Sorghum

Sorghum, Toongabbie 22 March 2010

Here is a photo of the sorghum at Toongabbie. It looks good, perhaps would have been better sown on wider rows with more stubble!

Bairnsdale Trial 2009-10

Fodder rape and Grain Maize at Bairnsdale 24 Feb 2010

In mid November an attempt was made to plant at the Bairnsdale trial site. The site had been long fallowed after a faba bean crop in 2008. The available row crop planter was unable to penetrate effectively so the trial was put on hold until a solution could be found.

On the 9th of December we planted 6 corn hybrids and 5 sorghum hybrids as well as two sunflower hybrids and one soybean variety. The machine we used was a Seed Hawk knife point parallelogram airseeder. The machine was set up on 30" rows and did an excellent job of seed depth placement. Seed spacing is what you would expect with an airseeder however some rows were thicker than others, possibly due to some makeshift work on the distributer heads to sow on every third row.

Only 80mm of rain fell in the first two months after planting, however the crops never looked back. Good rain in February should ensure very good grain fill! Unfortunately some sheep managed to get into the trial site and took a liking to the soybeans. They have regrown since being grazed however they suffered a significant reduction in biomass.



Bairnsdale Summer Rain 2009-10



Sunflowers, Bairnsdale 24 Feb 2010

 

Sorghum, Bairnsdale 24 Feb 2010



Maize, Bairnsdale 24 Feb 2010

Toongabbie Trial 2009-10

Planting corn trials, Toongabbie

Before leaving on my nuffield travels I decided that I would set aside some land for a summer trial. While sowing wheat, I left 1.5 ha unsown to create a long fallow for summer grains. The paddock I used had barley in it in 2008 and my first mistake (of many) was that I grazed that stubble, reducing ground cover and increasing surface compaction. Various hybrid seeds were acquired and planting began on the 28th of october (two weeks later than I hoped) with 4 maize hybrids at three populations. The first plants were out of the ground in 4 days, however some parts of the trial were planted too shallow - the disc seeder used was unable to penetrate some of the hardset land. Lesson number 1 is that we need to use controlled traffic (and no livestock) if disc planters are going to work. We also need to find a machine with a higher breakout.



Even Corn Emergence

The first photo shows the planter we borrowed, The second photo shows even emergence in one of the better parts of the trial. The third photo was taken on the 31st of December. The crop had grown really well until then when it was starting to show some moisture stress. It had 88mm of rain between planting and this photo.




Drought Stressed Corn, 31 Dec 2009

I planted some sorghum on the 16th of November. The sorghum was sown with our gyral airseeder, spearpoints on 300mm spacing. Four hybrids were sown with target plant populations of 40, 50 and 60,000/ha. 300mm is too narrow for these populations as the plants are more than 300mm apart within the row. There is also a lot of soil disturbance with the tynes. I will post some pics of the sorghum in a later post.

Nuffield Travels

Dryland Corn in Colorado 16" annual rain

In July 2009 I headed around the world on a Nuffield Scholarship to study "Soil Structure and Fertility in Arable Farming Systems". One of my key findings was the importance of growing a variety of crop types to build up organic matter and improve soil structure. I spent some time in the great plains of the USA. In these areas I saw farmers successfully growing corn on 16" annual rainfall. Although they had dry winters, they had similar summer rain to Bairnsdale, Sale and Toongabbie. They were also slightly hotter in the summer and were covered in snow in the winter. Basically they didn't have any advantage over us. The exciting thing is that these guys were averaging 70 or 80 bushels (4.4 - 5.0t/ha). The other good news was that when they started growng corn, their wheat yields went up! They would double crop field peas after corn, then plant winter wheat into the pea stubble. It sounds a lot like the sorghum, chickpea, spring wheat rotation of northern NSW. The photo above is a 70 bushel corn crop in Colorado.

Bairnsdale trial 2008-09

Bairnsdale Summer rain 2008-09

Following the success of the first trial, it was decided that further trials should be carried out to determine how successful these crops would be in more 'normal' seasons. Maize, sorghum, sunflowers and cowpeas were sown again in mid November. There was no fallowing undertaken prior to November so these crops would have had very little stored water under them. After a wet November and average conditions in December the crops were dealt a hot, dry January. Maize yielded up to 1.5 t/ha and Sorghum up to 1.2 t/ha. Sunflowers produced 670 Kg/ha. Cowpeas had very low plant numbers due to poor germination, however plants that did grow, grew well and the yield was estimated to be 900 Kg/ha.

I believe that given a full profile of moisture, early sowing and no till; sorghum and maize would have yielded above 2.5 t/ha. The ability of the cowpeas to handle this season demonstrates that they (or their relatives azuki beans and mung beans) may have a place, possibly as a double crop following a winter cereal.

Bairnsdale Trial 2007-08

Bairnsdale Summer Rain 2007-08

The first summer grain trial at Bairnsdale was quite promising. Two Maize Hybrids and 5 Sorghum Hybrids were sown. Given adequate fertiliser both Maize Hybrids yielded over 6 t/ha - 6.4 and 6.9 t/ha to be exact. Plant populations were 21,750 and 26,250/ha respectively, much too low for those yields. Plant spacing was also sub optimum, having been planted with equipment set-up for winter cereals. Given uniform plant spacing and higher populations, who knows what the yield could have been?

The sorghum was not quite as impressive. Yields ranged between 1.7 and 5.9 t/ha depending on variety and fertiliser. Sunflowers were also grown, however the yield results were not recorded. All these crops were planted on the 16th of November, perhaps the correct time for sorghum in this environment, but the maize could have been at least one month earlier.

Summer grains potential in Gippsland

Bairnsdale Climate
 

The red-gum plains between Traralgon and Bairnsdale in Gippsland are predominantly a livestock grazing area with a small percentage of cropping for both fodder and grain. I believe that there is potential to significantly expand this area. The main crops grown are winter cereals and canola with a small area of field peas and lupins. One of the challenges for gippsland is rain at harvest time - our wettest month is November, however our winter crops have finished using moisture by then. In 2007, wanting to turn a problem into an opportunity, several members of Southern Farming Systems Gippsland branch decided to plant a trial of several summer crops for grazing, grain and fodder purposes. With a wetter than average summer, very encouraging results were achieved. In this blog I will focus on the potential of summer grain crops for the Gippsland Plains. You can see from the graph above that Bairnsdale does recieve significant summer rain. Another feature is the mild climate, much cooler in the summer than regions on the other side of the great dividing range.