Canary seed

franklin

New Member
Grown it for 2 years. Not growing it next year. Has paid well, although not as well as advertised. Easy to grow. Not so easy to thresh. Dont forget the PRG. Bale the straw.
 
Grown it for 2 years. Not growing it next year. Has paid well, although not as well as advertised. Easy to grow. Not so easy to thresh. Dont forget the PRG. Bale the straw.

Only if you don't mind me asking, what made you decide not to grow it any more? Always interesting to see how these niche crops stack up in reality relative to the claims of those promoting them.
 

ZXR17

Member
Location
South Dorset
Did you grow it on Bg ground and if so did you use Avadex or rely on the Canary seed smothering it out. How much N did you use and where in the rotation did you grow it?
 

franklin

New Member
I have been asked about it on PM several times, so here is a bit of a potted history:

This has been the second year, but last year. we have grown canary seed. It is a very simple crop to grow. And a weird one. If you havent seen any, the seeds look like fat buff coloured linseeds. We planted ours into a fine seedbed and rolled in early to mid April. Avadex pre-em. The crop takes a long time to emerge and looks like the crappest grass you have ever sown. You know it is canary seed as, if you pull one out, the sap is red like blood. It trundles on until mid May it goes into overdrive. You *must* apply a PGR or it will go flat and will be a disaster. Crop grows high, maybe 5ft tall and very competitive. Our spray program was avadex, then later a BLW spray and PGR. Thats is. About 110kgN, spit half in the seedbed and half when rows visible.

Ours yielded 2.8t/ha and was worth a lot of money. So was profitable. The straw needs to be removed as it doesnt chop well. We bale and use to bed cows on. Ours has been followed by wheat, and the volunteers look like blackgrass. Took ours out with Atlantis I think - we dont plough.

The main plusses are:

Paid well.
Low input.
Wheat following it was good.
Big yield of useful straw for us.

The minuses are:

Very slow to get going / must go into moisture and warmth.
Potential to be a flat disaster if PGR missed. Even if it about to head it has to go on.
The combining is not tricky, but threshing if not fully ready is terrible. It must be dessicated, and you willl need to be patient or it will all go over the back. Concave wants to be so tight the combine squeals. Failing that, we have cut the heads, carted them home, blown two weeks of fristy dry ar through them and put them back through the combine.

It's debatable for me if ti pays more than the linseed we grow for premium crops. I like the linseed. My brother the canary. A farm not far from here grows it continuously - just subsoils after the bales are removed and direct drills in spring every year.

Did you grow it on Bg ground and if so did you use Avadex or rely on the Canary seed smothering it out. How much N did you use and where in the rotation did you grow it?

So yes, it is grown on land here with BG, but despite looking pretty pathetic for a few months, it does grow like stink once tillered and that combined with the drilling date etc has given us very, very clean crops of wheat afterwards. We have grown it both after linseed and after wheat. As above, locally I have seen it grown a few years in a row and I expect you could almost grow it continuously.

Only if you don't mind me asking, what made you decide not to grow it any more? Always interesting to see how these niche crops stack up in reality relative to the claims of those promoting them.

Partly it comes down to simplicity. We grow winter and spring barley, spring oats, winter wheat, beans, linseed, grass, OSR and an additional niche crop is maybe just pushing the boat a bit. As said, it is my brothers land where we grow it, and he has decided it is his least favorite crop although will admit that the straw is very useful for the stock.

Unlike the linseed, there is no facility to farm save the seed as it is taken on a licensing system rather than through the normal royalty route. The seed is a big % of the cost, and I sometimes get the feeling that these niche crops are really just after the high priced seed sales - I value things like Take-Off and nutrient seed dressings at exactly no pounds so if you ask for the price of an acre of seed and work out what that is per ton you can see there is a big, big margin in the seed. Out of the two, linseed and canary, going back to normal brown linseed and farm saving seed is producing a crop that is simple to grow and sell.
 

franklin

New Member
Did I mention GET THE PGR ON. This year with the drought the emergence into some beautifully powerharrowed but very dry seedbeds was patchy and we had some heading very low to the ground so took the view it wouldnt be very tall. This was an error. It did grow very tall once it rained. PGR. It wants that. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.
 
I have been asked about it on PM several times, so here is a bit of a potted history:

This has been the second year, but last year. we have grown canary seed. It is a very simple crop to grow. And a weird one. If you havent seen any, the seeds look like fat buff coloured linseeds. We planted ours into a fine seedbed and rolled in early to mid April. Avadex pre-em. The crop takes a long time to emerge and looks like the crappest grass you have ever sown. You know it is canary seed as, if you pull one out, the sap is red like blood. It trundles on until mid May it goes into overdrive. You *must* apply a PGR or it will go flat and will be a disaster. Crop grows high, maybe 5ft tall and very competitive. Our spray program was avadex, then later a BLW spray and PGR. Thats is. About 110kgN, spit half in the seedbed and half when rows visible.

