Farmers hoping for dry spring

By Dan Gray
Staff Writer

Local farmers are taking a wait and see approach as to how this extreme winter will affect their growing season.

According to Rashel Tremblay a farmer from Tilbury it’s too early to tell if this winter will have an effect on her summer growing schedule. One of Tremblay’s big concerns is that there is going to be a lot of water on the fields. She said she has clay fields and there are concern as to how long they will take them to dry. If it takes too long her growing schedule will be effected.

“With this really cold winter, how much frost is in the ground?” asks Todd Austin the marketing manager for Grain Farmers of Ontario. “If it melts too quickly…the water’s not going to flow somewhere or absorb, it’s just going to pool up.”

The GFO is an organization that represents more than 28,000 farmers of grain, soybeans and corn in Ontario. The farmers are concerned about how the extreme cold weather affected their winter wheat crop. Damaged winter wheat could be an issue if there wasn’t enough snow cover to protect the crop. Austin said these next few weeks are critical to understanding the damage to the crops. He said he believes it might take a shot of nitrogen to get the crops going.

It seems like spring isn’t showing up here,” said Austin. “If it’s a late spring there could be some issues as to what actually gets planted.”

Although Tremblay is concerned about her planting schedule, she said she believes the cold could have done some good by killing of parasites and ground organisms that can harm her organically grown crops. It could also help add water to the water table. However too much water this spring though will cause her garlic crop to rot for a second consecutive year.

“Peas are the first things we plant about the second week of April, at this point I don’t know if that is going to happen,” said Tremblay. “If the peas are quite late getting in and they don’t’ have a very good season, then other things are late.”

Tremblay said she just hopes for it to dry up quickly so she doesn’t have to wait until next Winter to make up for this year’s delayed growing season.