Weather takes toll on winter wheat crop

Saturday, June 11, 2011

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

If you did everything right and planted your winter wheat early, chances are your crop is looking good and perhaps even outstanding.

That was the observation from Ontario’s cereals specialist, Peter Johnson, on Friday.
Johnson says last fall’s good harvesting and planting conditions meant that much of the winter wheat planted in Ontario made it into the ground early or on time.

Over winter, the outlook had been good for the crop but this spring’s soggy conditions in southern Ontario altered the scenario.

Now there are probably three different wheat crops, Johnson says. There is the crop that is able to tolerate all of the moisture this spring has thrown at southern Ontario because growers did everything they needed to do and planted early.

There’s the mediocre crop where growers either had way too much water or may have done everything right except one thing. “It’s uneven, it’s OK, but it’s sure not great,” says Johnson, who uses one of his own fields as an example. “I did everything right but it’s not tiled and it looks like crap.”

And then there’s wheat on heavy clay or poorly drained soils that struggled with May’s greater than normal precipitation. “That wheat is going backwards every day and in fact some of it is actually dying,” Johnson says. 

The last scenario is appearing in areas with heavy clay soils such as Essex County, south Lambton County, west Elgin County and in Halton, Peel and Niagara Regions. Where wheat has actually died, Johnson advises growers to call crop insurance and pull the plants immediately, spray with glyphosate and replant with another crop. “I’ve never done that at the head stage before,” Johnson says.

Even in the good fields on the heavy clay soil there are low-lying patches “the size of your kitchen or the size of your house,” where the wheat has died, he says. “The entire plant dies from the bottom up, it goes white and it’s dead.”

Where growers have been able to use a two- or three-fungicide program the wheat is clean. But there’s also wheat with “a fair bit” of mildew as well as some tan spotting, stagonospera and a little bit of septoria leaf spot. “Septoria is normally our number one disease; this year I would rate it probably number four,” Johnson says.

All of the precipitation this spring has made it difficult for growers to get into the fields to apply fusarium fungicide on wheat, he adds.

Johnson says because of the problems this spring he’s calling for a good or close to average crop rather than a previous prediction of higher than average.

Spring cereals crops are late and acres are down this year, he adds. The early planted crops are mostly the best but because of the rains, have drowned-out spots. The late-planted spring cereals look better. But in some areas, such as around New Liskeard where there hasn’t been rain in four weeks, dry conditions have led to spotty stands. BF