My first maize harvest

17 January

Today I went with Matt, Nathan and Terrance (a casual worker) to  gather a sample of the maize harvest at Lawn Road.

Nathan and Matt would go in and cut two rows of 2m in length. Terrance and I had to go in a carry the maize sample out, weigh it, record it, and take a sub-sample of 6 plants.

This was hard and hot work, as the maize was way over my head and very dense. In the end I stayed to do the weighing and recording while Terrance did the carrying. Once Nathan finished he also carried some.

Once the maize had been done we then had to take a soil sample of each plot. The soil was rock hard and didn’t want to come out of the tube. I had to get creative at getting it out. I only had to do 2 plots, but I was still the last one out!

Back at the shed, we sieved the soil to 2mm, so Matt could do some soil testing with it. The soil had to be weighed into a 20g sub-sample, dried for 4 days. Then 10ml of soil is mixed with 30ml water, put in a mixer for 5 minutes, then tested for nitrogen levels using a testing strip.

The day was not over. Because the mulcher was damaged, we had to cut each plant into small bits to be dried. There were 20 samples of 5 plants to cut. I cut only 3 samples as I used secateurs, and the guys used machetes.

A hard day. Definitely needed my water that day!