Manitoba Agriculture reports crop development across the province has been quite variable due to spotty soil moisture conditions.
Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report Tuesday.
Dane Froese, the Industry Development Specialist-Oilseeds with Manitoba Agriculture, says seeding has advanced quickly given the fact that large areas of the province were drier than normal so seeding is now 98 percent complete, right on par with last year and two points ahead of the five year average.
Dane Froese-Manitoba Agriculture:
Crop development has primarily been influenced by moisture and temperature at this point.
We've had cooler than normal nights for most of May and early June which has really impacted how quickly the crop can grow and the lack of rainfall has been impeding a lot of progress as well.
Crops that are up and emerged, we are seeing some staginess and some non-uniformity particularly where seed was stranded in dry soil and didn't get moisture to activate the germination process until rain came later.
Other areas of the province are looking fairly good and fairly normal where seed was put down well.
Parts of the northwest part of the province are slightly more variable.
We're seeing soil moisture conditions very short around Roblin.
They were short around Dauphin area and St. Rose but they've just received about 25 millimeters of rainfall last week and further north around the Pas soil moisture conditions are adequate to very adequate and there's a significant amount of water in the soil and crops progressing well there.
Cereal crops are generally in the three to five leaf stage, canola is in the cotyledon to two leaf stage, soybeans are just emerging and corn is about the two leaf stage as well.
Froese says, with the exception of the Pas area, we could use a good soaking rainfall, maybe and inch or two, across the province to recharge soil moisture, to recharge hay and pasture land and get regrowth off a better start.
- Bruce Cochrane.
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