Spring Planting Advances in Saskatchewan Despite Rain but Still Behind Average

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports, due to variable weather and field conditions, spring planting across the province ranges from nearly complete to about 84 percent complete. Saskatchewan Agriculture released its weekly crop report yesterday for the period from June 2nd to June 8th.Samantha Marcino, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says some regions received excessive rainfall.

Quote-Samantha Marcino-Saskatchewan Agriculture:

Seeding progress did continue to advance the past week with some regions very close to completion or at completion. So seeding is 93 percent complete, which is up from 80 percent last week, but it's still trailing slightly behind the five-and ten-year averages of 97 percent. When we take a look at this regionally, the west central region is the furthest ahead at 98 percent complete, so basically complete.

The southwest region is 97 percent complete, southeast is at 96 percent, the northwest at 95 percent, northeast at 92 percent and the east central region is trailing a little bit behind at 84 percent complete. I think the story for Saskatchewan is always variability.

It ranges so much from the southeast corner to the northeast corner. Especially this past week, there's some extreme variability in rainfall. Some areas like the Calder region got 164 millimeters of rain, the RM of Fertile Belt was 118 and the Langenburg region 116 mils.So, the east, east central and southeast corners were a little bit wetter than maybe they wanted to be in certain regions.

This caused their topsoil moisture conditions to increase a little bit in that surplus category. But keeping in mind that there are certain areas of the province still they're probably looking for rain. But just looking at the cropland topsoil moisture, we're sitting provincially at a 13 percent surplus, 77 percent adequate, nine percent short and one percent very short.

Marcino says most producers are hoping for some sunshine and warm growing weather.She says there's still some seeding to be done in certain regions so they're hoping the weather cooperates for that and that the wind dies down to allow for in-crop herbicides.