For the week of June 10th – June 17th
The weather continues to be the prevailing story of June. We had another week of rain and wind, and then more wind and some cooler days. Total rainfall this past week was between 35-45mm across the farm. Along with the rain we also had wind, and cool conditions. Daytime highs of low to mid teens is not typical weather for us in June – with overnight lows in the low single digits. There were reports of soft frost in some areas of the province, thankfully the coldest we got to was +2.3C – which is as close as we want to get!
Most of the cereals are looking good – they are delayed in maturity – but good plant stand and overall healthy looking leaves. Some areas that had more rain (a few fields down south) are starting to yellow and have water standing in low areas, but once it warms up it should be ok. The canola has been struggling. Our earlier seeded canola is a newer variety and at the time of seeding it looked like the seed treatment wasn’t applied uniformly. We didn’t think it would be an issue, but now we are seeing these fields having significant flea beetle issues (sprayed twice) and poor vigor. In fact, the canola we planted 12 days later (different variety) is farther ahead in maturity than these fields, and plants look “fuller” and more vigorous. We are working with BASF on this issue.
Canola doesn’t like the cooler weather at earlier stages – it leads to smaller leaves on the plants and not the typical larger leaves we are used to with the Invigor genetics. Some of the canola will be cabbaging out soon and likely start bolting this weekend if it warms up.
This next week looks to be more of the same, cool/cloudy weather with some wind. The end of the week looks to be more favorable with daytime highs in the low 20’s….Wednesday night they are calling for a chance of frost/freeze – hoping that we have some cloud cover to keep it above freezing!
Overall spraying is coming along – we have had to spray in conditions we normally would not, but haven’t had a choice. We typically like to do 2 passes of herbicide in our canola – 1st pass gets the smaller weeds while the canola is at cotyledon to 1st leaf stage; with the second pass 10-14 days later when canola is 4-6 leaf stage just prior to fully cabbaging out. Once the canola cabbages out the leaves cover the ground and outcompete any weeds that try to come afterwards. With the poor spraying conditions we will only be able to cover 1/6th of our acres with 2 passes — will only get one pass done on the remainder.
Cereals are also a struggle to keep up with. Have to wait on some of the fields that had more significant rain to dry out – and switched in to Moddus on our earlier planted cereal fields. Moddus is a growth regulator that you apply around the 6 leaf stage (when the 1st and 2nd node are approx. 1cm apart) – it is a short window for optimum timing…We were able to cover all our barley acres and approximately 1/4 of our wheat. Plan to finish the wheat and get our oats done as well by the end of the week…weather permitting….
