canola 30 days till swathing

[BreadWinner]

We have received (1215gdds) so far this year ,on average canola takes (1500 gdds) to mature to the swathing stage. If we get (10gdds) per day that means we will be swathing Sept 11. That is for canola seeded May 10 which did not get set back by frost damage. If your canola is still blooming add 14 to 20 more days. Just have to be realistic about contacting any more canola. We will either have a excellent fall or a real depressing one.

[dfarms11]

pardon my ignorance but what does gdds stand for?

[Koldkanuck]

dfarms11 gdd stands for growing degree days.....usually called GDU or growing degree units.

[dfarms11]

ok, I've heard of so many heat units needed for growing corn, same type of thing I guess?

[BreadWinner]

Growing Degree Days (GDDs) and Corn Heat Units (CHUs) are both measures of heat accumulated by a crop over a period of time. CHUs are a more sophisticated and accurate measure of accumulated heat and are important for warm season crops like corn. GDDs are much simpler to calculate and prove a good estimation of accumulated heat for most cool season crops like canola and wheat. GDD, however, does not adequately account for the effects of extreme temperatures (high or low). Despite this disadvantage, GDDs provides a useful tool for predicting or measuring development of cool season crops.

sorry for the long winded explanation.

[TOM4CWB]

dfarm11,

"A form of the degree-day used as a guide for crop planting and for estimating crop maturity dates. The growing degree day forecast uses 5 degrees celcius as the base value."

On 'Farmzone.com' the long term forcast for your area shows the 'planning forecast' that has 'drying index', 'Hrs of sun','crop heat units' and 'growing degree days'.

Using these guides can help manage our crops to know when they are usually mature.