Sweet Forage Sorghum

About to harvest some wheat when the ground dry's out a bit

Chickpeas getting bulky

I took this photo today (sat), these chickpeas are going strong, my boot is at the base of the crop.
Not a lot of pods as yet although lots of flowers.(click on photo to enlarge)

Wet Over The Past 5 Days

 

We had some unexpected rainfall this week, as you can see from our soil moisture probe we are again at field capacity, makes it a bit hard on the Mung beans although with some sun all should be well.

Click on the image to see better





Our Annual Field Day

We held our annual agronomy Field day yesterday  (the 19th) we had recieved around 48mm of rain in the previous 36 hours and there was lots of slipping and sliding on the road in.
Around 140 people attended and from feedback today there was lots of value from the day.
Peter Schuur's who is friend/agconsultant/agronomist and lives in Uganda spoke over the day on the agronomy of various crops, he did a great job.
Bottom photo is of Annie and her friend Veena at lunch time.
We had a Aussie BBQ (Choma) for lunch with Annie cooking and icing hundreds of cupcakes and Anzac biskets for morning tea.

Sweet Forage Sorghum 85 days After Planting

Look closely, you can see Wiz next to the sorghum, Kabuli chickpeas in the foreground, Click on photo for a better look. Sugar's are rising in the plant as it goes into head. The crop will be cut soon.

Mung Beans and Wheat

Above are pictures of our wheat almost ready to harvest, it was planted on the 10th of Feb so it is just on 80 days from planting,  bit to quick to be much of a crop probably only 2 t per ha.
The Mung Beans on the other hand look fantastic with many pods being added daily. 

Bought some wood during the week

I bought some offcuts from these guys from the industrial area in Nairobi during the week.
The wood was for John and Wiz to do some woodwork, they are following in their big brother's footsteps who is a carpenter/builder.

Kabuli Chickpeas growing well

The above photo is Wiz in a crop of chickpeas.(note JD T shirt and Stara hat) Chickpeas planted on the 22nd of Feb.

Ice skating for Wiz's 9th Birthday, happy birthday big boy

Duma GL wheat

 This variety has only about 300 tiller/heads per square meter but reasonable head (ear) size, this photo is 68 days after planting, it has full grain and is only probably 30 days or so from harvest.
This crop was pushed by 30 degree C days and 25 to 30km per hour winds during March, even though it was on a very full profile of moisture the crop bolted and so we have low tiller numbers as the crop just raced into ear.

Bleached leaf margins in our Chickpeas

Does anyone know what may be causing the above? It looks like Simazine damage although they had no pre emergent herbicide, plus nothing residual in the fallow period.
I suspect it is some nutrient issue, probably not a drama for the crop although I would still like to know. (Click on photo to enlarge )

Forage Sorghum Growing fast (51 days from planting)

Moisture readings from our AquaCheck probe

The above charts show the water use of a crop of Mung Beans planted around 50 days ago. The bottom chart shows the 100 to 200mm (10 to 20 cm) water use.
You can see that at about 11% of soil water the green line flattens out (crop could not extract any more water) before we had 34mm of rain. Then there was a rapid increase followed by a few days then another 18mm of rain. Then a few days flat and now as the crop is bulking up and using a lot more water you see the "steps" (daily use) using much more water than earlier in the crops life.
The top graph is for the 700 to 800mm (70 to 80cm) zone, as you can see the crop is also drawing on this water slowly There is obviously water left in between the above zones although I did not want to make it too complicated by adding them (click to show a bigger image)

Soil Moisture/Temperature probe data

We installed a AquaCheck soil probe a while ago, the above screenshot shows the 10cm deep soil temperature (red line), as you can see the soil temp rises and falls each day, the highest daytime 10cm deep soil temp was 32 deg C, this surprised me as it was about the same as the ambient temperature (air temp).
Then we had 34 mm of rain around the 2nd of April, as the graph shows, the temperature plummeted by 8 to 10 deg C.
 I suspect that the radical drop is also related to the Mungbean crop getting canopy cover (shading the ground).
Lots for us to learn from all this type information, the hope would be that we make better management choices based on what we learn. 

Forage Sorghum planted on the 22nd of Feb (approx 49 days ago)

The above photo is of Kabuli Chickpeas planted beside our forage Sorghum trial, we will cut the forage in about 35/45 days and see what type of feed quality we get. 

A small number of Grubs installing some window's in our Mung Beans

Crop Progress 26th of March.

Photos from the top forage sorghum growing well, this is a small area to trial possible uses for the forage.
Next photo from the top are KS20 Mung Beans , our 500 hectares of beans are very even which will make managing the beans easier, they are growing nicely.
Bottom two photos are of wheat, it has been a bit on the warm side for wheat with temp up to 31 deg c and high winds.
Still if the long rains come in the next week we should see our maximum daytime temperature drop as we move through April down to 25/26 deg C.

Good Root Development on forage sorghum and Kabuli Chickpeas

Chick Peas , 23 days since planting

Jumping Beans, Mung Beans, 26 days after planting,variety is KS20

Annie, Grace, John and Wiz out on the town

 

Mung Beans (Green Grams) see daylight

Wheat up and Away

Planting 2016 started

We started planting wheat a few days ago, we have had 320 mm of rain over the past 3 months and so our soil is getting full.
We will plant about half our farm to wheat then the other half to Mung Beans (Locally known as Green Grams)
Plus a selection of small plot and small comercial trials of various crops.

Our planting team with our new Quick fill hopper (built by Robert in the purple top)

Seed Wheat Cleaning & Treatment

Farm Update

Well, we have had above average rain for what's locally called the short rains, usually just Nov and maybe half of December, the average for Nov, Dec and January is 208mm although we have been very fortunate to get 313 mm of rain for the same period to date (still some of Jan to go).
It has been very encouraging to see no water runoff our fields at all, quite amazing as much of the rain has been in heavy storms.
The previous crop residue, controlling our machinery traffic and zero till is showing its benefits, interestingly the only place any water has laid is in some tram lines.
The soil profile must be getting full of water and as we are only 10 or 12 days from the start of our 2016 planting it is nice to have all that water there.
Lots of preparing the planter and getting all our crop planting inputs ready to go.

Farm Christmas Party

 Gideon and his wife Margaret, Gideon runs our office and is also a very good machinery operator

 Team Security, Benson and Simon from our security team having a laugh

Samson on the left and Stanley our gardener on the right with Annett who helps Annie

 Annie giving a Christmas hug to Abigail, (Gideon and Margaret's daughter)