For the week of July 8th – 14th.
We finally had some heat arrive! We had daily highs in the upper 20’s and lower 30’s most days – which is helping to catch the crop maturity up with much needed heat units. Anytime the temperature is above 28C there can be some reductions on yield – as that is the point the crop starts to get stressed. This is the more sensitive time of year, as the crop is in its reproductive stage. Thankfully the overnight lows are in the lower teen’s which helps the plant to recover.
We had another storm roll through the area late last week – ended up with between 7-16mm across the farm – lower amounts in the south and higher in the north. The rain came down fairly heavy, and we had some strong winds accompany the rain – and a lot of crop lodged in the area. Fortunately we used a growth regulator on all our cereals, and that seems to have helped keep the plants standing. We left an unsprayed “check strip” in a field of barley – and you can distinctly see that 120 foot strip while flying a drone – picture is attached.
Fungicide season came and went – we finished the last of the wheat over the weekend. With the heat the crop seemed to be growing rapidly, and most of our fields all came in the proper stage for application within a 6 day window – which made for some busy days! It was too wet to spray most of our fields up north, so we had to hire a plane to do those fields. One of the fields we couldn’t get sprayed by the plane in time we ended up getting our sprayer stuck — in the middle of the field — had to take our 4wd to go pull it out.
Crops in general look to be progressing well. This next week looks to be hot again with daily highs in the upper 20’s and lower 30’s. Longer range looks to be much of the same — as wet as we were through June and early part of July, it is hard to imagine that we will be in need of rain again, but by this weekend we likely will be looking for a good general rain to keep overall prospects where they are now. We just don’t need the rain to be accompanied by a severe storm!
