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.