Corn planter

I have purchased a secondhand corn planter. It is an Australian made Mason 9550. It has 8 rows on 30" (762mm) spacing. The four fertiliser boxes hold approx 3/4 tonne. The fertiliser drops in the furrow in front of the seed, so we are limited to about 10Kg/ha of Nitrogen (9lb/acre). The seed boxes are John Deere vaccuum units and the double disc openers are a similar design to John Deere. It has 4 marks on the bar where it appears that fertiliser coulters may have once been attached, half way between each pair of rows. The planter came with full sets of corn, sorghum and sunflower plates. It doesn't have the little seed knockers that push the sorgum seed off the plate, so I might need some of those. It also came with 6 soybean plates.

Mason 8 row planter

We removed the marker arms and are relocating the gauge wheels further out. As you can see they almost touch the wheels of this tractor which has a 2m (80") wheel track. My other tractor is on 3m (120") wheel
track. Moving the gauge wheels means that we have to relocate drives, which is a bit of a job. My good friend, Stuart, gave me an older Mason 8700 planter which is coming in handy for spare parts. I have already taken some bearing hubs and a sprocket or two off it, as well as the rotary scrapers.

Mason planter ready for modifications

Here is a picture of my 5 year old son helping. He is pushing a shaft through a bearing with a 20 ton hydraulic press. My other 7 year old son reckons that "Grandad must like circles, because there are a lot of round things in his workshop."

Hydraulic press

Wet, wet, wet

It's been very wet so far this year. We have had just under 500mm for the year to date, which makes it the wettest January-August since 1981. None of this rain has fallen in really big falls, just enough to keep things wet. As a consequece we have only sown about 10% of our winter crops, and they are struggling a bit. So it will be spring and summer crops this year.

I had the opportunity last week to look at a few crops south and east of my farm at Toogabbie. My view is that all the crops on the lighter sandy soils were doing well, but still suffering from the wet. They were showing Nitrogen and potash deficiencies, but should recover well with a bit of fertiliser. On the heavier loamy soils, crops that were sown early for grazing appeared to be growing well, but anything sown after the start of May was suffering.

What to plant?

Canola, Barley and Wheat are still worthwhile options as an early spring sown crop. In November 2009, we had a hot dry spring that absolutely hounded our crops. These are the type of conditions that we fear with a spring sowing. The hybrid canola seemed to handle it the best, followed by the barley. The winter wheat didn't like the heat at all, most likely because it was filling grain when it was over 30 degrees for a week. As we can't plant winter wheat now, we have bought some quick maturing spring wheat seed. I'd still like to see all these planted before mid September, (Late August would be better!) I think that 4t/ha is still possible for cereals and 2 t/ha for canola, however 75% of those yields would be more realistic. 50% would be roughly break even.

Maize and Sorghum have been discussed elsewhere in this blog. The only negative aspect of maize is the cost of the seed and the ability to dry grain. Sorghum is much later maturing for us, which presents drying problems and limits double crop options. Maize yields of up to 7 t/ha have been achieved in our trials. 5 t/ha would be a realistic target.

Safflower is a crop that may be a good option. In South West Victoria and S.E. South Australia, safflower is planted in paddocks that have been too wet to plant winter crops. Safflower is heat and drought tolerant (compared to wheat, barley and canola) and will also open up compacted soil. One bloke I met grows canola after safflower to achieve two years of grass control. In a wet year his canola yields much better after the safflower, however it can yield less in a dry year. 2 t/ha would be a target yield.

Sunflowers would be a really good option if it weren't for cockatoos. Another negative aspect is that broadleaf weed control options are limited, this also applies to safflower A good point is that they can be planted almost anytime in the spring, and still be harvested without having to be dried. A target yield would be 2 t/ha.

Field peas and Chickpeas are all potential options. Chickpeas don't like waterlogging or acid soils, but should otherwise yield as well as field peas and being worth more would be my preference in the right paddock. I think the best fit for chickpeas is planted in a maize stubble in mid-late winter. In a situation like this there would usually be no water logging problems, however this year my maize crop had a full profile of moisture at harvest time! Chickpeas could yield up to 3 t/ha.

