Oh to be able to turn the calender around on about July 15

[miquelon]

If only this weather now came in late June and early July and the hot stuff was happening now instead!

Rain today and last night again makes for about 2 12 inches since July 18.(north of Cmarose) No frost as far as I can tell. Rain is too late for the canola and peas although I am getting significant regrowth on 200 acres of canola. My wheat is still green and is faring better than the rest of my crops. It appears to be filling the main stem and one or two smaller tillers. I am wonderimg about the barley. A week ago, it didn't look promising that the majority of heads would get out of the boot. Now I am seeing the main stem filling with one or two tillers still stalled but the colour of the crop has improved. What do you guys think? Is the rain in time to save those tillers and make something of a crop and/or is this going to become a nightmare to harvest - a poor crop with multiple stages of growth too short to swath?

By the way, where all did it snow and what areas got hit by frost?

[TOM4CWB]

Miquelon,

I believe on the wheat, if there are still viable green leaves, especially the flag leaf, the plant is still viable.

Things to watch for;

Tiller heads; when they were flowering, under the big heat stress, many florets blasted on the tiller head, take the head apart and see how many kernels are actually forming and filling now. The kernels should be at least in the milk stage now.

When I was at Lacombe on Thursday, I was told wheat stems under the heads elongate prior to flowering, while barley if under stress will be short in the boot, and could elongate the stem some during and after filling if the plant wasn't fried to badly.

Ethylene is produced by the plant, which naturally regulates the growth height. The bigger the stress, the more the regulator reduces plant growth, and puts all the energy and nutrients into the head development on the main stem first, then into tiller heads if they have developed.

We are in the same situation on Canola, the later it was seeded(late May), the better the crop now. Early Canola that had a decent stand blasted most of the pods off during the heat waves. Liberty Link hybreds are doing much better on average than anything else this year...

On the frost, I understand NE SASK was hit the hardest, maybe HWY 2 coridor was under enough snow where it froze to protect it? Seems the snow went from Ponoka to Calgary and maybe 10-15 miles east of Highway 2?

Maybe Cowman has a better scoop on the snow and frost on the Hwy. 2 coridor...

[miquelon]

Thanks Tom. My wheat has promise in that the tillers are 1/2 to 2/3 milky (heads are short) The main stem has a decent head and has milk to the top and there are still leaves on the plant. Only time will tell on the barley. My concern on the barley is crop maturity. It's too short to swath and if we get a lot of second growth straight cutting will be impossible without dessication, but is there crop enough there to justify the extra expense?
Same thing goes for the peas now. If the crop was decent I would have dessicated last week. Now with the rain over the weekend, will the green plants decide to stay green and will the almost dead plants decide to start pumping moisture back into the plant causing the seeds to swell and the pods to split. I have had this happen in two prevoius years and we had to dessicate poor crops just to salvage what was there. And to top it all, one year the dessication still didn't kill the plant. I had flowering peas on the 10th of September that been dessicated on the 15th of August. Interesting times to say the least!