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‘Greenfingers’ here got taken to task for last week claiming that wife Annie,
‘roughly chopped surplus tomatoes mixed with spring onions and froze them’.
Seems I was not observing the middle step of simmering until soft… very important
Annie tells me.
Another member of the household, wanted to know why all the fuss with preserving our
tomatoes when they are only 69 cents a can at the supermarket anyhow. Sure, but these
don’t have any pesticide residues in them and as a kid who grew up working in market
gardens at ‘The Marion’ I can tell you I never saw a commercial crop (here or in
Europe) that did not get sprayed with something and monitoring produce to its withholding
date was non-existent! I see no evidence that anything has changed.
The root crops such as turnips and Swedes, parsnips, carrots, radish and spring onions,
can all be sown now into well dug soil. The seed of all these is sown direct into drills
at least 20cm (8") apart. Any closer and it’s too hard to chip the weeds between
the rows.
A concerned reader was asking last week about a safe herbicide to use so that any
run-off into their pond would not affect frogs and fish. Some local water catchment groups
have been using Bioactive® by Monsanto which is a second-generation glyphosate product
and has been in use for 10 years in Europe because it is claimed to be non-harmful to
water creatures including frogs. If interested Monsanto 1800 639 899 can provide a product
fact sheet.
With the recent and sure to be repeated heat wave, water at night, since on a day of
40°C at least 60% of the water you put out will evaporate before it soaks in. The other
aid is to use kelp or seaweed extracts on seedlings and vegies that make the plants more
turgid and able to withstand heat and frost also!
Black Lawn Beetles and their larvae are busy feeding on my prize Kikuyu lawn at present
and ‘London-to-a-brick’ they are in yours too. They eat the lawn roots and make
your lawn look like it always needs watering. The treatment is to sprinkle granules of
‘Lawn Beetle Blitz’ (active agent chlorpyrifos) water it in for at 20 minutes
and keep the pets off the area for at least a day. Do not harvest the lawn clippings for
compost or feed it to your chooks for at least 3 days!
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