What seed rates would people recommend maize is drilled at ?
What seed rates would people recommend maize is drilled at ?
I never had much success growing Beet so I switched to Swedes , but I can imagine it's a wonderful crop if yiu can grow it
Heavy dirt, indifferent seedbed- 45,000.
If you are in Shropshire and can actually make a worthwhile seed bed: 42,000 or 40,000. I don't think you would gain much from going lower, that's grain maize territory really.
In adverse conditions and really heavy old clart I've known people sow at 50,000 but it adds cost to something that is already costly.
Outside of sunny Cornwall then you may want to consider early vigour. You must use starter fertiliser (phosphate- DAP etc at 40-50kg/acre) under the crop. Nitrogen- chuck it in the seed bed if you really must, I'm not hugely convinced big doses of N do much for you with maize if you're already hammers the land with manure and slurry anyway but it's your cash not mine.
Soil test any land you are suspect of ahead of time and correct any problems with pH or P and K before you begin.
Seed bed, fertility and soil temperature are what make the crop.
The maize starter fert i had wasnt micro was same size granules and sowed at 25kg/ac, had zinc mag etc, I'm trying to get away from chucking a pile of DAP onto high indexes land like we always used to when half of it doesn't seem to even get to the plant, but I have tried without any P other than muck and it definitely has an effect. Last year it worked out simular money per acre, year before the starter fert was much cheaper than DAP (when the world was a mess)
That's the plan, got loads of muck, dropping p indecies a touch without effecting crop yield will suit me
Never used umostart
Do you top up the N through the season?I go 40 ish kg N + sulphur down the spout. No P but i do have high indexes
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I agree with this, intend to run some trials on this, with different rates of N to check the impact.Nitrogen- chuck it in the seed bed if you really must, I'm not hugely convinced big doses of N do much for you with maize if you're already hammers the land with manure and slurry anyway but it's your cash not mine.
We have high P and low K in some fields, it's a hard one as the FYM is fantastic for K but can't apply without the P.If someone has high P and K indices then really they probably shouldn't be putting any more dung or manure on. The modest amount in 50kg/acre of DAP will be more than taken off by the crop, although I would agree with the comments in another thread that RB209 is hopelessly out of date and if you want a classic example of this then maize would be the crop where RB209 is even weaker
Do you top up the N through the season?
RB209 allows up to 150kgN/ha (total crop available N inc. artificial and organic) for a 40t/ha fresh weight yield, so we normally target that.Yes usually about 110kg in total depending on season and accounting for any Fym/slurry
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