Rain Delays Seeding But Improves Seeding Conditions and Speeds Crop Development

Manitoba Agriculture reports sporadic rain has delayed spring planting but has resulted in good seeding conditions.Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report Tuesday.

Dennis Lange, a pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and editor of the provincial crop report, says rain over the past week did cause some delays but has resulted in good seeding conditions.

Quote-Dennis Lange-Manitoba Agriculture:

Provincially we're sitting at about 47 percent complete.That is slightly behind the five-year average of 52 percent but there were some sporadic showers that have gone through over the last week and kind of slowed things up a little bit but things have picked up after the weekend and are moving along nicely.
The big change that we've seen, or lack of change, is the Interlake area has been a little bit wetter and seeding progress in the Interlake area is a bit further behind than other areas with only about 30 percent of the crops getting planted at this point in time.

Overall, we're seeing some of the crop that has been planted already, we’re seeing some good emergence.Some of the early planted spring wheats that were planted a few weeks ago is in that third to fourth leaf stage already.Over the last week or so growers have been able to get some planting done but have been stopped by little showers and had slowed things a little bit.

Overall, I think moisture conditions are pretty good for the most part across the province and we're seeing good seeding conditions, probably better than we've seen in previous years.I think now a lot of farmers would be waiting for a bit warmer weather just to get things going and moving along a little nicer but, overall, things are looking OK.

Lange says we're seeing a lot of planting happening now and we'll see pretty much every crop going into the ground over the next week.He says rain in the forecast Friday might slow things up a bit but, if the weather holds and things go well, he anticipates most of the crops to be in once we get into early June.For more visit Farmscape.Ca.