A mulch of dry leaves helps protect a perennial border.

Protecting plants from winter damage

You’ll be glad you did when you see healthy plants come back in the spring

Late October/early November is the ideal time to plan on how you are going to protect vulnerable plants from our severe winter. The first step has hopefully already been taken where you have chosen most of your plants that are hardy to your climate zone. Many gardeners, however, like to try a few “challenging” plants

Katherine Stanley (l) has been named as the Manitoba Organic Alliance’s first agronomist.

Manitoba Organic Alliance names agronomist

Katherine Stanley will take on the term position over the next year

Manitoba’s organic farmers now have an agronomist to call their own — even if it’s only for a year. The farmer organization the Manitoba Organic Alliance has teamed up with the University of Manitoba and the provincial Agriculture Department to create a one-year term position for an organic agronomist and Katherine Stanley has been named


A thatch layer builds from the declining clover as the season progresses. 
The thatch decomposes and nitrogen becomes available for corn nutrition.

Night of the living mulch

It’s more fairy tale than horror story, according to researchers 
studying the technique

Living mulch may be a way to benefit both soil and the bottom line. The technique uses a peren­nial crop sown between the rows of an annual crop and University of Georgia researchers are studying how to make this old technique work even better. They’re studying the use of white clover between the rows of

Soybeans damaged by dicamba. The Arkansas State Plant Board wants to ban in-crop dicamba use from April 15 to October 31 following almost 1,000 complaints about dicamba drift damaging nearby crops. The proposal needs approval from the Executive Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council.

Arkansas moving closer to in-crop dicamba restrictions

Its plant board wants an April 15 to Oct. 31 ban to prevent injury to crops from drift

Arkansas farmers might not be allowed to apply dicamba in annual crops during the 2018 growing season. A regulatory change prohibiting dicamba applications between April 15 and Oct. 31, was approved by the Arkansas State Plant Board, Arkansas’ Agriculture Department said in a news release Sept. 21. Read more: U.S. EPA gives dicamba ‘restricted use’ label

Fertilizer Urea Prills

Broadcasting nitrogen in fall least efficient approach

It’s also the least environmentally friendly

Broadcasting in fall is the quickest and easiest way to apply nitrogen — and the least efficient. So why, anecdotally at least, does the practice seem to be on the increase? Bigger farms and a shortage of labour could be part of it. Moreover, nobody knows when poor weather will shut down field operations. And


Attendees of an Aug. 30 field tour at the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives site north of Brandon explore pollinator-friendly seed mix, including a swath of 
purple blooming phacelia.

Pollinator seed mixes tailor made

Just like cattle and hogs benefit from the right rations, bees can benefit from the right mix of flowering plants

What’s good for the bumblebee may not be good for the honeybee. That was the message as the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives dug into pollinator-friendly seed mixes Aug. 30 during its Brookdale site field tour. “You want to have something that’s going to grow and, depending on how much time they have, legumes in

Processed meat products are particularly hard to test for adulteration.

Rapid detection of meat fraud

Spanish researchers say a new biosensor can give test results within an hour


In recent years meat fraud has been a growing problem. Unscrupulous sellers have been caught adulturating beef with cheaper horsemeat and swapping chicken for turkey in sausages labelled 100 per cent turkey. Now researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid say they’ve developed an electrochemical biosensor that can quickly detect a DNA fragment unique to

Health Canada had no herbicide drift complaints from Manitoba

That includes the herbicide dicamba, which has triggered many drift complaints in the U.S.

Health Canada has not received any herbicide drift complaints in Manitoba this season, including related to dicamba, André Gagnon, a media relations officer serving Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, said in an email Sept. 12. That contrasts sharply with the United States where the University of Missouri says 3.1 million acres


Tour attendees kneel to get a better look at the mix during the Aug. 4 tour focusing on green manure at Carnegie Farms north of Brandon.

The making of a green manure mix

Grain-only operation one of several tours organized by the Manitoba Organic Alliance

For organic grain farmers without livestock such as Carnegie Farms north of Brandon, green manure has become a mainstay for nutrient management. Visitors to the fully organic operation’s field day Aug. 4 took in two green manure mixes, ranging from peas, beans, oats and buckwheat to a field with all of the above, plus kale,

Bagasse, as the leftover crushed stalks of sugar cane are known, may some day be converted to biofuels due to research into plant cell walls.

Cell wall secrets could unlock plant potential

U.K. researchers say figuring this puzzle out could improve hunt for traits

We’ve gone a long way in recent years unlocking the genetic potential of plants — but mainly the focus has been on seeds and fruits. Now researchers from Britain’s University of York and Quadram Institute say they’re unlocking the genetic secrets of plant cell walls, which could help improve the quality of some plant-based foods.