Manitoba Agriculture reports, after getting off to a slow start, good seeding progress was made over the past week.
In its weekly crop report, released Monday, Manitoba Agriculture indicates warm, dry and windy weather conditions prevailed across the province resulting in favorable drying of soil surfaces allowing more fields to become accessible for field work and seeding.
Rejean Picard, a Farm Production Extension Specialist Crops with Manitoba Agriculture, says many areas continue to report soil conditions too wet to allow access with field machinery but soil surfaces have dried nicely and the lighter textured soils could use some rain.
What we’re seeing over the last week has been good progress made across the province. We’re reporting an estimated amount of 20 to 25 percent of acreage seeded in Manitoba so that’s up from about 5 percent last week, so good general progress.
Most of the progress has been made in the Central Region with up to, what’s reported here, is 30 to 60 percent complete and that’s the most advanced of the five regions. Other regions report 10 to 30 percent progress made.
Southwest, Northwest and the Interlake report a little bit more moist soil conditions so they have to be a little bit more selective to get on fields, taking a little bit longer to access fields but conditions have improved significantly over the last week with warm drying winds and the warmer temperature and no rain to speak of so it’s been a good week in terms of progress made.
~ Rejean Picard, Manitoba Agriculture
Picard says, compared to last year, seeding progress has lagged behind. He notes over the last two to three years we’ve had some very early seeding starts and, while this year we’re not necessarily too far off the mark, progress is somewhat delayed compared to last year.
