Roughage tour Week 13
Prepare parcels loose and crumbly for silage maize
Now that the wet and cold period of early March is behind us, the maize fields are being prepared. This also applies to the fields of the Roughage Tour 2021. The preparations for preparing for sowing are going well and without too much effort. That is a good starting point for rapid initial development.
After all, a good seed bed promotes water and air management, so that the seed bed can warm up better. A well-prepared plot is certainly important for derogation farms, because they have to deal with a ban on fertilization of phosphate. The young plant can no longer use the phosphate from the fertilizer and has therefore become more dependent on the good substrate. Growers aim to lay out the seedbed loose and crumbly, with a substrate without compaction.
Tillage
The participants of the Boerenbusiness Roughage tour are busy getting the corn land ready for sowing. The green manures are incorporated and the grassland is torn up. By working in the green manure about 6 weeks before sowing, the mineralization can start nicely.
Last week (week 12) 20 tons of solid manure was applied to the plot in Guttecoven (Limburg). The old grassland plot was plowed last Saturday and is ready for sowing, which is expected to happen in the last week of April.
Ideal sowing moment never the same
"By sowing at the end of April or the beginning of May, you reduce the chance that the young plant will get night frost, because it is not yet up to it," says Robert ter Maat, forage specialist in the Central Netherlands at Limagrain. we prefer to put the maize seed into the ground no earlier than mid-April. But there are never any guarantees, as the first maize was sown at the beginning of April last year. At the time of the night frost in May, this plant could withstand much more than the late April maize."
Erik van der Deure
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