Monster crop of Nescio forage maize!

Nescio is a class 5 variety that has been on the list for a long time, since 2001 and is such a stable variety that it is used as a control variety.One of it's characteristics is to produce large cobs with big grain, making it a good grain variety if situations allow it to go that far.This crop was harvested on the 29th October near Sticker, St Austell. Contractor was surprised too, really made his machine grunt! Estimated yield was well over 20 ton/ac, every line and a third of the way back was a full trailer load!

Knife is 4.5 inches, unfortunately the cob is pointing towards me when I took it, never-the-less, it was a good 9 inches in length.

Maize at Cann Orchard 2

This is Beethoven, the highest yielding variety in it's class on the NIAB list. This sequence is the harvesting of the crop whose pictures appear in an earlier blog of mine charting the crops growth stages.

Some farmers will be shocked, or surprised at how green the crop appears, saying it was harvested way too early, being cut on the 5th of October.

Now, there would appear to be a fair amount of incorrect information being dispensed by certain people not familiar with the stay-green concept of most LG varieties, you only have to look at photo's of harvesters in Holland, or Denmark cutting maize which is as green as this, they don't seem to have any problems with it.....The issue is cob maturity, as well as soil type related.

This is fairly dry, free draining soil, so the amount of water in the stems is that much less than that on heavier clay soils. Looking closely at the sheaves of the cobs, it can be noticed that they are all brown and drying off, when the cobs were snapped in half, the kernels were hard cheese almost down to the bottom where there was a little bit of milk/soft cheese, importantly the grains on the cob were shiny, but not flint hard. This is important, as I have seen quite a lot of maize that has been left in the field till the grains were flint hard, especially maize under plastic. The problem with letting this get to this stage is that there is a high risk of the cows' gut not being able to digest these very hard grains even if they have been through the cracker on the forager. Seems pointless to go for a high drymatter, if the cow isn't going to get the full benefit of all the feed.

The issue of maturity of the crop is important, because where crops have been planted later (15th May onwards), I have noticed that they were still not mature in the cobs by the end of October, even though the leaves were dying back (due to frost and the very cool nights). Given maize needs to photosynthesize right the way up to cob maturity before dry down commences, it is important to get the cobs mature on the plant, before this happens. Immature cobs, no matter how dry the plant is from a dry mature point of view, is always going to produce very acid, poor quality silage. Unfortunately, it is the way in which NIAB works out the dry matter values at harvest that causes some varieties to be placed in catergories that don't accurately reflect their harvest dates. In trials this year, where a range of maturity classes from 5 to 10 have been grown all in the same field, the diffrences in maturity to harvest was 10 days between the earliest to the latest, with some group 5 varieties being ready to harvest at the same time as some 9's. Harvest dates on the list should be measured as a race to 32% DM, this would then allow better differentiation of varieties on the recommended list.

Happy grower! Silage in the clamp has come back at 30% DM and 32.5% Starch, the yield was conservatively worked out at 22ton/ac as with only 4 trailers running the driver on the forager was filling the trailers to brimming to enable them to keep up.

Nice consistant crop height, even cob height,even maturity, dwarfed forager.....that's what we should be aiming at when growing maize!

Nickerson Wheat variety trials 2009

Something that is so important to growers, yet is often overlooked in chosing a variety to grow on your farm is disease profile. So often I come across farmers who are chosing varieties purely on outright yield off the NIAB list and not looking at what it is going to cost in spraying and agronomy inputs to produce this yield. Look on this chart produced by Masstock who co-run this trials site in Devon with Nickersons and the interesting feature to note is that most varieties in the green zone (ie being more resistant to Septoria tritici ) are Nickerson varieties! This is so important when it comes to timing of sprays, especially in the west where disease pressures are higher anyway and the rain can delay critical spray applications by a week ,or more early in the spring, leading to a loss in yield, or worse, lower specific weights at harvest. It was illuminating talking to a contractor near Crediton who is growing, Sahara, Except, Istabraq, Gatsby and Einstein who after testing reckoned his average specific weights were all over 80!

Nickersons' breeding team are and have for a number of years have been breeding clean ripening varieties with disease resistance. What has been interesting to see this year is that some of the 'older' Nickerson varieties which have been down graded by some experts as 'past it', this year outperformed the so-called all-dancing-all-singing newer varieties of some other seed houses. Claire (10 years on the list) this year performed extremely well in large parts of the country, and Istabraq is still a fantastic late sown variety, particularly after maize. The photo's below show the stay-green-and-clean aspects of some of Nickersons' varieties compared to others.

A variety to watch out for is Invicta, shows really good yield potential along with strong disease profiles.

More maize nightmares......!

None of these yielded very well! Kaspian drilled late May (acid land as well), 3rd picture somewhere near Launceston shredded by cutworm and wireworm (always use Poncho seed dressing if it's following an old grass ley!), bottom one near Okehampton.

Maize under plastic. Weed nightmares........

Not an isolated incendent this, I have seen and heard of half a dozen growers having this problem in North Devon this year. Some resorted to riding up and down the lines on a quad bike with a long handled knife slitting open the plastic pre-spraying. Which ever way you look at it, this isn't a good situation to find yourself in! Photo's taken 6th July.

Maize under plastic. Trial at Sticker, St Austell, part 3

LG3193 cob compared to a Beethoven cob picked a few days earlier at Bude. The photo's below show some of the advantages of growing maize under plastic, it does produce an earlier crop, it should produce more starch per acre as well due to the compensatory effect of the lower plant population (38,000/ac) being transferred into larger average cob size, and hence higher starch yield per plant.



However, you need to have big plants in the first place if you want to get the yield as well, it seems costly to plant maize like this, if you are only going to get 8-10t/ac of material! The maths doesn't stack up, £52/ton as opposed to £22/ton for normal forage maize...and this before rent payment.



Another issue with maize-under-plastic is that as the plant grows it can drag the plastic up with it, as seem below, which when it comes to cutting, gets dragged into the forager, chopped and contaminates the silage. Wonder what the poor cow/animal thinks when it has bits of plastic going into its rumen.



Notice the Eyespot starting to appear on the leaves.

Plastic riding up bottom nodes.

Eyespot! Also look at the LG3193 cob size, compared to the recommended variety in the next door row. These pictures taken 1st September, fields opposite side of this valley had been completely wiped out by Eyespot, crop disced in.

Maize under plastic. Trial at Sticker, St Austell, part 2

LG 3193 in top and Nescio in bottom picture, alongside Justina. Pictures taken 3rd July. Interesting to see how nutrient deficiencies are now starting to appear in the crop (even though the fields were lagged with FYM and slurry pre drilling), because of the inability to put placement ferliser down when the plastic is being laid. With maize not being a scavenger of nutrients, this is a common shortcoming with resultant loss of productivity and yield, even though the added cost is over £100/ac compared to ordinary forage maize.