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.

Video tour of my Launceston Maize trial plots.

Here it is, there are other clips on my youtube site too, more to follow.

Generally, these trials were very good this year, soil structure improvements carried out early to improve root development, the application of chicken manure as well as getting a good fine tilth all helped with the establishment and early growth which is vital with maize. Sometimes, the importance of leaf area index is forgotten, it is vital with maize and this is where vigour comes in as it is this ability to keep growing in less than ideal situations that means that when peak sunlight and heat units arrive in June and July you want a plant with a big enough leaf area to be able to absorb it all and to grow quickly! Beethoven is a variety that is able to do this.

Maize Trial Pt 2

Fresh weight yields for the varieties was as follows;

Acclaim 14.8t/ac
LG 3181 17.8t/ac
Lorado 18.4t/ac
LG3193 18.9t/ac
Beethoven 22.3t/ac
Nescio 22.7t/ac
Award 19. 2t/ac

Starch yields were a bit more interesting as can be seen from some of the cob photo's below and didn't follow the pattern of yield above in some instances.




Acclaim (4 rows in middle above) being the earliest to maturity had the highest dry matter (36%), but lowest ratio of starch to fresh weight, even though the plants were much shorter than the rest by a good 12 to 30 inches. Award had the lowest dry matter and was only at 22% DM when harvested.

Acclaim on left, LG3181 middle.


Whole cob weight (sheaves removed) averages as follows:
Acclaim 210 grams
LG 3181 270 grams
Lorado 270 grams
LG3193 236 grams
Beethoven 258 grams
Nescio 268 grams
Award 220 grams

What is interesting to note is that Beethoven and Nescio both combined very high yields in tonnage terms with a good average cob weight and when analysed gave readings of 32 %DM/34% Starch and 29%DM and 33% Starch respectively.


Beethoven left, Lorado right of knife.

LG3181 and Lorado both surprised with quick dry down, large cobs and high starch contents, facts which have been born out by similar merchant trials at Tregony where LG3181 had the highest starch return/ac of all varieties on trial and Lorado the highest return at a big trial at Launceston. This is also consistent with national trials for grain maize where both these varieties have come top for grain yield vs DM, both yielding over 8.4 ton/ha at 15 % moisture content.

Lorado and LG3181 were also both grown in a trial a mile down the road with Kingdom and both outyielded it by some margin, with Lorado doing the best of the three. This variety wiill be covered more in the section on grain maize where it performed well, even though the weather did wreak havoc.