More snow and rain

A couple weeks ago, many areas of the province were anticipating an early start to seeding. In fact, there could have been a lot more seeding done but producers held off because it was so early. Since then, we’ve had a major rainfall event and now we’re into damp, cool weather. There was snow over the weekend and showers and rain are in the forecast for the days ahead. It will be at least early May until a significant amount of seeding starts and for most eastern regions of the province it will be much later than that. It’s still early in the season, but producers are going to be anxious to make progress as soon as the weather allows. The warm weather in the first part of April warmed up the soil and spurred weed growth that requires attention. And the clock is ticking for producers who have a lot of ground to cover. Showery, cool weather could delay seeding and spraying without providing much in the way of meaningful precipitation. Or there could be significant amounts of precipitation causing longer delays. There are areas still short of soil moisture, but there are also areas dealing with excess moisture and they’d prefer not to see any more wet stuff for a while. I’m Kevin Hursh.