Maize drilling weather for most arrived around the 15th of April, although some was drilled earlier still, but under plastic. The soils were generally dry, well worked and friable, some of the heavier clay soils needed a bit more working down, but seedbeds seemed to be good. Daytime temperatures were up in the high teens, low twenty's when drilled, although night time temperatures were dropping down near freezing on some nights. The average soil temperatures were however well over 10 Celsius and stayed that way.This is Lorado grain maize, drilled at 94,000 seeds/ha.
The second image is a site at Sticker where we are doing a maize under plastic trial, using 2 varieties, LG31 93 and Nescio, firstly to see if they would come through the plastic, as well as looking at these varieties compared with Justina, the variety normally stipulated. This has been drilled at 98,000 seeds/ha, compared with my recommended rate of 110,000/ha to maximise yield potential. After all, if you are growing maize under plastic, you need an extra 17t/ha to balance out the increased cost incurred over open field forage maize.
