Farmers Need To Be Patient When Assessing Frost Damage

Farmers will be out checking their crops for frost damage over the next few days.

Temperatures dipped below zero in many parts of the province last night.

Dennis Lange is a Pulse Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.

"Definitely some frost being reported and in some cases, it's harder. How it will affect soybeans, we'll have to wait and see on that one because a lot of the soybeans right now are just starting to poke out of the ground. At that stage...it does take a little bit more frost to really do any damage. From a soybean standpoint, I'm thinking we should be okay but what we'll have to do is wait and see. It takes three to four days to really start to see any significant damage in the soybean plants."

Lange says field peas are a lot more resilient than soybeans and can take a lot lower frost. He notes edible beans are still in the ground.

Canola is another crop that is susceptible to frost.

Justine Cornelsen is an Agronomy Specialist with the Canola Council of Canada. She says canola can withstand that zero to minus two degree Celsius range.

"We've got to wait," Cornelsen said. "With canola you want to be assessing the growing point or the growth point, which is located between the cotyledons. If you've got that starting to shoot up green or shooting up that new first leaf, that plant's going to survive and be just OK. They still will look really bad, canola symptoms for frost, you'll get that wilting, you'll get really soggy leaf tissue, browning or even whitening of the plants. You've got to wait. Frost assessments you have to be very patient for. They do take time to really show which plants are going to survive or pull through."

Cornelsen says reseeding canola should be a last resort as seeding into June will decrease yield significantly.

She notes even one or two plants per square foot will produce a decent crop.