Winter wheat fields starting to green up

Manitoba's winter wheat fields seemed to have come through the winter fairly well.

Doug Martin farms at East Selkirk and is on the Wheat & Barley Crop Committee with the Manitoba Crop Alliance.

"From what I see in our area here, it's looking not too bad. Part of the equation is having a good snow cover and we certainly had that this year and we didn't have any melts or any rain events in that March, early time-frame. I think it's looking good. The flooding now will maybe take some toll on it but in general you get flooding every year and it's dormant and it seems to recover from the flooding, so time will tell."

Martin says the cold snap a few weeks ago didn't seem to affect the crop.

He talked about soil moisture conditions heading into this year.

"We are way ahead of last year, that's for sure. Even last fall, we put our winter wheat in and we had a fairly showery fall and that really helped it come along. It was a long fall too so the growing season kind of extended into November and we had really good growth on the winter wheat. That part of the equation too, when you get good growth and you get a strong large plant, it's able to withstand a lot more issues than say a smaller plant with only three leaves and a tiller. We had a good healthy plant going into the winter which helps too."

Martin expects the fields to really green up this week with the warmer temperatures.