N-Power Update: Good Agricultural Practices on Maize Production For N-Agro

This post was written by an N-power beneficiaries after his training on Maize Production as an Agric extension worker.

Planning is very important when going into farming, organize your site before farming season. Site selection, Land preparation and setting up a budget for hiring workers on your farm is also what you need to make arrangement for.

WHEN PREPARING FOR MAIZE PRODUCTION CONSIDER THESE:

• First thing to do when farming maize is to do site selection
• Know whether the area is prone to flood
• Know the size of your farm. Are you farming large scale or for personal consumption
• Decide on what variety of maize to use
• Then do land clearing/land preparation
• When the rain is well established then you can start planting
• From May to July you can plant your Maize

MAIZE VARIETY IN THE MARKET:
One of the Maize high yield variety in the market is the "30F87". The potential yield of this variety is 180bags per hectare

The Normal seed to use is 20kg per hectare and farmers should space by planting 1 seed per hole and 25cm between plant and 75cm between ridges and your farm should have about 133 ridges per hectare. When your spacing is correct you will have 53000 to 53200 stands.

Make sure that your planting dept should not be less than 5cm deep

HOW TO APPLY FERTILIZER
Apply 8g of mpk at the middle of 2 plant and buried the fertilizer. Fertilizer is applied at the middle between plant so that it will evenly distribute nutrients to plants and Maize should germinate from 7 to 14days after planting

SIMPLE SOIL SAMPLING AND TESTING TECHNIQUES FOR INCREASING YIELD.

• Before farming on the land, take the soil to lab and test
• Take the soil from every angle/potion and not from one spot.
• Before taking sample know the farm size
• Label your package soil sample
  Sample should be taking before the raining start.