Ours yielded 2.8t/ha and was worth a lot of money. So was profitable. The straw needs to be removed as it doesnt chop well. We bale and use to bed cows on. Ours has been followed by wheat, and the volunteers look like blackgrass. Took ours out with Atlantis I think - we dont plough.

The main plusses are:

Paid well.
Low input.
Wheat following it was good.
Big yield of useful straw for us.

The minuses are:

Very slow to get going / must go into moisture and warmth.
Potential to be a flat disaster if PGR missed. Even if it about to head it has to go on.
The combining is not tricky, but threshing if not fully ready is terrible. It must be dessicated, and you willl need to be patient or it will all go over the back. Concave wants to be so tight the combine squeals. Failing that, we have cut the heads, carted them home, blown two weeks of fristy dry ar through them and put them back through the combine.

It's debatable for me if ti pays more than the linseed we grow for premium crops. I like the linseed. My brother the canary. A farm not far from here grows it continuously - just subsoils after the bales are removed and direct drills in spring every year.



So yes, it is grown on land here with BG, but despite looking pretty pathetic for a few months, it does grow like stink once tillered and that combined with the drilling date etc has given us very, very clean crops of wheat afterwards. We have grown it both after linseed and after wheat. As above, locally I have seen it grown a few years in a row and I expect you could almost grow it continuously.



Partly it comes down to simplicity. We grow winter and spring barley, spring oats, winter wheat, beans, linseed, grass, OSR and an additional niche crop is maybe just pushing the boat a bit. As said, it is my brothers land where we grow it, and he has decided it is his least favorite crop although will admit that the straw is very useful for the stock.

Unlike the linseed, there is no facility to farm save the seed as it is taken on a licensing system rather than through the normal royalty route. The seed is a big % of the cost, and I sometimes get the feeling that these niche crops are really just after the high priced seed sales - I value things like Take-Off and nutrient seed dressings at exactly no pounds so if you ask for the price of an acre of seed and work out what that is per ton you can see there is a big, big margin in the seed. Out of the two, linseed and canary, going back to normal brown linseed and farm saving seed is producing a crop that is simple to grow and sell.

Extremely detailed answer and very helpful. Thanks!
 

franklin

New Member
Thanks for the detailed information @static .
I take it's advisable to use a PGR :).

What gave you that idea?!??

Yup. Vital. We got it off the floor this year but my brother even put the lifters on, which I dont think has happened in many years.

Note that while the PGR is just the same as Moddus, SOLAs require you to use Adama Optimus. Likewise, I am sure you will be dessicating it with Roundup Energy - you will cry at the price but instantly fall in love with the spray cans it comes in.
 

franklin

New Member
A good month after dessication. For us it has been mid September. The crop is a bit indetetminate in that you will never get it all ripe, so dessication is vital. The biggest problem is the threshing - if you go and read what the Canadians do, they would recommend waiting until after a frost to harvest it. This year was better as we adjusted the rotors so they were really, seriously tight. Otherwise the year before we cut a rough sample, dried it in the shed until proper crisp, and put it through the combine a second time.

Like linseed, it is happy to sit and wait for the right time, but it wants to be properly dead and a bit of heat.

I think the buyers now can clean it and dry it, but the costs mentioned were very high.

Did I say the straw wants baling? I have never combined ryegrass for seed, but I imagine the straw left is similar but deader. My brothers cows like it for bedding. Oh, I would say that the combine wants pretty much following with the baler - if you are cutting with a wider header you do not want the swaths getting very wet. The straw is shiney but very dense and although it does dry out there is quite a lot of it and it doesnt dry very quickly.
 

CORK

Member
This sounds very like a very annoying weed that we have over here - called Canary grass. Big rate of Axial to kill it in cereals and produces a huge number of seeds if it is allowed do so.
Nasty thing.

Ours also does the sap turning red trick....
 

franklin

New Member
Phalaris canariensis - canary seed. Big fat seed heads.
Phalaris arundinacea - reed carary grass. Seed heads more like panicles on oats like little fluffy upside-down unberellas.

Red sap is common for phalaris species.
 
Who has grown it and how have you got on with it ?

We grew 25ha in 2016 and it yielded 36 tonnes. We followed the growers guide precisely but it just didn’t yield on some nice clay loam soil. We no tilled it into stubble and avadex’ed it at the same time. Backup from the seed supplying merchant was poor with excuses like sorry it’s bank holiday weekend so I can’t come to you for 5 days. This was when the crop was looking extremely poor and a funny colour. Then again on harvest day we wanted some assistance with settings and best practice to cut. Nobody could help is due to internal meetings. Eventually we got an email later that day asking what we wanted by which time the 25ha has been through the combine and combine was back cutting wheat.

Lots of straw which we baled. It’s ‘hay like’ which was sold for £50/t iirc.

Where the crop was a bit thin weeds grew but it did surpress them where the crop was thick.

You’ll make more money selling the crop direct to bird feed people.

We’ve got some left over so may try again at some point but not with the seed supplier.
 

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