Frost a veil of worry on crops in the Wimmera

A lack of rainfall and multiple frost events are becoming worrisome for some Wimmera grain growers.

Scarce rain: A Wimmera grain grower has had 13mm of rainfall for July, which is about 20mm below his average, and experienced frost about four times last week.

FROST and lack of rain is causing concern for some grain growers in the Wimmera whose crops are slowing down and “chewing moisture”.

“We have had some frosts in the area over the past few months,” Horsham-based Sparke Agriculture senior consultant Matthew Sparke said.

“We are now backtracking on decile numbers — we are now at a decile five when we were at an eight.”

But at this stage, frosts had caused little damage to crops, Mr Sparke said.

“They have just caused some minor damages at this point such as discolouring,” he said.

“There haven’t been any yield decreases yet.

“In this area we will see frosts peak in about the third week of August until about October.”

After a promising start to the season this year, Mr Sparke said growers’ sentiment was now more “reserved”.

“Some (growers) are unable to spread urea and crops are chewing moisture,” he said.

“And that will continue if we keep getting warmer weather.

“When we start getting into days of 20 degrees we will start needing significant rain.”

Mr Sparke said the lack of rain for winter would cause growers to solely rely on stored summer rain.

“Rain will only get us to that point of having a decent crop,” Mr Sparke said.

Arkona grower Michael Bothe said he has had well below average rain for the month, and experienced frost about four times last week.

“We had 13mm of rainfall for July, which is about 20mm below our average,” Mr Bothe said.

“We were supposed to also have a dry May but we had a wet one, thankfully, otherwise we would be in awful trouble.”

Mr Bothe said the multiple frosts had significantly slowed crops down: “Most of the Wimmera and two thirds of the Mallee are going OK, but it could be a different story in another 10 days.” he said.

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