It's the great pumpkin harvest!

Sep 23, 2022

A Southern Manitoba pumpkin farmer says he's seeing average to above average yields this year.

Scott Friesen, who operates Snowland Vegetable Farms near Halbstadt, commented on the timing of this year's harvest.

"They're about 10 days to two weeks later than I would have liked to have started, just due to the wet spring. Our planting delay was also about two weeks. The wholesalers were looking to buy much earlier but we were just unable to deliver product. It just wasn't quite ready yet."

Friesen grows 95 acres of pumpkins and says he's harvested about 10 per cent so far.

"It's looking to be pretty good. The pumpkins have sized up fairly well to almost a little bit too big as some of the pumpkins, the seed that I buy is supposed to be for a specific size, but with the moisture they've gotten a little bit larger than I would have liked to have seen them."

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Video: Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday

Field Talk Friday | Dr. John Murphy | Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes

Most of us spend our time managing what we can see above ground—plant height, leaf color, stand counts, and yield potential. But the deeper you dig into agronomy, the more you realize that some of the most important processes driving crop performance are happening just millimeters below the surface.

In this episode of Field Talk Friday, Dr. John Murphy continues the soil biology series by diving into one of the most fascinating topics in modern agronomy: root exudates and the role they play in shaping the microbial world around plant roots.

Roots are not passive structures simply pulling nutrients out of the soil. They are active participants in the underground ecosystem. Plants constantly release compounds into the soil—sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and other molecules—that act as both energy sources and signals for soil microbes.