Bardens in Kenya: May 2015

Thursday, May 28, 2015

No Chemical Resistance with Group P (people)

We have about 120/ 130 casuals hand weeding 160 ha of Mung Beans, we planted them dry and although we had a grass control option in the form of a herbicide we did not have any broadleaf weed control options.
They are doing a good job, it is all paid by the row, thank goodness for straight rows.
(Click on photo for a better view)

Spraying Barley (Dry planted 57 days since emergence)

Yesterday I was applying 10kg ha of Potassium Sulphate together with 250mls of Tilt, barley was planted dry with a full profile (1meter of wet soil) but about 15 cm of dry soil on top, this crop has had 155mm of rain since emergence. It is looking very strong although time will tell.
I would estimate there was approximately 180/200mm of PAW (plant available water) in the soil at the time of emergence, add to this the 155mm of "in crop" rainfall of 155mm =335mm less 110mm to allow for evaporation (French/Schultz method) and we have 225mm available for grain fill.
The general range of WUE of wheat and Barley (water use efficiency) is 10kg per mm of grain to 20kg per mm of grain.(can be a bit higher or lower)
So with 225mm available for grain fill at 10kg per mm = 2.25 t ha (2250kg per ha) poor WUE
or at 20kg per mm it would yield 4.5 t ha (4500kg per ha) which would be a good WUE.
Only time will tell.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Planting Mung Beans

We are just planting our latest 160 ha of Mung Beans (Green Grams), we have another 160 ha we planted dry about 50 days ago, they are up and look OK, we split the planting so we could spread out harvest as well as a bit of risk management, the earlier planted should do better (maybe) although the latest Mungs are being planted into a meter of moisture, (about 180mm of plant available water at my estimate)
Wait and see, we have put 10kg ha of potassium sulphate on as a foliar spray twice to try and get the flowering and pod set more even, the varieties we have tend to flower over a longer period than I would like, this obviously results in some pods being fully ripe/dry with others still very green, this is from my limited knowledge on Mung beans a bit of their nature although we are doing what we can to tighten this period up.

Trials, looking tidy !

We have our two major field days coming up in early June, one for commercial farmers and support people and the other for small farmers who live locally, our trial site is looking good, we are missing Tim our Canadian, things happened a lot smother while he ran the trials.