Manitoba Agriculture reports recent rainfall has helped encourage improved crop growth.
Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report Tuesday.
Dane Froese, the Industry Development Specialist-Oilseeds with Manitoba Agriculture, says crop development has really picked up in the past week to week and a half.
Most parts of the province have received some rainfall and the temperatures have risen more to the normal range for the period we we’ve seen a real uptick in crop growth, particularly for corn and for cereals and canola. Soybeans are just starting to take advantage of some of that growth and some of the earliest seeded fields are now releasing their first flowers so they’ve gone into their reproductive phase. Wheat crops right now are filling out and in flowering mode or about to flower. Canola is usually just at the cabbaging stage to bolting and some of the earliest fields are now flowering. The later reseeded stuff is just filling in rows now.
Really we still are limited by the lack of rainfall that we’ve had. Most parts of the province are reporting good soil moisture at this point but it’s only good for a short amount of time. With crop water use and evapotranspiration happening we could be running into a short situation for soil moisture in a matter of weeks. It really depends on what the rainfall patterns are like. Rainfall has been quite variable and spotty. Good chunks of western Manitoba did receive some rain this last week however areas that were the driest and needed it the most unfortunately received the least. Areas around Dauphin, Rorketon and into the Manitoba Interlake are still the driest to date.
~ Dane Froese, Manitoba Agriculture
Froese says at this point we need serious rainfall inn beef and cattle country. He says where cattle producers are getting first cuts of hay yields have been well below normal so we’re really looking to get a good shot of rain to get regrowth on those pastures and hayland for a second cut if possible.
