As the growing season moves along, the biggest need for producers in the southeast area is for warm sunshine, as crops are generally a week to 10 days behind in their development.

Some warm weather has been experienced in the last week or two, but also some cool rainy weather, as the area has been drying out from the May and June rains and returning to normal conditions.

"The crops are very lush, but the rain and cool period was certainly a problem. We could use a little heat right now. Normally we would assume a fall frost would occur 50 per cent of the time by Sept. 15, so we do need some warm days to get things growing," said Ed Tanner, a crop and soil specialist with Sask. Agriculture and Food for the southeast area.

Some leaf diseases have begun to appear as the weather begins to warm up, such as tan spot and septoria in the cereal grains, said Tanner, and some lentil growers are gearing up to spray for ascochyta.

Due to the high levels of moisture and humidity in the fields, the needed heat could also produce some new problems in form of fungus and disease, but Tanner notes the heat is going to be needed to grow and mature the crops.

Blair Stewart of Fill-More Seeds noted some of the early-seeded crops in the Fillmore-Creelman areas are a week to 10 days behind, which were mostly planted before the rains came in May. The later-seeded crops are even further behind than that.

"There's a wide range. Generally lentils haven't started to pod yet, and some of the peas are in early flowering. That's a little behind too," said Stewart, adding there aren't a lot of diseases being reported yet in the lentils, and most early-seeded wheat crops look clean so far.

"It's right now we're going to have to watch for leaf disease with the humid and hot weather to come," he said.

Asked if the crops which are behind can still make a rebound with the right weather, he responded, "There's always potential, but you have to keep in the back of your mind what kind of weather there's going to be in the fall. We just don't know. Last year, it was October before we got any frost. We're going to need a long open fall, that's for sure."

The ideal weather right now would be a heat level of mid to high 20s, not excessive heat, and this would help the crops speed up in their development, said Stewart.

Asked how the grasshopper situation looks so far, Tanner said the hoppers are definitely slow in hatching due to the cool wet weather, and the numbers are not as large as was originally expected.

"They're small at the moment, but there could be more coming. We've also got a much better crop this year compared to last year, so with more plant material the same number of grasshoppers won't do the same damage as last year," said Tanner.

One good sign is that topsoil moisture conditions were reported to have improved over this last week, as less crop land is considered to be in a surplus moisture situation than last week. Crop reporters also say about 93 per cent of hay and pasture land have adequate topsoil moisture.

For cattle producers, many acres that were left unseeded for cereal grains or oilseeds are being seeded to greenfeed. The Crop Insurance deadline to seed to greenfeed is July 15, and the deadline to report those acres is July 20. Organic producers also have until July 15 to qualify for the organic reseeding benefit if they have had to work under their crop due to excessive weeds.