₦airaland Forum

June Maize - An Indepth Research To Study Resilience & Productivity of Maize Across Lengthy Dry Spells

This thread showcases the effects of cultivating 120 days maize in June for maize farmers who would like to see how Maize do well when planted with a dry season in between the propagation stages of your crops.


So, if you desire to find out what happens when you plant maize in June to harvest by October, this thread is for you !

Traditionally maize farmers target the month of May to cultivate maize, but what happens when for some reasons farmers miss the May planting window ?

This is what we are about to find out through my project.

We did not meet the May planting window and infact it's tilting towards the end of June and the opportunity to farm Maize opened. So, i'm embarking on this journey with a client.

Together, we will be farming 4 acres area of maize. My target is to attain atleast 10 Tons of maize grains, so follow this journey if you desire to know what it feels like to cultivate maize towards the end of June.





If you're thinking about planning towards your retirement, consider agriculture. Whatever your financial goals maybe, i can design elaborate farm setup to meet them.


Talk to me. I design, setup, manage and supervise farms

International world weather recording center declared 2025 dry season spell was the longest ever dry season spell ever documented since it's over 100 years of documenting global climatuc conditions. This is because rains seized from july ending and remained this way till August ending. In view of this analytics, this thread will highlight and provide information on the resilience of hybird four months maize that is cultivated across the dry season. So, for seekers who would be seeking how maize can thrive with a dry season spell or what happens when maize is grown in June, this thread is for you


Follow as the journey unfolds

First Step :



The first step in setting up a farm is to inspect the land and ensure that the land is free of rocks, tree stumps that makes them unsuitable for tractor to operate on them. Make sure this check is done to avoid paying for a land that wont be useful.



You need to make sure of the suitability of your land. Once this is confirmed, you may go ahead and make payment. Like you can confirm through the images, the land is tractorable and with just few hours of work, the land will.be completely ploughed and ready for cultivation..



Like i traditionally do, i do my planting within 72 hours of ploughing. This is a fixed rule i obey all the time. For this project, i am.doing the planting within 24 hours of planting because of time.

Every farm has a beautiful story. This is why I am journalling the journey. Not only to share the beauty of the journey with the world but t inspire and motivate people to wipe the dust off their journals and begin whatever your dream projects maybe.



Back to the theme. After examining the land, the next thing to do is use GPS to carry out measurements. I always use GPS to make sure the land worked upon or to be worked upin is a little bigger than my target area. This is because if the right plant spacing is applied, there is a quantity of yield to expect, but relies heavily on the quantity of plants and by extension the land area.

For my weed control, I will be using Sunphosate and Lagon for my first application.

In Maize cultivation, weed control is it everything. Poor management of the weeds during the initial 8 weeks of the crop growth can consume the yield up to 40 percent of the crop. In order to have a weed free farm, i am using a mixture of Lagon and Sunphosate. Lagon to seal weeds seed and prevent growth of weed seeds in weeks as Glyphosate in mixture of herbicides eradicate the weeds which have resisted tractorizing.
I personally oversee the process of my workers application of herbicides to prevent cases of misapplication that result into the emergence of weeds along the way. Under my practice on herbicides application i always put the same measure of liquid mixture and tell them to keep on spraying until the liquid has been exhausted. This would not leave them with such excuses of simply crossing the farms and not carrying the actual job.



Think intelligently farmers !

This is how the farm site looked like before tractorization. Once the rental fee is paid, the journey begins. Farming inspires resilience, patience, grits, guts, hard work and patience. This is why every farm story should be told.

The journey begins with tractorization. The idea way to go about farming is to plough twice to ensure the terrain is fine, loose and completely free from weeds, but to save costs, we often times do just single ploughing like in this case. ..

An important thing to also consider during tractorization is untouched spots. Always make sure to look out for sections that are skipped to ensure the tractor operator reworks these sections, otherwise you loose money.

For this exercise because of the time of the season the project is taking off, I will be using Seedco SC719 seed variants because of its drought tolerance and ruggedity.

For the 3 Acres, I am cultivating, i got 30 KG seeds and ploughed 3.5 Acres of land so there is more land than the actual spacing the plants needs. This is my new strategy now, because of errors during planting, I always make sure to plough extra spacing to accommodate the right quantity of seeds for every project.


Note using the right quantity of seeds means pre-estimated crop yields won't be met. So, if you are going into maize cultivation, always strive to cultivate between 9-10 KG of seeds per acre.

Optimization of productivity is a considerable factor as far as achieving food securty in Nigeria is involved. There are two tenets that are important in order to realize success in the enhancement of maize productivity.


