Beans are coming through.

It's been 10 days since the beans were planted, since the photo's were taken anyway, and I have to say I am a little disappointed with the consistency of the emergence . The problem was that we didn't plant the beans sooner, the way our planter is configured the planting depth control wheel had to run over the cane that is growing, so because the cane was starting to put on stalk this meant that the depth wheel rode over, bringing the seed out of the soil. However we had 35mm of rain just the other day so when we were looking we could see beans germinating in the moist trash.We had a visit from the people from University come and have a look , so the photo's were taken by Susanne Schmidt who is leading the project.Hopefully all is not lost and we will have enough population to have a recordable difference in the treatments.We have three different nitrogen treatments across the field and two different soy seeding rates along the paddock.

Planting our Inter crop of Soybean.

It has taken ten years lots of time and money a Nuffield Scholarship overseas research, a collaboration with the University of Queensland and we have finally planted another inter cropping trial, and I was not there.I was in Brisbane attending a company directors course to be able to have a better understanding of the business of farming, it was some pretty serious stuff I would have rather have been home planting the trial, but this is something that can have as much of an effect on our business as the operational stuff that I usually do. My brother planted the trial and we were very pleased with the way the planter performed as you can see from the picture there is a lot of residue to work through, hopefully next week we will see the beans emerging.We have had 120mm of rain since my last post and are just starting to irrigate again, this time of year is peak growing time so we have irrigate as necessary, makes it hard around Christmas time but when you consider that Cane can grow up to 35mm per day here, good moisture management really pays off in the long run.Have to say even though the week in Brisbane was quite full on it was good to meet new faces and catch up with the old friends.

Irrigation scheduling .

Summer is here in a big way , we have had more than a few days over 40 degrees celcius, with a very strong southerly blowing definitely sucks the moisture out of the crop. This makes irrigation very important for crop growth and for the hip pocket, water is a very precious resource and a major input cost, so putting the right amount on at the right time to maximize returns is critical. The picture is of a evaporation pan which is a very simple device to determine how much moisture is getting pulled out via evapotranspiration and crop growth, so this is dependent on specific varieties and specific soil types so there is some calibration to be done, but once calibrated this is a very simple and cost effective way to manage crop growth. The other photo's are of gypsum being spread and incorporated on the leveled block , and in the new system existing bed, where the crop has been sprayed out and gypsum spread on the bed, because of the trash the gypsum is trapped and doesn't get blown away by wind.

Out with the Old !

Still flat out even though harvest is finished, we have managed to get the cane watered so it looks like cane now. We have come to the last block of "the Traditional" row spacing 5 foot that we have left and it has been rotary hoed out and the block is being laser leveled in preparation for the 2 meter beds to be formed and some soybean to be planted.We are also applying the second application of fertilizer along with cane grub control chemical, we have had some hot days here already and we have cracked 40 degrees already , all of the ratoon blocks have still only been watered once such is the water holding capacity that we have now.

Harvest Video

Don't know if this will work but I will give it a go, this is us harvesting 150tph (60 tpa) dual row!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnCXO0SQowA

Check this out !

If you ever wanted to see a great example of the difference between the new permanent bed farming system and traditional tillage farming this is it. Even though we have adopted the new two meter row spacing, to get to that we had to conventionally till the farm to get it over to the new system. Have a look at the two photo's the first is the tilled plant cane that has been irrigated three times, ( it is so dry because we have been harvesting everyday up until now and couldn't get to do it not ideal)and the second photo is the cane that was planted directly into the permanent beds and has only been irrigated twice, this cane was planted within days of each other.

What a month.

Well what a month it has been it has been like my life has been put into "fast forward" after our Brazilian visitors it was a couple more days in the harvester then off to Perth to give my Nuffield presentation , it was great to catch up with my mates from that year who were also presenting, it is like we all saw each other yesterday such is the bond we have from our Nuffield experience. So my presentation went well and now a lot more people realize the importance of the Sugarcane industry. Somehow I lost a day and thought I would return on Saturday but in fact would not get home until Sunday afternoon. After a long sleepless overnight flight , we pretty much traveled across the country diagonally, it was back in the harvester Monday to finish the rest of our crop. We didn't do to bad considering that we had no early plant cane and all of our crop was harvested pre 12 months of age, we averaged 105 tph or in old school 42 tons per acre @ 14.5 ccs. We had Tuesday for maintenance and then we started to harvest our neighbors farms to help them get there crop off and we have been doing that up until yesterday, our farm has suffered but we felt obliged to help our fellow farmers. Oh yeah we had a day off last Friday when we hosted some more international visitors this time from Mauritius, and Tanzania these guys were here to look at how we have adapted industry research into a new farming system and to see first hand the benefits that come from it. I have posted a photo of some of these guys inspecting our min till plant crop that still has only had two irrigation's since planting.