"For the most part I'd say we had a perfect year down here in the south corner," Scott Chalmers WADO

A cool, wet spring changed to tropical-like growing conditions over July and August and the crops in the southwest corner of the province, and for most of the Westman Region farmers are seeing are seeing positive results.

Applied Research Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, Scott Chalmers, says they're in a wet season at this point much like the rest of southern Manitoba at their Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization (WADO) test crops in the Melita area.

"For the most part I'd say we had a perfect year down here in the south corner," he shares. "We had 19 rainfall events that were greater than a half inch and at an average of 7 days apart. So, the conditions for growth were fantastic."

"At the plots here we basically have soybean, dry bean, sunflowers and some corn left," explains Chalmers. "We had gone through our canola plots here and this is probably the highest yielding year I've ever done canola at WADO. We were running around 55-65 bu/acre canola."

In the canola, Chalmers notes they're seeing verticillium, including leaf chlorosis (insufficient chlorophyll), early ripening, stunting and the shredding of the stem tissue as the disease progresses. He says verticillium is a tough disease and not much can be done about it. "I think maybe we need to start thinking about rotations in canola."

With their cereal crops, Chalmers says they've had amazing yields.

Spring wheat was running around the 85 bu/acre mark, 100 bu/acre for winter wheat, and AC Recipiter yielded 139 bu/acre. Their rye was running up to 120 bu/acre on average. Spring oats running at about 179 bu/acre.

"I'm not sure if we'll ever see these yields again as those are quite good, and I'm kind of excited to see what the late crops here, like soybeans, sunflowers and corn have in store," he adds.

Please listen to more with Scott Chalmers below!