Plans for the 2026-2027 Carbon Positive summer crop
Our 2026-2027 summer crop will be a crop of maize grown for Nicolle Grain. The ultimate destination is your plate of nachos, once the grain has been turned into corn chips. We’re grateful that Patrick and Tom Nicolle have agreed to work with us this summer, providing an alternative to the sweetcorn crop that had been planned prior to McCain Foods’ factory closure.
The plan for the coming season is an adaptation of the sweetcorn plan that was our first crop in the Carbon Positive trial. One change is that none of the treatments have been grazed over winter. We have sent soil samples to Hill Labs for Basic, Sulphur profile and potentially available nitrogen PMN testing. We will use those results and our regular soil nitrate monitoring to determine the crop nutrition programme for each treatment.
* fertiliser rates to be reviewed when lab test results received.
# use later in crop if needed for escapes. Maybe the interrow cover crop mulch in the strip-till plots will be enough.
With rain in mid-August, we already missed our planned spray-out date! We wanted a 6-week interval before cultivation. Given the crop is maize and the harvest date is less important than for process crops, we are not overly concerned, but we do want to get the crop out early enough for good winter cover crop establishment in 2027.
Our latest soil nitrate testing showed that levels continue to be very low and often non-detectable (<5ppm) using the Nitrate Quick Test. They do suggest that the regenerative plots might be a little higher than the others, perhaps a reflection of the vetch component in the cover crop. It will be interesting to see if there are any differences in the PMN in the Conventional and Hybrid ryegrass, and Regenerative triticale and vetch plots.
We will have regular field walks so everyone has opportunity to view the trials firsthand. Make sure you’re signed up to receive notifications.
We recall that 2022-2023 was a la Nina year and 2026 -2027 is looking to be the opposite, an el Nino year. You may recall that our 2022 sweetcorn was impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. In the end, the yields in the treatments were good, but we don’t know how the flooding impacted any of our results.
