We finished the remainder of the fungicide this past week. We ended up spraying the majority of our cereals and about 20% of our canola. Even though it has been trending drier, the plants were still wet around noon, which is usually a sign that the incidence of disease can be higher.
The weather this season has been hit and miss – where you will literally miss a big precipitation event by a few miles. This last week we saw good rain in the south, and there was a small band of decent rain that hit some of our land in the north. The far north continues to miss out on all the rain. The south was the drier land at the start – which has reversed. The north was the area we had been getting rain up until a month ago. The soil probes still show that there is some available water up north, but with the longer range forecasts continuing to show all but no measurable rain in the 7-10 day period – yield will be impacted up there. We have had decent amounts of rain on about 35-40% of our land to date; another 20-30% has been limited but timely; and the balance is really starting to get dry. The driest fields have suffered yield loss already. We have been having some cooler temperatures, especially at night, which has softened the stress, but plants still need some moisture to produce, and that seems to be avoiding those areas.
With fungicide season done, we will now begin to start preparing the harvest equipment for the harvest season…