Manitoba Agriculture is reporting that at this time the majority of crops are looking good in the province, but some areas will be needing rain over the next week.

Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says rainfall and thunderstorms over the past week led to strong winds and hail with the east, central and parts of the southwest receiving the most rain while the east, northwest and Interlake regions are looking for rain.

The corn is looking really great. The majority of fields are from that V8 to V10 right now. We’re also seeing the winter wheat and fall rye are looking quite good and sitting in the grain fill stage. The wheat as well, with this early start. The really earliest seeded fields are sitting at anthesis and barley and oats ranging from stem elongation to head emergence. A lot of the cereal quality is looking quite good.

I would say some of the later seeded crops, if they haven’t received a lot of rainfall, had a tougher start in terms of emergence across the field or just needing to get some rainfall to catch up. We’re seeing right now a wide range in canola stages because some was also reseeded due to different things. The field peas as well have moved quite quickly so those ones are sitting at the reproductive two to reproductive three stages with some beginning to pod. We’re also seeing a lot of those early seeded soybeans as well sitting at R1 to R2 but the later seeded sitting at the more vegetative three to five staging.

Overall, I would say the majority of the crops were looking quite good but where there hasn’t been a lot of rainfall are lagging and really needing it in the next week or so.

~ Sonia Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture

Wilson says crops hit by hail will be assessed over the next week or so.