek,Saskatchewan farms hes doing it in large acerage.....?? i know you said hes east side your west side...but..if ya want a few answers as in a starting point he has them.been doing it for decades

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I think most just apply as much organic fert as they can get their hands on, it's hard to overapply manure and other readily available organics.

One organic guy I know is always cleaning out corrals and pumping pig waste from lagoons. If you want to grow organic, you are going to need a lot of poop! All you really need is a manure spreader.
Sheep manure is obviously the most desired as cattle crap out a lot of weed seeds. Only one guy around here that feedlots a bunch of sheep though.

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