The winter wheat crop insurance deadline is fast approaching.

The regular deadline is September 15th, while the extended deadline is September 20th.

Anne Kirk, cereal specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, had a few tips for producers who are seeding winter wheat.

"Winter wheat should be seeded fairly shallow, so less than one inch deep," she said. "I'm expecting that a lot of the seed beds that winter wheat is going to be seeded into are going to be quite dry. The shallow seeding is important as it allows the seed to take advantage of the fall rains and winter wheat seed does have low levels of dormancy, so it doesn't really require much rain to actually get started."

Kirk noted that controlling volunteer cereal crops is key.

"The important thing when controlling wheat streak mosaic virus is [breaking] the green bridge. So making sure we don't have new winter wheat coming out of the ground at the same time as we have other volunteer cereals because those mites that transmit the wheat streak mosaic virus can just move onto the winter wheat and complete their life cycle causing more problems next season."

Kirk said winter wheat is a great rotational crop because it is planted at a different time of year.