By: Wendy McDonald – MPSG Production Agronomist – West
Pulse and Soybean Crop Update for Western Manitoba field conditions up to July 17, 2026
Wednesday, July 8
These peas in a field near Elphinstone were looking great. However, we found a few leaves with surfactant burn from fungicide application.
These faba beans in a field near Elphinstone were flowering beautifully. Faba beans produce a lot more flowers than pods.
These faba bean leaves were a beautiful dark green colour, but pea leaf weevils had taken just a few nibbles out of some upper leaves.
Fantastic faba bean nodulation.
These nodules are working – they are pink inside when split open.
Tiger lilies blooming in the ditch.
Brown Eyed Susans blooming in the ditch.
Looking west out over the Little Saskatchewan River, that is spilling its banks.
South of Menzie, the low spots have pea plants that are starting to yellow off.
This pea field, south of Strathclair, showed signs of hail damage but thankfully only on the west side of the field.
Peas can recover from hail damage, and when they have amazing nodules like this, they will have all the nitrogen needed to make a great recovery.
Soybeans, at the north end of Grand Valley road, coping with the flooded runs and low spots.
These flowering peas near Neepawa, were thick and standing extremely well.
The low end of this pea field near Plumas, had standing water. The peas were drowned out on this corner of the field.
Thursday, July 9
MPSG staff attended a Vyconic soybean tour near Carman. Bayer anticipates that Vyconic soybeans will be commercially available in small amounts next season. The demonstration plots of simulated volunteer Vyconic soybeans showed the activity and effectiveness of different products and combinations of herbicide applications, both pre and post seeding. Other plots showed the crop safety and weed control of many of the options that will be registered to apply on Vyconic soybeans, and some of the ones that won’t be registered.
A nice field of Austrian winter peas intercropped with canola near Carman. In “peaola” the canola gives the peas something to climb and have greatly improves their stand-ability.
Very impressive nodule clusters on the peas.
Mechanical weed control via inter-row cultivation on dry beans near Carman. The sea gulls also seem to love it.
This soybean field near Wawnesa, suffered extreme hail damage and 100 per cent leaf defoliation.
Friday, July 10
Gilbert Plains celebrated their Homecoming and 126th Annual Fair and Rodeo, so MPSG’s Kid Bean made a sweltering appearance for the parade.
Monday, July 13
Peas near Dauphin were showing signs of excess moisture.
In the MPSG Regional Variety Trials south of Dauphin the soybeans were coming along nicely.
The faba beans were in full flower.
The dry beans were showing great growth, but a few of the plots had a thin plant stand.
Beautiful peas near Holland flowering nicely.
I was pulling off the top six inches of the pea plants and slapping them into my hand as I was walking through the field – I wasn’t seeing any pea aphids. On the drive back, I found this pea aphid on my pants.
The Agriculture and Agri Food Canada (AAFC) research station at Brandon was only accessible from the north. The Assiniboine River had encroached over the Grand Valley road and into some of AAFC Brandon’s plots.
Wednesday, July 15
Dry beans in a field near Deloraine, that were budding and just about to flower.
These dry beans have faced a lot of damaging weather so far in 2026. They were showing signs of bacterial blight on older leaves. Unfortunately, the kochia was looking healthy too.
A soybean field near Waskada with every run full of water.
Peas podding nicely and growing as tall as my shovel in a field near Waskada.
The sprayer ruts in this pea field were filled with water.
MPSG staff enjoyed the WADO field day at Melita.
The field day had a great crowd and it only rained in the morning.
It is always interesting to think about what is under our feet and how that affects our crops. This soil pit shows the different soil properties in each horizon.
Another stop on the tour was at U of M – MPSG Agronomist-in-Residence Kristen MacMillan’s soybean rolling trials.
The dry bean research plots were one of many stops on the tour.
There was a lot of interest in the dry bean inoculant research, especially the “man-made, Manitoba-made” inoculant strain. Melita is one of the research test sites that does show response to dry bean inoculation. It was interesting to see some leaf colour differences between the different nitrogen rate and inoculant treatments.
Even after such drastic rainfalls, in this pea field near Shortdale the soil was cracking under the intense heat. The ground was very hard.
Many roads in the Parkland, like this one west of Grandview, are still closed but repairs are being made. Crop checking takes a little longer with a few more U-turns than usual.
I’m all bundled up taking samples for the Manitoba Agriculture pea disease survey, but not because it was cold out. It was quite hot but the mosquitos were very intense!
Pea plant, root and soil samples are collected for the pea disease survey.