Miscanthus learning event

We were invited to attend a field day just south of Greenfield at the Iowa State University Neely-Kinyon Research and Demonstration Farm in Adair county. There were several great topics on No-Till practices, cover crops, and miscanthus grass. Interesting to me the John Deere 2510H was exhibited for its low disturbance NH3 application. In a previous position as and engineer at John Deere, I had the opportunity to work on that machine when being first introduced to the market. The information is available at the Iowa learning farm website:
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/ilf/

We were able to speak a short bit about out experience of farming miscanthus, and it was great to see how interested the attendees were on the topic. 

There is also a like to a great Webinar on the site above by Emily Heaton from Iowa State University covering growing miscanthus grass as a dedicated bioenergy crop.

Lots of good sunshine, heat, and rain on the miscanthus plot. With the weeds knocked down, it is performing well. When we were at the field day mentioned above, it was great to see second year and first year miscanthus side-by-side. Sadly, my camera only saved blank images when I was there, so none to post today. It was good to see how our plants compare - they look like great first year plants. All we can expect now is for the plants to continue to do well, go dormant well in the fall, and really produce come biomass next year.

Weed Patrol

In early July the field was getting pretty weedy. After a few more days, the weeds were getting to be significantly bad and the field was sprayed before the weeds could do any damage. Below are some pictures several days after spraying. With close inspection, one can see some rows of grass in the weed patch. Note this post is a little dated, these pictures are from early July.  To spray the acre a pesticide mix was made up and applied using a 4-wheeler spray boom. Chemical applied was 2,4-D,  Atrazine, and AMS (ammonium sulfate).

You can sort of see cross rows of the grass among the dying weeds.

another cross row picture, one can see the taller miscanthus grass.

Slow and steady

On July 3rd, I was able to make it out to the farms and have a good look at the miscanthus plot. We were also lucky enough to have Emily Heaton from Iowa State University meet us to have a quick tour. We were able to discuss the plot, growing expectations, equipment & labor, and talk about general practices and shared lessons learned over years of growing miscanthus as well as other research and personal projects. I look forward to sharing our experiences into the future with what works, what doesn't, and how to logistically make a biomass crop really work.

As traditional Iowa farmers, my dad and I can easily look as our new grass plot and say that it looks terrible. The nearby corn is approaching shoulder height, and the grass is far behind other nearby established brome grass.  But this is a new plant, and we have to change our mindsets. Upon closer inspection, there are a lot pf plants coming, and they seem to be doing well.

First view entering the plot. Quite a bit of foxtail in this area, but this is right next to the driveway entrance to the field. Same vantage point as many other previous pictures.

This is at the top of the hill in the middle of the plot. A few really good rows are visible without a lot of weeds around. The tall skinny grass is the miscanthus, everything else are weeds.

 
There needs to be a broad-leaf pesticide application soon, but it really looks like the miscanthus might make it! Emily assured us that the stand of first year rhizome grass looked really good. Her pleasant surprise helped calm our original doubts.

I got a yardstick and took a couple pictures of a few plants. I would guess that about 75% of plants are up, and of them 50% or better look like these plants below with the rest still very small as if they just came out of the ground. It will be better to see again after the broad-leaves are killed off.

25" single plant lots of good looking leaves.

Good sized plant, 4+ separate plants coming out of the same rhizome.

Smaller plant here 10" in height and only a few leaves, this is the general middle range of plants out there at this time

Another good medium sized plant. The terrace grass is in the background.

Growing update

I missed posting a few weeks ago when I took some more pictures of the grass starting to poke through the soil. A week or so after planting temperatures started to climb, and with all the rain we have had, the volunteer foxtail grass started growing. we tried to keep it knocked down by harrowing the ground well until the miscanthus started to come through.
These pictures were all taken June 12, 2011, 25 days after the initial planting.

After all the rain, a pool of water sits in the low spot. This is the view from the field entrance

This is on the back side of the hill. You can see there was quite a bit of erosion that happened from the rain and no soil cover. The stubble that was  harrowed in was still in the top portion of the soil. There was not deep gullies created by the rain.

Here is a grass coming out. very new. This likely just came through in the last day or two.

A little hard to see but this and the two below attempt to row the grass by sight. They are there, but are so small you have to almost know what your looking for, The grass is about 3-6" tall and doming through at the spaced we planted. It look like there is a good percentage of survival rate of the rhizomes. They are just slow to get started.

Coon Rapids Enterprise

Page 5 of the Coon Rapids Enterprise, Thursday, May 26, 2011 has our story
Energy Grass growth test begins near Manning

Also, same story on the front cover of the Manning Monitor today, Thursday June 2, 2011.

Poking out

We finally have sunshine and heat! And wow is the gras growing! We dug up a few rhizomes over the past weekend to be sure they were growing. Sure enough they were starting to sprout out new shoots. Very small though. Since then we have had temps in the 90's and lots of sunshine (and some evening rain). The rhizomes I planted in a pot outside my back door sprouted on May 31st and haven't stoped since. I even planted it in junk clay soil to test the worst conditions I could.  So I am feeling much better about the rhizomes taking off.

Rain and publicity

Nothing but rain since planting. A few nice warm days in between, and overall good weather. Almost 4 inches of rain since planting. It would be nice to warm up some.

A nice article was included on page 9 of the May 28, 2011 Iowa Farmer Today. I couldn't find the article online though.