This spring will make or break the upcoming harvest season, with fingers crossed for rain and the avoidance of heavy winds.
From the dire forecast in May the season has had a massive turnaround, with rain in June, July and August throughout Eyre Peninsula.
Nutrien Ag Solutions Ceduna agronomist Leigh “Megsy” Davis said in July there would have been about 80 to 120 millimetres of rain in the mid-Eyre Peninsula and heading west, around Ceduna.
“That rainfall was just a massive gift really, it put a lot of subsoil moisture down and gave us a lot of breathing space,” he said.
“Since the late start, we’ve had fantastic rain and follow-up showers, which has put crops in a fantastic position.
“They’re looking excellent, with fantastic growth and with all that growth it’s given us fantastic yield potential as well moving forwards.”
While there is plenty of potential heading into harvest, Mr Davis said the next few months would be a really pivotal period.
“It could go either way from here on in, if we continue to get rain and not much wind, we’ve got fantastic potential,” he said.
“But this time of year we often see that the rain stops and yields are reduced, with not a lot of rain over spring.
“This spring is vital for us, as if we have a nice kind spring with not too many high temperatures and good to average rainfall, we’ve got quite a bit of hope for the season and year moving into harvest.”
In terms of threats which could derail this harvest, Mr Davis said frost is always at the back of the mind.
“Some lentils are just looking to get into flowering and some cereals are a little way off,” he said.
“Flowering is when you really don’t want frosts as that can do a lot of damage to both cereal and pulse crops.
“So frost is a bit of a worry and it can come in quite late, but due to the later season we have less of a chance of having frost damage.”
The horrific winds which occurred over the last few weeks have continued to cause issues on bare sandhills.
“Some hills have recovered but there’s many that haven’t, so wind is still causing us a lot of damage across the middle and upper Eyre Peninsula,” Mr Davis said.
