Summer rain means bumper crop, mosquitoes for Sask. growers

There was a plenty of produce for sale at the Regina Farmer’s Market Wednesday, but Mother Nature hasn’t made it easy for crops this year.

Recent wet and stormy weather has provided challenges for many growers in Saskatchewan.

At Spring Creek Garden, a greenhouse and garden patch located about 35 kilometres north of Outlook, plants have been underwater with rain almost daily since mid-June.

“We’ve had over a foot of rain in our area since the beginning July alone and that is more than we get in a season,” owner Chelsea Erlandson said.

At the market in Regina Wednesday, customers were buying everything from corn to beets, beans and celery. Crops, Erlandson said, weren’t easy to obtain.

“Everyone is fairly miserable on the farm because its rain gear and muddy boots and the mosquitoes have come out recently,” she said.

Erlandson is hoping for some drier conditions heading into fall and right now, it’s what forecasters are predicting.

David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said summer weather is not over yet.

“A change is coming bringing you nothing but that great Saskatchewan sunshine. Some warmth, but not excessively warm, but also some very dry conditions,” he said.

Phillips predicts the conditions will last into the fall just in time for harvest.

“You wouldn’t want to put your mechanized equipment on to the grain fields right now, so if we could dry things out, get back to that optimistic look at what the grain quality and quantity will be, I think people will be happy about it.”