For the week of June 2nd – 8th
The big news for this week is that we finally ended up with some moisture! There was approx 8mm – 20mm of rain across the farm. Although this isn’t going to end the drought, this does buy us some time until mid month when we can hopefully get a break to the weather pattern!
Spraying started this week. We were going to wait for a rain before spraying – the top layer of soil is completely dry, and there are very few weeds growing as of yet. When in no-till, most of the weed seeds are stuck in the top couple inches of soil, and when it is as dry as it is, there is not enough moisture for them to germinate. However, since we started seeded at the beginning of May, and we had some abnormally warm weather, the crop is advancing quickly and we are getting into the 5th-6th leaf stage – if we wait too much longer we will start doing damage to plants with the sprayer tires.
The big story continues to be the dry weather, and wind. Outside of the rain on Saturday (June 7th) the pattern just does not seem to want to break. Up until now, we have had virtually no measurable rain since the snow melted in April. This is one of the longest stretches that I can ever remember waiting for rain. For the most part, the plants do not require much moisture at this early of a crop stage. They seem to be rooting down to access moisture in the subsoil. I don’t know if we have had any cuts to our yield as of yet – if we did it would be mainly to cereals. Cereals set their yield potential early on – and after that you can only maintain current production prospects. Canola on the other hand is more able to recover and compensate for early moisture deficits. Yield is set between bolting and flowering stages – and if conditions are favorable, the plant is able to branch out and keep flowering.
