Soil conditions in the Parkland are continuing to improve.

Nicole Clouson, the Farm Production Extension Specialist with Manitoba agriculture in Swan River, says warm weather and drying winds are helping.

“The majority of the snow melt is done. Fields are drying up including the low spots and soil temperatures are warming up.”

 If we get a large amount of rain or snow in the next week, she says it might slow things down, but she expects things to pick up as conditions allow.

“So things are starting to fall into place to get the 2019 seeding started. However, there is some field catch up work to get done that wasn’t done last fall due to the late harvest we had.”

This weekend is supposed to see temperatures reaching highs of 6 and 8. Clouson says in general soil temperatures are warming up, so a couple of days of colder weather should not set things back too far. 

“Seeding into cooler soil temperatures may result in delayed germination, poor emergence, longer emergence, and therefore reduce protection of your seed treatment against pests.”

On the positive side getting the crop in early has the potential for higher yields, it can have better weed competition, and can potentially avoid pest and disease damage.

MASC does have some data that says that the first and the second week of May seems to be the most ideal in terms of crop yield in response to seeding date. Clouson says after the third week in May data shows that there may be a decline in near yield.