Manitoba Planting Advances in Spite of Small Showers

Manitoba Agriculture reports, while spring planting has moved forward over the past week, farmers could use a little more rain.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, say some small showers moved through the region last week but they only shut things down for half a day to a day and farmers have moved forward in terms of seeding completion.

Clip-Dennis Lange-Manitoba Agriculture:

We are at about 62 percent provincially completed.It is still behind the five-year average of 81 percent however things have been going in really well over the last week.I think for the most part every area has been moving along at a very similar pace.Cereals and field peas, in particular wheat and field peas, are 90 to 95 percent complete range in most regions.

Even most of the cereals are moving along as well and they're up in the high percentage, 80 to 90 percent complete as well.Soybeans are a little bit behind, but not necessarily behind for this time of the year.We're probably sitting somewhere in that 50 to 60 percent complete around the province right now.

Growers have been able to do some pre-seed herbicide applications, spring burn off, to get rid of some the weed issues.Some growers are going post-seeding as well just to make sure they’ve got the crop off to a really good start.Not a lot of insect pests as off this week's report but I could see some flea beetle issues popping up as they normally do at this time of year.

Overall, things are moving pretty nicely.I expect to see more good progress over the next week or so and, by next Tuesday when we release the next crop report, a lot of the crop will be in the ground already.

Lange says we still have good soil moisture conditions in most regions but we could some more rain.He says there's good moisture in the soil but perception has been lacking over the last few weeks so showers moving through the region would be really nice at this point.