Mungbeans are a possibility, planted perhaps in November. Broadleaf weed control is a issue. I have done some very small trials and reckon we can grow 1 t/ha.

Conclusion

Some cosiderations:

• What if it turns dry next year? Double cropping after summer crops may not be possible.
• What if we get a hot dry summer? Sorghum may significantly outyield maize.
• What if we get a dry spring? Wheat, barley and canola will suffer.
• What if it keeps raining? Crops grow well, a spread of maturity helps us battle through harvest and we double crop the summer crop stubbles.

It is importat to spread our risk. Wheat, barley and canola are the proven crops, and will top the list. Maize is the preferred summer crop. Sunflowers and safflower might be a good option in the right paddock, especially since they will be harvested when other crops aren't. A paddock of sorghum might be worthwhile. If I was going to take a punt on a legume it would be chickpeas. Mungbeans might go in a small trial somewhere.

Sorghum

Sorghum, Toongabbie, 5 May 2011

Photo above (5 May 2011) is the sorghum approaching maturity. You may notice that just left of centre (in line with the electricity pole at the far end of the paddock), there is a change of hybrids. The headland was also sown to a different hybrid, it came up thinnner and so has more late tillers.

The photo below (5 June 2011) is the sorghum almost ready to harvest. It has been sprayed out but some of the tillers are still quite green.. Interesting photo with Loy Yang power station in the background (climate change, global warming, etc) and a crop that is not usually grown until you go several hundred kms north of here. :) Bring it on I say, as we're still a bit cold to really grow sorghum well as I'll discuss below. 1 degree warmer and our spring would start 2 weeks earlier and our autumn would finish two weeks later. Our summer would be 1 month longer. Bring it on!

Sorghum, Toongabbie, 5 Jun 2011

 

Sorghum heads

The plant above has 4 heads on it. The main shoot is in the front with a reasonable tiller on each side, a third tiller has come out the back of the plant and you can see it's head tiny head on the left. The next photo shows all four decapitated heads.

Sorghum, main shoot and 3 tillers

My agronomist friend in Alberta, Canada, Steve Larocque sends me his agronomy newsletter every week. It might sound strange,  but it occured to me one day that sorghum growing in southern Victoria is much the same as wheat growing on the Canadian prairies. I'll explain.

 In Canada they plant their wheat in April and May, as early in the spring as they can while avoiding frosts and cold soils. They have a very short window to get their crop in as it has to mature in time to avoid frosts at the other end. The harvest takes place in September. A rule that they use is that half the wheat yield comes from the main stem and half comes from the next two tillers. Quote Steve: "any more than two tillers is a waste of energy and a detriment to maturity". With this in mind I weighed the sorghum heads in the above photo. The weights, right to left, are 240g, 160g, 100g and 38g. The fourth head has no useful grain in it, even though it weighs 38g. I know that the weight of the stems has to come off, but I'll use these figures anyway. So the main head is 240g and the next two total 260g. Given that the main head is pretty dry and the next two are not, I'd say that half the yield coming from the main head is about right.

My friend Steve has an article you can read titled: "Ten tips to speed up maturity for spring seeded crops"

To summarise it all comes down to what you do on the day of seeding. I'll put my own list here as it applies to Sorghum.

• Start and finish sowing as early as possible. Use insecticides or seed treatments to avoid insect pressure.
• Optimise phosphorus rates and place with the seed. Phosphorus is less available in cool soils.
• Higher plant population and wider rows will reduce tiller numbers.
• Hybrid selection. Obviously earlier maturing but also cold tolerant varieties.
• Acurate seed depth control. Even seed depth = even maturity. Shallow seeding = warmer soil and quicker emergence, however soil temp is more even at depth and leads to more even emergence.
• Avoid fertiliser toxicity. Place N away from seed.

Corn Harvest

The corn has matured and I've managed to find an 8 row corn front to hire. This is a New Holland front that has been modified to fit a CAT header. We made a simple adaptor in our workshop so it would fit on our Case 2388. If it hadn't been modified it would have actually been simpler to fit. I bought some shorter tubes for our PTOs and they went straight on. Fortunately the owner of this front is not using it this year so we have had plenty of time to get it ready and no rush to send it back.



