The weather pattern has continued over the past week – although we did finally get some better rains around our land in the Marysburg area (central) and last night had another storm go through that hit about half of our south land. Last weeks rain was a welcome relief, all in we had 40-60mm in the central areas and 10-25mm in the south. In the north we have still been receiving rain every couple days, and soil mositure conditions are optimum up there. This next week looks to be changing – they have forecast hot and dry conditions all week – daytime highs 28-32C and overnight lows in the mid to upper teens. The stage the crop is in is not the greatest to have our hottest week of the year – with the canola and cereals flowering, but on the positive side it will help to speed the maturity up. The overnight lows dropping to below 18C is the most critical – it gives the plant a chance to respire – if it were to stay above 20C overnight, you could see significant plant stress and leading to a bigger drop in yield potentials. The other positive is the recent moisture we have been receiving. Next week they are uncertain – we may see continued waves of hot weather, or we could see a return to the more seasonable weather with daily chances of thunderstorms.
There have been some big storms through the prairies this summer – seems like a daily occurance that we will have a tornado warning in some part of the province. With a high pressure ridge in place over the Midwest USA – the storm systems ride over that ridge and can become significant storms. Reports of large hail storms and heavy downpours (100mm or more) have been common through the Prairies. These storms, although signifant where they are centered, have not been very big in size, so hasn’t impacted a large portion of acres.
This next week looks to finally be getting into stage for getting fungicide application in full swing. We have about 75% of our oats sprayed – it gets sprayed at flag leaf (targeting leaf disease) – which is an earlier stage than we spray our wehat and barley – which gets sprayed at heading (targeting fusarium).
