Manitoba Agriculture reports continued rain with warmer temperatures over the past week. Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says excess moisture continues to be a problem.
We still had some more rainfall over this past week. Again, it wasn’t as much as we’ve seen previously but there were still some strong winds and intense rain throughout parts of the province, particularly in the southwest. In terms of the temperature, we also saw some warmer days, which were good in terms of drying out some field conditions but also hit some pretty high temperatures as well, which would be more of a concern with our flowering canola. Otherwise, in terms of weather, again, we’re just seeing a lot of excess moisture stress. Especially in wheat fields, you can see the bleaching in the low areas where we’ve had plants dying off.
We also see low areas of canola, where we have carcasses, for example, and dead plants and some stress as well in our corn. Again, it’s a mixture of the low areas being really hit with the amount of rainfall that we’ve received. But then some of the higher areas are looking quite good and some regions are looking quite strong because of some of this precipitation as well so, it really is dependent on the region that you’re in.
~ Sonia Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture
Wilson says due to all of the moisture this will be a very high-pressure year for fungal diseases so farmers are busy scouting fields and spraying fungicides.
She says crops in the southwest previously damaged by hail are still being assessed but, because the hail hit at an early stage of growth, there is potential for recovery, so growers would be looking for regrowth in those fields.