Case 2388 with New Holland 8 row Corn Front

Grain Dryer

I've also hired a dryer. It's an Agridry FB2000 cross flow batch dryer. In this photo it's hooked up to my Case Puma 155. The dryer holds 20 tonne (800 bu). The tractor PTO drives a blower and a generator. The generator is for the burner which has an electric fuel pump and air blower. The burner runs on diesel. The corn is coming off between 18 and 20% moisture and takes a few hours to dry. The crop was mature (but not dry) early April and I've had to wait a while for the dryer. I think that if we had planted 3 weeks earlier in mid October then harvest could have started in early April. The owner of this dryer wants it back soon so he can start his own corn harvest. We'll also need the dryer later on for our sorghum. For what it's worth the Puma 155 is for sale as I've bought a bigger tractor with a 3m wheel track for CTF. I'll miss the Puma, it's a good all-round tractor. It's been our preferred tractor for windrowing, mowing, baling, spraying and just about everything else. It's a bit small to pull our airseeder but we did end up using it on the chaser bin this year and I prefer it to our larger Magnum for that job.

Case Puma 155 with Agridry FB2000 Grain Dryer

Harvesting

Harvest started on the 5th of May. Heres a photo from the header cab. I'm harvesting the Pioneer 36B08 which is 103 day CRM. I'ts my best yielder this year and I think that maturity length is about right for our area. This is also about the best part of the paddock. Not far to the left of here is an old fence line and once I crossed that the yield drops off. The poorer side was cropped for about 8 years before we started no till in 2006, while the good side had only been cropped for 5 years. Also in 2004 a stubble burn was followed by a strong wind that blew all the ash onto the good side of the fence. The bottom line is that the better side has more organic matter and fertility. I think a bit more urea and potash would have helped.

Harvesting Corn Drivers View

Yield

I like this yield monitor photo. It rarely dropped below 5 t/ha (80 bu/a) in the 36B08. I think if you knock off about 10% it would be closer to the truth though. I'll calibrate it when I've finished harvest. Overall I lost about 2 or 3 ha to cockatoos and averaged about 4t/ha (64 bu/a) on the rest. I'm disapointed with the yield as we've had quite a wet summer. The crop did suffer from early waterlogging in places. I applied a total of 70 Kg/ha of Nitrogen which is only just enough for 4 t/ha so N probably limited yield. Plant population was 36,000/ha (14,400/acre) planted, but being sown with an airseeder, spacing was all over the place. Some plants were crowded and only produced small cobs, while there was also some big gaps. Not having a no-till planter available we didn't really have a choice, but I have something organised for next year. Speaking of plant population - the US no-till guys aim for 200 plants/bushel (8000/tonne) so my population was right for 4.5 t/ha (72 bu/a).

Logistics

The photo below sums up the logistics. I can nearly (but not quite) hold a batch for the dryer in the header and chaser bin. As the dryer has two bins we can unload half and empty the header. Then we can harvest a couple of tonne while the trucks unloading into our silos. The dryer is a big hold up for this job, we have fairly dewey mornings with a fair bit of moisture in the air so I can only get one batch dried per day. Starting harvest a month earlier would make a big difference. I'm not sure how we'd handle a big harvest, maybe a combination of aerated storage and drying. The chaser bin holds about 11 tonne of corn. It holds 12 tonne of good wheat so thats about 450bu. A 25 tonne bin would be better for this job and for filling semi trailers but we mainly use it between the header and silo bags, for which it's perfect.

Plant Spacing

Everyone says that it's important to get plant spacing correct, but nobody could put a figure on how much yield is lost. In the photo below I have 14 cobs taken from 20' of row. The smaller cobs came from crowded plants. These plants could have been placed in gaps between the other plants without compromising them. So I believe that with a precision planter I could have had 14 full sized cobs instead of 10 full size and 4 half sized cobs. This gives me about 17% yield increase.

