Maize thoughts

I know a lot of maize growers this year are probably thinking about whether it is the crop they should be growing, or thinking about reducing their acreage grown, or thinking why they decided to grow it in the first place. Yes it has been a really difficult year for maize growers, certainly down here in the south west, but then looking at wheat whole crop results and seeing starch levels down as low as 12%, you question the wisdom of relying on this as a starch source too. The same rules that apply to getting a good crop of wheat apply to growing a good crop of maize, namely good seedbeds, the right fertility, the right field aspect and a whole lot of SUNSHINE! Without the later, nothing grows, as can be seen with grass growth as well this year.

The vital thing now when looking at harvesting maize is to make sure the crop is as fit as possible before going into the clamp, cutting maize below 20% DM is really asking for a lot of trouble when it comes to be fed, the acid loading from the sap and sugars that convert into acid during the fermentation process will be off the richter scale, making for some very unhappy animals that are forced to eat it. Not to mention the potential environmental concerns of trying to control and store, dispose of all the effluent that is likely to pour out the bottom of the clamp.

A crop that has been re-drilled, showing the most yellow cob with the most starch, though only at about 20%DM.  The re-drilled stuff has a long way to go before it's ready to be ensiled.

A really good crop of maize (for this year), but at least 10 days away from being ready to cut. Taking this early will decimate all the hard work and add to the woes of trying to feed it successfully this coming winter.

This crop was at 30% DM, can see the die back in the plants, the sheaves on the cobs have started to brown off and the grains were firm with little milk in them. It may only be an 8 ton crop, but at least all of it will be utilisable. The cows will milk better off this than the crop above if ensiled at this stage.

It's despairing when you see fields as wet as this, this late in the year, the temptation is so strong to go and get the crop on a dryish day, but patience will give a better result.

 Maize under plastic this year seems to have been very variable, it certainly isn't the magic bullet to growing good maize, some very early drilled stuff rotted under the sheets, other stuff never got going as the soil temperatures were too low for adequate mineralisation of nutrients to take place. Those that planted late April and into May however did get some reasonable crops, however due to the low levels of sunlight, they have faced a nightmare trying to cut the crops without dragging up big pieces of plastic into the foragers as there hasn't been enough sunlight for it all to break down.

There are some things we can do however to improve the agronomy aspect of growing maize here in this part of the world. The issue is we have to get contractors and growers likewise to take it forward, as  contractors are heavily invested in the status quo at present.

Inter-row cultivation with something like this in the picture link below is what I have used very successfully in Zimbabwe in a pre-post-emergence herbicide application situation up to about 6 leaf stage. It is very useful where the soil has capped off after a heavy downpour and the soil has slumped a bit, destroys any young weeds, aerates the soil and can be configured to through the soil towards the plants, or into the middle of the row. It works tremendously well in combination with a post emergence fertiliser application as you can 'brush' the nitrogen in towards the roots, making the uptake and utilisation far better. The other beauty of these machines is they are light and don't require a lot of horsepower (and weight) to pull them.
http://www.oliverdahlman.com/sitebuilder/images/p114-600x289.jpg

Strip tillage / Rip-on-row tillage is another way we can get maize established, a very well documented and proven form of growing maize in both the southern hemisphere as well as the USA is slowly making an appearance here in the UK, but the machinery looks really expensive and requires a lot of horsepower to pull. There are simpler and less costly manufacturers about.
http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Strip_till_improves_nutrient_uptake_and_yield_999.html

We also need to look at these types of planters to maximise sunlight availability per plant, whilst maximising nutrient uptake too. I saw one of these in the Freestate last December and the maize planted this way was noticeable healthier, further forward with thicker stems than that drilled conventionally. The farmer reckoned he was seeing a least a 10% grain yield advantage, in some cases up to 20% or more. I know Great-plains (Simba) have a machine here in UK, they have done some work with it this year, but I haven't yet been able to see how well it went. The link below is the machine I saw.
http://www.carrotech.co.za/twin-row/a-monosem-6x2-twin-row-planter-sold-in-mpumalanga-408

All food for thought.