The WADO Field Day & Bus Tour took place last week Thursday in and around the Melita area to check out the crop trial test plots.
This was the first time during the annual WADO Field Day where a touring bus was used to help with travel to the different locations. With the heatwave the air-conditioned touring bus was a welcome relief.
Applied Research Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, Scott Chalmers, says the hot and humid weather is certainly contributing to the healthy growth across the board when it comes to crops.
"Going out to the sunflowers we haven't really toured those in years, maybe in 2009 we did a sunflower tour, but I hadn't been out to the sunflowers in a few weeks, and it was quite shocking to go out and see sunflowers over my head and some of the varieties were flowering already," explains Chalmers.
"That's always pleasing and then to go out to the plots that are nice and chiseled with the labels. My diligent staff worked hard to get to that point, and it's always nice to get compliments from everybody at how things look," he adds. "Participants were quite pleased as well to see the performance of the well-grown varieties."
Looking at the spring cereals and canola, Chalmers says the crops look fantastic and have probably set their yield at this stage of growth. He adds we have enough water in the profile in the soil to finish it off. But when it comes to later crops like corn and soybeans, they would likely benefit from another couple of inches of rain between now and the middle of August, just to finish that podding and the cob set.
"We can always do with a couple of intermittent rainfall events, despite needing to do some harvest here in the next 3 weeks on some of the crops," he says. "I know barley is starting to turn and we have winter wheat that is also a week and a half or two away from harvest as well. It's moving along very good and some of the early canola has finished flowering and setting up pods."
"I'd have to say, at least in our area it has been years since I've seen a crop of this potential growing and another inch of rain would really finish things of nice, that's for sure," he adds.
Extreme heat can also bring extreme weather systems so we're keeping our eyes on the skies.
"I always think if we can make it to about the middle of August the threat of hail goes away, so we have about 3 weeks yet to put up with the potential for severe weather, however it does look like we're in a dry spell and it takes a lot of energy to get some rainfall going," adds Chalmers. "I'm sure we'll get some here on the eastern prairies here."
Please listen to more with Scott Chalmers below as he explains what last week Thursday looked like during the 2024 WADO Field Day.