The past three weeks the weather trend has shifted to a more reliable moisture pattern. It has been nice to see the dramatic 180 degree shift. All of May and first 10 days of June were hot, dry and very windy. The past three weeks we have had a cooler weather pattern, with some level of moisture consistently falling every 4-7 days (more up north, less down south) and the wind has not been nearly as bad. Some of the storms have been severe, and isolated. We have had 1-2″ differences in rainfall amounts over only a few miles. In all, we have had between 3″ to 5″ of rain through June across the farm.
Driving around you can see the plants have been thriving on the new found moisture levels. This didn’t completely fix the crop potentials – the first 20-30% of cereals planted did have some yield potentials reduced, as we can see the size of head and the overall “fullness” of the crop have been reduced. The later planted cereals look to still have strong potential. Canola is more of a resilient crop, and even though they did not look strong earlier on, they have filled in and look much better. The next 5-10 days look to be a continuation of the current weather trend, and then longer term forecasts are calling for a return to the hot and dry conditions. The rain that is forecast will be what we will have to live off of if it does get hot and dry – it isn’t a lot of rain, but what ever we get will be put in the bank (subsoil) for use later on in the season. The past few years we have went into July with ample soil moisture, and then the tap shut off in July – and has had a major factor in reducing yield potentials. So we still have a long way to go!
All the in-crop herbicide is complete, and we have started to apply fungicide on our earlier planted crops. The next week to ten days will be busy, with the bulk of our crop coming into stage for fungicide. We have also started prepping for harvest. Grain carts are getting an upgrade for this season – adding water suppression tanks/hoses to them. Last year there were several fires in the area that caused significant losses. This doesn’t completely eliminate the risk, but it does give us some tools to help.
