Manitoba Agriculture reports, with spring planting virtually compete, more rain and more consistent heat is needed to maximize yield potential.
Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report Tuesday.
Dane Froese, the Industry Development Specialist-Oilseeds with Manitoba Agriculture, says with seeding nearing completion, what’s needed now is a little bit more rain and a little bit more sunshine.
Seeding has progressed fairly rapidly throughout the province. We’re just putting on the final touches of seeding here in the second week of June so we’re at 99 percent complete which is right on par with last year and our five year average. We’re looking at some canola that had to be reseeded to due to dry soil conditions or flea beetles or frost or a combination of the three, as well as some remaining greenfeed acres or silage varieties still going in.
So far our temperature has been quite variable so we’ve had some days with highs into the 30s as well as over night temperatures dipping into the single digits or very near freezing or at freezing which has really hampered the potential growing degree day accumulation and corn heat unit accumulation. We’ve ranged between 65 and 85 percent of normal for heat accumulation since May 1st of this year.
Regarding rainfall, this past week we did see a widespread shower that covered most of the province, at least the Central, Interlake and Eastern regions. We did see scattered showers with lower amounts in the Southwest and Northwest parts of the province too. It wasn’t quite enough rainfall to meet crop water demand at this point but it was certainly appreciated and we’ll use every drop we can get.
~ Dane Froese, Manitoba Agriculture
Froese says, with the exception of Swan River, we’ll need some very consistent rainfall and in larger amounts than one or two tenths at a time and a consistent overnight temperature. He says we would like to escape those swings from daytime highs in the 30s and overnight lows in the single digits and instead see overnight lows of at least 12 degrees to avoid the risk of frost and allow growing degree days to accumulate quicker.
