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NW Washington | There are both winter and spring varieties of rape/canola. The winter varieties should yield better than the spring varieties. Winter rape is planted in August or early September, so you need good moisture to get it up and growing up to a rosette stage so it will make it through the winter. Insects can be a major problem. Flea bettles eat it off as it comes through the ground, then comes cabbage pod weevils and aphids later. If your just interested in the oil then growing mustard is easier as the bugs are not such a problem, but the seed cake after pressing out the oil not good animal feed. Same is true for some varieties of winter rape, like Dwarf Essex. Harvesting winter canola or rape can be are real hassle as the stalks stay green when the seed is ripe and it is a real bear to get it to feed into the header if you cut it standing. Spring canola is usually swathed and left to dry in the windrow and then harvested with a pick-up header. Here is one bulletin on growing canola from Missouri and more stuff can be found on Google. The main canola/brassica crop breeding program in the US is at the University of Idaho, so you should be able to find info from them too. Also, one of the posters on here from Germany grows winter canola so if "Countryman" shows up he should have some good advise. Most of the growers in the Pacific NW have given up on growing canola becauses of the insect problems and poor yields/return. It is a great rotation crop as is helps control soil borne diseases and it has a deep tap root that openes up the soil.
http://extension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/crops/g04280.htm | |
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canola or rape seed
