Manitoba Agriculture reports despite spotty rainfall, crop development throughout the province is progressing well.
Anne Kirk, a cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says, due to the dry soil conditions there weren’t many delays in planting, although in some cases people held off planting the small seeded crops such as canola waiting for more favorable soil moisture conditions but spring planting is now considered to be complete.
Precipitation, the soil moisture has been quite spotty throughout the province but, in general moisture, conditions have been very variable. The rainfall has been spotty and this week has been no different. In most regions of the province we have seen some areas this past week that received more moisture but for the most part precipitation was quite low this past week.
Crop progress and development has been good so far this year. It is fairly quick, so crops advancing quickly in Manitoba, partly because of the dry conditions throughout the province. We are seeing that spring cereals are starting to head and fungicide applications for fusarium head blight control are just starting.
Canola is flowering throughout much of the province. Some soybeans are starting to flower as well and some of the warm seeded crops such as corn are starting to progress quite quickly as well.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says we don’t have a lot of disease pressure in the fields but we are starting to see spraying for fusarium head blight and we did see some hail damage in the southwest and central regions but some crops are recovering while other crops have already been reseeded depending on the severity of damage and the crop stage at which the damage occurred. She says we haven’t seen an lot of insect pressure throughout the province and we’re past the stage of concern for flea beetles or cutworms.
