Maize Watch: Forage maize off to a flying start
This week sees the start of the Farmers Weekly/Grainseed Maize Watch series looking at maize crop development up to harvest.
Neil Groom, technical manager at Grainseed, reports that maize crops throughout the country are looking good this year and have potential to fill the clamp with quality forage.
With a dry spring and hot weather throughout June and July the crop had a flying start in most regions and rain just before flowering means grain set is excellent.
“If we do get a heatwave through September then growers will need to keep a good eye on all fields since modern varieties can accumulate upwards of 5% of dry matter in a week during September. Even in overcast conditions, with warm nights the crops will increase by 2-3% a week in September”.
Mr Groom advises walking the crops regularly to assess grain maturity and colour of the crop. As the sugar in the leaf is converted to starch in the grain then the crop looses the glossy greenness and the grain matures.
“Looking at the results we can see that three sites have already started starch lay-down and the dry matters have moved up from the vegetative level of 20%,” he adds.