CARBERRY, Man. – Trevor Dickson is eager to get on the land.
In his farmyard east of Carberry, Man., the seeder is hooked up and ready to roll.
“This is way earlier than last year,” he said, standing in the yard on a 20 C and windy spring day last week.
The plan is to seed canola and wheat sometime this week, followed by potatoes in the last week of April, Dickson said
If it goes according to plan, Dickson could be finished planting crops in early May, several weeks ahead of 2009.
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Last year, most Manitoba producers struggled with cool, wet conditions across the province and were unable to seed crops until late May or early June in 2009.
While it’s not unprecedented, the warm, dry spring and opportunity to seed in April is a welcome change from recent years, said Shawn Cabak, a crop production adviser with Manitoba Agriculture in Portage la Prairie.
“I wouldn’t say record, but (it’s) earlier than normal,” said Cabak.
He said a few producers in the Portage area already had canola in the ground by April 14. Most growers didn’t get started until this week.
Gary Martens, a crop production instructor at the University of Manitoba’s department of agriculture, said heat units are running about 12 days ahead of normal this year.
“I think farmers will start planting their cool season grasses like wheat, oats, barley, things like that, which can tolerate quite a bit of frost and there may even be a few farmers that plant some canola now,” he said in a university news release. “There’s going to be adequate moisture (now) to germinate all of our crops. As you delay that, the top of the soil starts drying out if we don’t get rain and it’ll be more difficult to start a crop, so it’s great to start now.”
In the area between Riding Mountain National Park and the Trans-Canada Highway, farmers may have to wait until next week, said Elmer Kaskiw, a Manitoba Agriculture production adviser in Shoal Lake.
