Morris farmer expects fall rye harvest to start in next week or two

Aug 05, 2022

Overall, farmers seem to be pleased with how the crops are progressing.

David Hamblin is with Red River Seeds near Morris.

"All things considered, I think they look quite good. We had a real late start and some big challenges with flooding of course here. Considering the mess we put it into, I think things are looking reasonably well, albeit quite late," he said. 

Hamblin was asked if they've had a lot of rain this summer.

"Compared to last year, definitely. We've been fortunate to miss some of the big rain storms that have been popping up all over the province here and hopefully that will continue here. We definitely have enough moisture, especially on the flood land where the crops are still at a smaller stage and obviously started completely saturated. Those fields, some of them are starting to suffer a little bit with a bit too much rain, but crops like corn, they're just loving moisture at this stage and it could rain a couple inches a week and it wouldn't hurt anything in the corn."

He added, that despite flooding in the area, they were able to get most of their fields seeded, minus a few problem areas.

This year Hamblin seeded corn, wheat, oats, canola, and rye, noting the corn is looking really good and is the least far behind of all the crops.

He says fungicide spraying is ongoing for diseases like fusarium head blight in wheat, something which wasn't done in the last few years due to dry conditions. Grasshoppers are also a problem in some areas, with spraying taking place around field edges.

Hamblin expects harvest to start in the fall rye in the next couple weeks, with earlier seeded crops to follow

He's hoping for good weather this fall in order to repair drains that were damaged during this spring's flooding.

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