Camelina

[Livewire]

I have one year experience growing Camelina. Certainly an early maturity crop. Got delayed seeding due to rain and more rain. With the saturated soil it was easy to get it growing because you need to seed it really shallow due to the small seeds. If at seeding it’s really dry I would probably want to grow something else. Seeded on June 10th and it made it through a fall frost with no damage that left our canola seeded about a week earlier with 8-10% green.

Yes it’s a challenge to keep it in the combine. The hulls the seed is in are like cups so seed is riding out over the seives no matter how you set them. The only solution is to take it with a lot of dockage to save that seed from going over. Mine was 20-25% dockage but I probably should have taken it even more dirty to save seed.

Only sprayed assure for wild oats. The field was clean of broadleaf weeds

[WiltonRanch]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like any of these exotic alternatives we try in their infancy. I hate the thought of sinking a bunch into it to wait for a long time to recoup my money. It’s touted as cheaper to grow than canola but my math doesn’t see that. Prove me wrong please.

[shtferbrains]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like any of these exotic alternatives we try in their infancy. I hate the thought of sinking a bunch into it to wait for a long time to recoup my money. It’s touted as cheaper to grow than canola but my math doesn’t see that. Prove me wrong please.

If you grow it on ground you fed on consider group 2 pursuit type products have virtualy zero control on lambsquarter/pigweed.

I would also want to have good perennial and winter annual control done in the fall.

As soon as you need multiple product going in the tank to do rescue weed control it blows the budget.

I visualize growing rap eseed in the 70's and we were thrilled to get Treflan that left some weeds that would cover the ground before you ever saw the stuff you seeded.

[BreadWinner]

These niche crops should have the purchaser putting up the money for risk, how come the farmer always gets stuck with the loss.

[WiltonRanch]

I really don’t think I’ll bother with it until the market is more established. I can never live down trying flax.