37 Our Advertisers Appreciate Your Business Better Farming | January 2025 Agronomy Insider WHY TERMINATE VOLUNTEER CROPS EARLY? What goes in must come out, right? But when? By Jason Voogt Back in the growing season of 2021, south/central Manitoba was affected by a significant drought. Then, from late August through early September, the area experienced rain events. Since fields were not tilled because of how dry they were, these rains and warm temperatures allowed for a lot of volunteer growth to occur in cereals, canola, and even weeds. Fast forward to this past 2024 season, and we are experiencing the same thing – albeit not because of initial drought but just continuous moisture events through harvest and into fall. With growers busy harvesting various crops, fields were left, which allowed for volunteer growth to occur. With a warm and drier open fall, most growers have been able to catch up on drainage and tillage. However, many still left fields with aggressive volunteer growth. Since we had a very wet growing season in 2024, some growers opted to let the growth continue to “draw out” or remove excess moisture. The trade-off with this, however, is that that growth also removes nutrients that may or may not be returned back to the soil quickly enough for the following crop to use. In this article, I will mainly focus on cereal and canola volunteers and nitrogen and phosphorus as far as nutrient uptake by volunteers is concerned. This is something to be aware of for two reasons. The first is nitrogen immobilization, and the second is the Jason Voogt photo Volunteer canola and volunteer oat growth from fall of 2024.
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