Hoping for a wet week

Its outlook maps showed plenty of potential for rain in parts of the State's grain growing regions and less in others.

BOM meteorologist Mark Paull said overall growers should expect to receive rain throughout all the farming regions this week.

But he said a band to the north and along the west coast would restrict heavy falls in the Merredin to Wagin and Wagin to Esperance regions.

"Any time from Tuesday night we're expecting growers in the western districts to start receiving some rainfall," Mr Paull said.

"That's expected to extend through the South West Land Division on Wednesday."

Mr Paull said as a result there would be reasonably moderate to heavy falls in the western coastal districts, through the Gascoyne, Goldfields and possibly south east coastal districts in coming days.

"In the central districts rainfall will be a little lighter and growers should expect to receive less from the sky," he said.

"Those farmers who are already seeding will continue to do so with or without the rain.

"We're not expecting conditions to be so soaking wet that farmers can't get tractors into paddocks but in parts it will be substantial."

Mr Paull also said growers at Moora, Morawa and Coorow should expect quite heavy rainfall throughout the week and strong winds across the entire State on Wednesday might prove to be troublesome.

Last week a rain band associated with a low pressure system moved across the South West Land Division which, on Thursday morning, produced widespread rainfall and isolated thunderstorms to the region.

Moderate to heavy falls were recorded in the South West and southern parts of the Lower West.

The low pressure system weakened and moved to the south east region of the State by the end of the day which saw the rain ease to light showers in the South West land division by Friday morning.

Moderate daily rainfall totals were confined in the southern parts of the South West including Boyup Brook which received 11.8 millimetres.

In scattered showers Lake King received about 12mm of rain measured in the 24 hours to nine o'clock on Friday morning, Hyden received 10mm and Gnowangerup got 19.7mm in the same period.

When Farm Weekly was in Corrigin last week there were nothing but blue skies overhead.

A few kilometres north of town, Adam Rendell had received about four millimetres of rain from the State's most recent weather front (in two, two millimetre events).

But he wasn't complaining.

He said a 75mm downpour resulting from a storm on New Year's Day set his farm in good stead for the 2013/14 seeding period.

That, followed by 22mm of rain in mid-March, 12mm in April and a further two millimetres just a week or so ago, was enough to secure a significant amount of subsoil moisture.

"We've put 600 hectares of canola and 300ha of Calingiri wheat in dry so far," Mr Rendell said.

"We received a fair bit of rain during harvest last year so surprisingly the ground has retained a lot of that moisture."

When Farm Weekly visited Mr Rendell's 100 per cent cropping enterprise late last week he was just starting on his first paddock of Scope barley for the season.

"We've dug down with the loader to see how much moisture has actually been retained," he said.

"At this point we're sowing about two inches down into the damp.

"We're about half way through our 2150ha seeding program.

"We kick off on April 15 every year and go until we're finished."

Last year the Rendells averaged about 1.65 tonnes a hectare for their wheat crop and 900 kilograms a hectare for their canola.

South of town, Neale McLean's family farm received about three millimetres of rain last Thursday morning.

Although the figures weren't staggering, they were enough to kick-start the family's annual seeding program the very next day.

"We received about 30mm in two rains during March," Mr McLean said.

"And another three millimetres in April.

"We'll kick off our seeding program with some lupins tomorrow and then follow that up with some more substantial hectares of wheat and barley in the following weeks."

Mr McLean said his farm also benefited from some 70-odd millimetres of rain over the New Year's period.

"It's hard to tell how things will really go until we get out into the paddocks," he said.

"Hopefully BOM isn't too far off with its outlook and we'll get some follow-up rain in the next few weeks."

By the time Farm Weekly got to Wickepin on the same afternoon there were dark clouds overhead and rain was falling from the sky.

But by all accounts it was very patchy.

Just 15 kilometres west of town in Conrad Flavel's paddock there wasn't a drop to be seen.

"We measured about 11.5mm of rain last night," Mr Flavel said.

"And we were lucky enough to tip about 65mm out of the gauge just a couple of weeks ago."

He also said parts of his farm received up to 80mm during the same timeframe.

"It has set us up well for a decent start," Mr Flavel said.

"We've been seeding some canola in the last few days and now we're cracking ahead with a few hectares of lupins."

The Flavels planned a 2300ha seeding program of canola, wheat, barley and lupins for the 2013/14 season.

Despite his program being slightly bigger than last year, Mr Flavel said so far his paddocks had retained enough subsoil moisture to back up his planting intentions.

"Hopefully this little bit of rain might be enough to join it up," he said.

"And if BOM's outlooks are anything to go by, we might even get a little bit more during the week."

But now that seeding had started it didn't mean the Flavel's tractor would work around the clock.

"I plan to spread out the plantings over the next few weeks," Mr Flavel said.

"Our crops were hammered by frost last year so we're trying to be careful to miss that window."

At Ash Sanders' property at Muradup on Friday the rain had started to fall again.

Despite only having just pulled the air seeder box out of the shed, the millimetres in the rain gauge indicated a fairly solid start to seeding 2013/13 in the Kojonup and Boyup Brook region.

"So far we've had about 18mm since yesterday morning," Mr Sanders said.

"We tipped about 30mm out of the gauge for March which kick-started a good germination."

Despite the paddock germination having mostly died off now due to a fairly dry April, Mr Sanders said the seeding of a 1000ha program would start in relatively clean paddocks sometime this week.

"We've got some canola, barley and wheat to go in so hopefully we get the rainfall to go with it," he said.

In recent weeks the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) also released its latest growing season outlook which predicted normal to above normal rainfall for growers during the next three months and a potential late break to the season.

DAFWA's Statistical Seasonal Forecast system outlook from April to June suggested normal to above normal rainfall throughout the Wheatbelt but said growers should expect strong variability between months.