Beethoven maize at Bude - video guide

Here's some footage of a standing crop of Beethoven forage maize near Bude, been the pick of all the crops in the area again this year as previous posts show. I shot this short clip today so you can gain some perspective of just how big this crop is, given I am 6ft6" tall!



This the first attempt to forage the crop, the crop isn't quite ready yet, we estimated it was at 30%DM, but the Smartlab kit on the forager reckoned it was only just over 26%, so we wait a week or so to let it increase to 30% DM. Machine said the crop was yielding 26ton/ac and this is the shortest part of the field!

Maize Trial at Bude. Part 1

There has been a fair amount of data and results published in the press with regards to maize varieties, some funded by merchants, others by seed houses, some done by farmers and those done by NIAB. The new NIAB descriptive list has been published and it is good to see the LG varieties are performing well across a broad spectrum of sites, although hopefully this year we are going to see a proper Less Favourable Site being added to the South West, rather than the data from Bicton, which should be classified more as a favourable site.

This year I conducted a small scale trial near Bude with the idea to get some relevant data for this area, given that the climatic factors and soils are very different here than those at Bicton.

The following varieties were planted at 45,000 seeds/ac on the 5th of May, 12 days after the grain maize planted in the same area. Nescio, Award, Beethoven, Lorado, LG 3193, LG 3181 and

Acclaim to give a spread of maturity classes from 4 to 10. The site was westerly facing, about 150 ft above sealevel, fairly exposed to wind, on ground that had been contiuous cereals before going into maize, this being year 5 into maize, so not an ideal situation, but typical of a lot of maize ground in the area. The site was dunged with FYM @ 10 ton/ac, also had 100 units of Nitrogen supposedly applied in the form of biogas digestate, as well as 50kgs DAP down the spout at planting. The plots were the full eight rows of the planter, each line being just over 300 meters long to give some idea of variations in line and soil type as there were a few clay patches in the field and also to try and get a representative yield analysis.

Initial germination was good, plants grew away well before slowing down with the cooler drier conditions in late May. The initial herbicide application pre-emergent worked well, although the was a post emergent flush of volunteer oats and oil seed rape that required spraying. This checked the growth rate and at first this was assumed to be the main cause of slow growth.

By the 26th of June, the difference in growth rates between 3 different sites all within a couple of miles of each other was starting to generate some cause for concern. A line was developing half way through the trial site below which plants were paler and shorter, whilst above this line plants were much greener and healthier looking. This was the cut off line where chicken manure had been spread previously at 2 ton/ac.

Come 14th of July, yellow patches were readily apparent in the area where no chicken manure had been previously applied, plants were just not growing as vigourously as they should have been, so after an inspection involving the suppliers of the biogas, a soil nitrogen test revealed a huge difference in available nitrogen between the two halves of the field. As a result the field, and those others that had biogass applied to them were topdressed with 75kg/ac of AN, with an immediate improvement in growth and colour, with very minimal scorching of leaf area.

The above photo shows Acclaim tassling, it was about a week ahead of the medium varieties, as would be expected with it being a class 10, with LG 3181, Lorado, Beethoven and LG3193 following shortly behind with Nescio and Award last.

Maize under plastic. Trial at Sticker, St Austell.

Trial used 2 varieties under plastic to see firstly if they would come through the plastic and to see secondly how they grew compared to the stock variety Justina

Nescio im the first 2 rows near the hedge, then Justina in next 2, followed by Nescio in next 2 and so on up the field till the drill ran out of seed, the switched to LG3193. The bag in the 2nd photo is the start of the LG3193. Photo's taken 3rd and 19th June, crop drilled 14th May.

Welcome!

This blog is intended for all my customers and people that know me as an online resource to see what I am doing in Devon and Cornwall from a business advisory point of view, as well as allowing you to share in some of the good and the not so good results of the farming year.