Probably the best way to mow.......

Nickerson Pro-circle being mown by the ultimate mower, 50 ac/hour, giving a very even and uniform product going in to the clamp, with a 50ft cut limiting compaction too. Very impressive piece of kit.

20 minutes to mow this field from start to finish....!!

Maize eyespot - it's about!

29/07/2010 near Bridgrule.

The recent cooler, wet weather has brought about the emergence of this distructive disease again, the difference being that most maize is now chest or shoulder height, some taller, making spraying difficult. Still, better to be preventative whilst you can, rather than sorry later, so if you see anyting looking like this in your maize, get it protected.

Well established in maize near Holsworthy. 23/07/2010

Early symptoms - 22/07/2010

In a field near Exeter Airport- 22/07/2010

Maize 2010 so far.

Cold, dry and a late start for many, although fortune so far has favoured the brave who planted early, got the crop started with the moisture that was already in the soil and then got rain just when needed to push the crops on. The predicted frost damage on early drilled fields has not yet materialised down here, even where drilled on the 16th of April when we had a week of hard frosts at the beginning of May.

16th April, Petrockstowe.

Beethoven with it's fantastic early vigour has lead the pack in the trials right from the start, although Lorado in the last ten days has really started a serious growth spurt and has caught it up in terms of stature.

24th May, Pertockstowe

3rd June, Bude.

A lot of crops with average vigour have needed a trace element/foliar spray to get them growing in the very dry conditions, especially those planted in May which weren't able to get a big enough root area before the sun and dry weather started to make life difficult for the small plants.

Contrary to MGA advice about cloddy seedbeds being OK, this has proved to be bad advice on heavier ground this year with very poor germination and plant counts where these types of seedbeds have been found. This may be OK on light loams and sands, but not on heavier clay loams in Devon and Cornwall. Compaction too has been a real issue on ground that was compacted in the wet last autumn with the tracks stil being visible this year, even after numerous passes with subsoilers and cultivators.

Compaction.....!

Going on growth stages, this year the crop on average is about 10 days ahead of where it was at the same time last year with a crop of Beethoven near Bude over 6ft tall at the end of June!

25th June, Petrockstowe.

Beethoven 30th June, Bude!

Frost heave/lift on winter corn.

Above is Nickerson Original Alchemy in very heavy claggy clays at Whitstone, near Launceston which came through the winter without much suffereing, even though there was standing water that froze here. Below is Original Istabraq at Ashwater, again no issues with the very hard frost and wet this last winter.


Contrast this above with this below of other seed, with the effects seen though in later growth stages.

Seen a lot of this this year after the very cold winter, following a very wet Autumn where late drilled wheat suffered badly.

Yellow rust in Devon

Yellow Rust is very active in the untreated variety trial site run by Nickerson at Silverton near Exeter.

For those who thought this was not a disease of concern in the south west, please be aware this is no longer the case. On the back of growing susceptable varieties in this area, the disease has migrated southwards into the region and growers must appreciate that all untreated areas (those around field corners, hedgerows, pylons, electricity poles etc) will be hot spots for the disease to flourish in and spread from making the risk greater in future.

Full details can be seen at the Farmers Weekly Rust Watch page.

Grain Maize at Bude, Cornwall.

Bude is one of the few places in Cornwall and Devon that grain maize can be grown without the excessive cost of using plastic to force the crop. It is not a favourable area in the NIAB/MGA sense at all though, so site choice is crucial as wind is a major factor in any site being considered for growing grain maize.

Below photo's of Lorado 2 weeks off combining, or when combining should have been done! Photo taken 7th October.

Two growers tried it in 2009, one had much better results than the other, one was being grown as a concentrate source in preference to Spring Wheat, the other as a cash crop. The concentrate crop was to be crimped and clamped, whilst the other was to be dried and sold at 15%MC.

One of the risks of combining maize is being able to harvest the crop early enough before the onset of the wet weather in November. Both growers crops were ready to combine in October, however for various reasons this didn't happen. Sure enough on Saturday the 7th of November the first winter storm blew in, deluging 3 inches of rain with 45mph winds in 4 hours between 6 and 10pm that night, with the results seen below.

Photo's below taken 9th November.

Even after this setback with the weather, the concentrate crop still averaged over 4.5t/ac, even though 4 ac were lost and not cut. It was telling that the crop was actually too dry when it was being crimped as water had to be added to aid the crimping process. However, the result worked in the farmers favour with 330 tonnes being crimped at a cost of £70/ton in the clamp, still a lot cheaper than bought in wheat and a far better feed. The actual advantage has turned the enterprise around with grian maize now being grown instead of forage maize as the one thing it does provide is a very stable diet platform for the cows.

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.