Sunflowers

Got a idea in my turnip:scared:
Plaster field with muck plough and sow bird seed sunflowers
Pre em it and cut the heads off combining time:undecided:
 
Growing them will probably be the easy part. Got a feeling west Wales might be a bit damp on average come combining.
 
A couple of dry sunny days and barley will combine. That big flower head on sunflowers holds the wet and goes rotten.
looking into that it seems you could get a variety that goes over like barley
would discourage birds and hold less water
 
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No experience, I would think you would get on OK in a year like this, but a year like last year would be very difficult. Might be worth a small trial but I think you would have to be willing to lose the whole crop if things go wrong when trying such things.
Which is basically along the lines I'm thinking
 
He who dares wins Rodney. Great year for sunflowers here although these are just for fun.

They were grown locally about 5 years ago quite successfully and harvested for grain/seed. I believe it was a pilot project with McDonald’s to produce sunflower oil but it obviously never got off the ground for whatever reason. Unfortunately I was just too much a plough/one-pass fanatic at the time to appreciate the finer agronomic details of the crop throughout the year
 

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Got a idea in my turnip:scared:
Plaster field with muck plough and sow bird seed sunflowers
Pre em it and cut the heads off combining time:undecided:

Not far off there.
They need to be précision planted though.
80cm width and 14cm spacing with a maize drill, otherwise they will grow too tall and fall over...
Seed is ~€90/ha.
Herbicide (pm) is €55/ha.

There’s new varieties now that will ripen from 80dsys after planting. I’m thinking of planting after wbarley and then back into a wwheat.

I was short half a bag of seed to finish up planting this May past so popped into pet shop and bought a 25kg bag of birdseed...feckin birdseed has a much bigger head!
I’ll take a few pics when I get home later.
 
Not far off there.
They need to be précision planted though.
80cm width and 14cm spacing with a maize drill, otherwise they will grow too tall and fall over...
Seed is ~€90/ha.
Herbicide (pm) is €55/ha.

There’s new varieties now that will ripen from 80dsys after planting. I’m thinking of planting after wbarley and then back into a wwheat.

I was short half a bag of seed to finish up planting this May past so popped into pet shop and bought a 25kg bag of birdseed...feckin birdseed has a much bigger head!
I’ll take a few pics when I get home later.
brill thank you:Thumbp2:
 
Not far off there.
They need to be précision planted though.
80cm width and 14cm spacing with a maize drill, otherwise they will grow too tall and fall over...
Seed is ~€90/ha.
Herbicide (pm) is €55/ha.

There’s new varieties now that will ripen from 80dsys after planting. I’m thinking of planting after wbarley and then back into a wwheat.

I was short half a bag of seed to finish up planting this May past so popped into pet shop and bought a 25kg bag of birdseed...feckin birdseed has a much bigger head!
I’ll take a few pics when I get home later.
I’d to get my young lady to hold up the heads as they’re well turned down now.
She’s 14 and is 5’3”...

Birdseed on the headlands, certified seed out the field.
 

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You say precision planted, what sort of weight per acre/hectare?

I sowed maize a few years ago with the accord air drill.i weighed the acre packs and set the drill acordingly
I experimented the year before blocking off coulters etc but found the best stand was sowing at 5inch (every coulter open)there was too much bunching of seed

It was the best crop id ever seen here,cobs as big as your forearm plants about 9 feet tall
 
You say precision planted, what sort of weight per acre/hectare?

I sowed maize a few years ago with the accord air drill.i weighed the acre packs and set the drill acordingly
I experimented the year before blocking off coulters etc but found the best stand was sowing at 5inch (every coulter open)there was too much bunching of seed

It was the best crop id ever seen here,cobs as big as your forearm plants about 9 feet tall
I know a man that planted his maize with a one-pass for 5yrs. He changed back to precision drilling.
For the one year that it works, there are more where it’s sub-optimum.

You’ve a much better chance of getting a good crop of maize sown that way than sunflowers. If there’s a double of sunflowers you get two lanky stems with small (if any) heads, or each stem could throw out several tiny heads that come to nothing. Think along the lines of sbeet.

Sunflowers need very little nitrogen. Ten ton per hectare of well composted fym is plenty. Pre-em herbicide and close the gate.

Can be tricky to harvest. The heads can get hung on the bars of the reel and end up on the ground. Cut the heads off and leave the stems to rot.

Pigeons love them when emerging, and surprisingly not for the seed. They just love the newly emerging shoots. They won’t touch them when you’ve got two emerged leaves. Every bird on the planet loves them for a few weeks before harvest...

Probably one of the very best break crops. I’d put it streets ahead of osr.

Edit. I find that 65-70k grains per hectare to be optimum. Any thicker and you run the risk of them falling over.
Totally guessing, but maybe 50k plants per hectare in Wales would be thereabouts??
 
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I know a man that planted his maize with a one-pass for 5yrs. He changed back to precision drilling.
For the one year that it works, there are more where it’s sub-optimum.

You’ve a much better chance of getting a good crop of maize sown that way than sunflowers. If there’s a double of sunflowers you get two lanky stems with small (if any) heads, or each stem could throw out several tiny heads that come to nothing. Think along the lines of sbeet.

Sunflowers need very little nitrogen. Ten ton per hectare of well composted fym is plenty. Pre-em herbicide and close the gate.

Can be tricky to harvest. The heads can get hung on the bars of the reel and end up on the ground. Cut the heads off and leave the stems to rot.

Pigeons love them when emerging, and surprisingly not for the seed. They just love the newly emerging shoots. They won’t touch them when you’ve got two emerged leaves. Every bird on the planet loves them for a few weeks before harvest...

Probably one of the very best break crops. I’d put it streets ahead of osr.

Edit. I find that 65-70k grains per hectare to be optimum. Any thicker and you run the risk of them falling over.
Totally guessing, but maybe 50k plants per hectare in Wales would be thereabouts??
Very informative thank you:Thumbp2:what sort of yeild would you be expecting from those pictured fields?
 
Had to get stuck into sunflowers yesterday because the pigeons were having a party.
What’s weighed so far...
Worst 2.5t/ha and best 4.1t/ha.
Moisture between 5.9 and 7.8%.
Bushels from 48.8 to 56 kph.

Final tally should be around 3+t/ha and I’d be delighted with it.
Rare to have moisture under 9% but it is dry...
 

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