Manitoba Agriculture reports cool wet weather continued to delay crop develop development over the past week but warmer weather over the next few days is expected to help advance crop progress.
Dennis Lange, a pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and Editor of the provincial crop report says the big thing everybody has been talking about over the past number of days has been rain.
Most areas did receive rainfall and some areas in the northwest, the Fork River area, received up to 82 millimeters of rainfall. That would bring our average rainfall since May 1st to about 130 percent of normal precipitation. Overall development is delayed this year just because of the cooler weather we’ve had up to this point. Right now, as a comparison, growing degree days right now, we’re actually sitting at about 90 percent of normal for the majority of Manitoba so we are lagging behind a little bit here.
We are definitely in a wetter situation right now and what that’s been causing for growers and for industry as well is when you look at the fungicide application that growers are doing right now, a lot of growers have switched to areal application for their cereals and canola where they don’t have really good field access. That changed things a little bit over the last while but we’re looking at some warmer temperatures in the forecast for the next week so hopefully that will help dry things up and move things along.
~ Dennis Lange, Manitoba Agriculture
Lange says growers who used preemergent herbicide on the pulses report really good weed control but now is the time to start watching for things like water hemp in the field. He says encourages growers to keep an eye on weed escapes and pass along anything that looks suspicious to someone who can identify what’s in that field.