Uneven Corn Plant Spacing

Growing well

18th January 2011. Eastern Australia has recorded one of it's wettest springs followed by an extremely wet summer, with major flooding in Qld, NSW and Victoria. Despite all this here in Gippsland we recorded 168mm for the spring (about 20mm below our average), and 107mm so far for the summer, which is about 20mm above average. The photo below is of my maize and was taken on the 13th of January in the same place as in earlier posts.

Hycorn 504, January 13 2011

Here is a photo of my sorghum taken on the 13th of January. I planted this about a week after the maize, but it's much further behind. Our cool nights suit the maize much better. Our airseeder is set up on 300mm row spacing. I could have lifted tines for 900mm rows which would have been ok. However as we only have single shoot boots I was concerned about seed burn, so I opted to lift only half our tines. I figured that 300mm double skip would be better than 600mm rows. I love seeing that stubble in between the rows. Seed rate was 2Kg/ha with 70Kg/ha DAP. I also had to follow up with atrazine early post emergent which seems to work better than pre emergent.

Sorghum, January 13 2011

This photo was taken today (16th Jan) It's the DKC 37-12 (87 CRM) planted on the headland. Hopefully I can harvest this one without drying. The others will probably need drying but should yield more.

DKC 37-12 January 16 2011

This photo was also taken today (16th Jan). Sorghum in the foreground and Maize behind, Hycorn 504, 97 CRM.

Sorghum & Maize, January 16 2011

This is 36B08, 103 CRM. Photo taken 16th January.

36B08 Corn, January 16 2011

Sunflowers, Bairnsdale, January 15 2011

Below are some Sunflowers planted at our trial site at Bairnsdale. They were planted November 3rd, along with maize and sorghum. If we can make sunflowers work they might be a good opportunity crop to plant after wheat harvest. Photo taken 15th January.

Chickpeas

Chickpeas would be the perfect fit for us after maize and before our next winter crop. I planted some chickpeas in my vegetable garden, just to see how they would grow. They are a Desi variety, I think they are 'Slasher'. Tim Brown should know, he gave me the seed. They were planted mid September without any fertiliser or innoculant. I think they should go in earlier, July or August maybe. In our climate they should start to set pods in November when the average daily temp is 15 degrees. November is our wettest month, so they should have plenty of moisture to finish, might not be good for disease though. This photo was taken on the 10th of November and they have just got their first flowers.


Chicpeas Nov 10 2010

Chickpeas, Toongabbie, 29 Dec 2010

The next 3 photos were taken on the 29th of December. They have grown well, I think - but I don't know anything at all about chickpeas.

In this photo you might be able to see mature pods, new pods and also some new flowers. There is a break in the pods just below the top where we had a cool period in late Nov - early December.

29 Dec 2010, Chickpea Pods

There won't be any chickpeas at all thanks to these little fellas. They have dropped all the mature pods and sucked the life out of the immature pods. It would have been good to see what they would have yielded. Anyway, will have to do a few acres next year.

Chickpea pod borer, Helicoverpa. 29 Dec 2010

Maize Establishment

I have taken the punt and planted 29 ha of maize and 22 ha of grain sorghum. I fallowed a paddock after wheat harvest 2009. This paddock yielded poorly with the heatwave in Nov '09 and crown rot affecting the wheat. It has had a long history of winter crops, especially cereals so it needs a break. I don't like the idea of sowing to pasture and running sheep so a summer crop or three seems a good option to me. Here is a photo of the fallow taken on the 29th of October, just before planting:

Wheat stubble ready for corn planting

I planted on the 6th November with the same Seedhawk that planted our Bairnsdale trial. 36,000 seeds/ha and 70Kg DAP. Here is a photo taken on the 10th:

Seedhawk planted corn

This photo was taken on the 18th of December. The lighter green is Hycorn 504 (97 CRM) and the darker green on the headland is DKC 37-12 (87 CRM). Just after this photo I topdressed with 120 Kg/ha of Urea and 80 Kg/ha of MOP. I also applied a foliar Zinc.

Hycorn 504 and DKC 37-12