While some farmers have been busy with the harvest, others are busy seeding.

It’s generally a challenge to make time to seed winter cereals when harvest activities are underway but there are advantages with the crop.

Seeding winter wheat can help even out some of the workload in the Spring and at harvest since it is ready to go prior to Spring Wheat.  It also helps provide soil cover during the fall and winter and generally helps manage common annual pests and herbicide-resistant weeds because it throws the weeds off balance.

Mitchell Japp is the Provincial Specialist for Cereal Crops with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture.

He says having good weed control and selecting stubble are two of the biggest issues for producers.

“In terms of overwintering success, you want to make sure that there’s some snow trap potential on the field it’s going into. Canola makes ideal stubble for doing that. Stems stand up very well and do capture the snow quite nicely to provide that extra layer of insulation to protect those crowns.”

He warns another big thing for producers when seeding winter wheat is not to seed it too deeply, don’t push it and try to find the moisture.

The optimum time for seeding winter cereals is late August to right about now depending on where you are in the Province.   It’s a little earlier in the North because they tend to freeze up earlier, while generally, it’s the first to second week in September for the Swift Current, Kindersley, Maple Creek, and Estevan areas.

He notes the end of this week is the winterkill deadline for insurance through Saskatchewan Crop Insurance.