Silage Making & Maize Drilling

GRASS SILAGE

Another fine week of warmer weather has seen grass crops push on.

We looked at a couple of grass samples again this week and sugar levels are very good and would be over 4% if crops were wilted to 30% dry matter, (over 3% is the critical figure).

Protein has gone up in these samples as the grass roots gets more active and pull in more nitrogen from the soil but nitrates are still low. Some silage has already been cut and yields have been surprisingly good at over 5T per acre. The comments generally are that there is a lot of dead grass in the bottom that would soon rot if it came wet. You need to walk your silage ground now to see if any of your crops should come off now, especially those that were too forward to put slurry of fertiliser on.

Weather looks good for the next week – don’t miss that window if the crop is anywhere near worth cutting. Let us know if you want any sample bags to send off your own samples.

If it stays dry and you cut now, a second cut is still going to grow well, leave it too late and second cut just won’t be there.

MAIZE DRILLING

Soil temperatures are rising well following the warmest day of the year so far yesterday. Based on just soil temperatures you could start maize drilling early next week but there is still quite a risk of frost damage, if possible delay until 20 April to reduce that risk.