In every case, it is important to use the appropriate type of seed. The climate change caused the right seed variety namely the drought resistance seeds.


Always follow the good Agronomic practices.

This research is aimed at verifying the potential of yield of Seedco SC719



The yield is also significant to the Maize population. It is because of this reason that the right quantity of seeds are to be planted rather than quality seeds.


My target is between 2.5 and 3 tons per acre. To achieve this objective, one must plant atleast 8.5 KG.


With a planter, planting precision can be achieved, however, in it's absence, if you are to cultivate manually, always have this calculation in mind :


One Acre = 4,000 sqm.


4,000/0.75 x Y = 21,333 plants. If you use a calculator or pen and paper, you would come to this spacing calibration :


0.75 x 0.50 = 2 Seeds per hole


I ensure the workers planted using two seeds per hole, sometimes, three seeds. This leaves the allowance of 5-15% mortality. In case 5-15 of the seeds fail to sprout, then the resultant effect would be that I will get 17,000 - 19,000 successfully growing plants per acre.


More Arithmethic :



When you have say 20,000 stands of maize in ur farm, and then one maize cob will weigh 350g when Agronomic practice is done well. Following shelling it can decrease to 250g.




Farming is a business that is extremely difficult to get into, but when you get into it right, then you will become UNSTOPPABLE



Agricultural projects should not wait, quit procrastinating and start now !

To cover an expansive weed profile, I am using Lagon, Forceup, Sunphosate and Atrazine. Combining so that the weed growth resistance would be strong and longer.

Can you imagine the quantity of seeds in this 25 KG sack alone and the duration and work out into cultivating the seeds 2-3 per hole ? We started 10am, finished past six.

Protecting your farm investment is the next thing to do right after your farm setup. I hired labourers to fell tree and make fencing blocking any possible entry and exit points across the farm. I wished i could make videos of the boys panting hard as they were striking their cutlass against tree trunks. Omo, life is tough. .

More random images from the land preparation to crop cultivation.

For the spraying process, i normally use atleast 220 Litres per acre. For this current 3.5 Acres, I am making use of 750 litres of water with three farm labour. I estimate the job to be done and dusted within 4-6 hours timeline.

More random pictures. Embrace productivity today !

Imagine spraying herbicides into 07.30pm and leaving the farm past 8pm. I am extremely tired

Can you imagine that i interrogated a security man that works around the farm this project is setup and i asked him how come such a good land is unused. He said for the past four years the land was unfarmed because people did not have interest in farming.


Please push this thread to the FrontPage let's encourage more and more youths to take up agriculture.


Also, this thread will help inform farmers the way to go about Farming maize in June

Cc:

FarmTech

Pavore9


It will be nice to push this thread to FP to motivate youths to come into the agricultural space

This is how my feet looks like following the stain from the very dark soil. It's still very shocking to me

The dark soil shows that the land you are farming on is very fertile. Very rich loamy soil you're standing on. Cheers.

Interesting research. Let me carry seat and learn

Sp33i:
This is how my feet looks like following the stain from the very dark soil. It's still very shocking to me

No be your legs be the problem. Na the tire wey you carry sew shoe dey shock me. Whatever happened to actual protective wear? The terrain you operate in looks like somewhere snakes reside in so why leave your feet unprotected?

Banters aside, in your 3rd posting, you talked about how absence of rainfall is worsening. Some sections of the country are only just beginning to experience rainfall. Are you saying the rains will cease early this year?

Agriculture is easy if money is involved, all this herbicide, pesticide is not cheap I'm a living testimony, it's when I enter into farming I realized the reason why local farm product are costly than foreign food...

I don't get it. Do you mean planting maize in June and harvest in October? That's a whopping four months. I harvest my maize in 60-80 days, although it's just a small farm. I'm eagerly following this thread. I want to learn more.

Sp33i:
This is how my feet looks like following the stain from the very dark soil. It's still very shocking to me

You no suppose show us this photo of your feet o. Or you for put disclaimer: "graphic"

See as you take wan give me bad dreams!
Which kind legs be dis?😒😒😒😒

And I liked your farm before o...

When I open the thread and I read some of your post, I fell in love with what you are doing, I love farming especially maize farming. I travel to iseyin to purchase about 10 acres then, I did very well for about 2 years, towards the end of buhari regime, Fulani people became very dangerous, twice my farm was encroached on, and they pay dearly for it , Subsequently I begin to sense danger , when stories of how farmers are abducted some times even killed. Sold of the land and headed back home. I hope Fulani people are not around that area because they can ruin people investment.