Manitoba Agriculture expects the majority of crops to be in the ground across the province by the end of this week.

Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly Crop Report Tuesday.

Dennis Lange, a pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and editor of the provincial Crop Report, says while seeding across the province is still behind the five-year average it is ahead of last year.

Starting off with provincial seeding progress, we’re sitting at 81 percent complete. That’s slightly behind the five-year average of 91 percent but expectations are by the end of this week most crops should be in the ground. We’re already starting to see some of the cereal grains and field peas move along quite quickly and things are looking pretty good so far, other than being a little bit on the drier side. We could use a little bit of rainfall. The topsoil is a little bit dryer than what we would like to see but there’s good subsoil moisture.

When you compare it to last year, we are further ahead than last year and seeding has progressed rapidly this year, which tells you that soil conditions have been good for planting. The thing that we’re seeing is crops like soybeans, for example, that were planted about eight to nine days ago with this warmer weather are starting to emerge from the soil right now. Whereas, if they were planted in mid or early May time period, they’re taking a little longer, which typical given cooler soil conditions but we’re seeing fairly rapid emergence right now, which is good, in areas that have moisture and heat and, overall, another relatively good start now that we’ve got some crop in the ground.

~ Dennis Lange, Manitoba Agriculture

Lange says, across the province, we are looking at areas that are drier with most regions showing up at 50 to 60 percent of normal moisture to highs of 80 to 90 percent of normal moisture. He notes some areas have received rain since the crop report was issued and there are additional rains in the forecast.