The Old Wagonhouse

The Old Wagonhouse

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Agricultural practices for September / October

For the weekend farmer and or town fruit garden owner maybe a few tips on what to be done.

1.  Fruit thinning.  Usually with our lovely weather our trees produce to much fruit.  To get better size and quality fruit you have to thin.  With peaches it is usually a space between fruit of about 15cm and with apricot and plums a space of 8 to 10cm is fine.  This creates enough space for the fruit to develope and you will pick definately bigger fruit this year.
2.  Fertilizing.  This is the tricky one.  If the trees do get enough water they will usually have enough vigour in Calitzdorp.  To help the tree a bit and to replace the Nitrogen and Potassium which the tree took out of the soil with the removal of last years crop you have to add a bit.  The commercial farmers will tell you that with apricots and other stone fruit you have to replace about 2kg of nitrogen per tonne fruit produced per hectare (800 trees per ha).  The potasium replacement will be about 2.5kg per tonne fruit per ha.  Remember compost never replaces the fertilizer and usually just act as an add-on.  Your trees will definately act on good fertilizing habits.  The compost adds a lot of organic matter which sometimes include nitrogen and potasium in very small amounts but never enough for the plants needs.
3.  Micro elements.  Sometimes plants especially peach trees show some yellow leaves and that is usually a shortage in micro elements.  Here you must look for additions of small amounts of magnesium (Engelse sout) and iron.  A spray of boron and zinc can not do the tree harm either.  Most of these is available in our soils but because of our high pH soils not  very accesable for the plant.
4.  General spraying with a backpack spray (16lt) cost you about R170 at the local Landmark,  can also be done.  Spray for most fungal growth with Mancozeb and Sulphur (Kumulus) base sprays.  Do incude also something for insects as after the wet winter and warm spring their numbers are increasing quickly. 
5.  Do remember to spray for fruit flies and or put out the 'lamp olie / water' mixture to keep their numbers intact.

The attack of the Fruit Fly

 The first fruit is allready visible and so far the setting looks great.  It seems as if we did have a warmer and drier August and it the warmer weather really hit us in the mid of September.  This is also what the long term forecast for the Southern Cape predicts.  To look more into the future it seems that the months of September and October will be drier than usual with the chance of only 80% of the normal rainfall. 
The weather will change in November with the rainfall being 120% of the normal.  This means problems especially for the fruit farmers and these days the onion seed growers. 

With more rainfall comes higher possibilities of fungi growth and insect counts.  Talking about the six legged creatures: Do you also find that the mosquitoes are more active earlier this year.  I was surprised to also find the first fruit fly in my plum orchard.  This is a menace to the local farming community and we really want to encourage the people in town with the one and two fruit tree gardens to help us in this battle. 
The last few years it seems as if the numbers of the fruit flies really took off.  There is a few possibilities but the two most common is also the most expensive.  In the Boland / De Doorns areas where the table grapes and fresh fruit production is huge the release infertile males which leads to females being not fertilized and thus less fruit flies being born.  This is an very expensive exercise. 
The best option is probably the second one.  Spraying.  Hire and aeroplane and spray the whole town.  This is a practice done in the Americas with great succes and can easily be applied here.  It still stay very expensive and spraying residue will be in the air for some time.  It is not harmfull and very safe. Again it is expensive. 
Now you ask what can I do to keep these menaces out of my town garden to help myself getting better fruit and keeping the population of fruit flies down for my farming neighbour.  There is two possilities.
1.  Spray a product with active ingredient Mercaptithion at least once every week.  You can put it in any open container add some water according to the dosage on the bottle and add some sugar (the one which you put into your coffee).  This will draw the fruit fly to the poison and the kill it.  The Mercaptithion will break up very easily in direct sunlight so this must be done weekly so that you keep the population down.   You can start as early as October.
2.  Some of the older farmer do have a other solution.  You take a two litre plastic  bottle like a coke or the other famous beverage in town which bottles are distributed everywhere in town.  Cut a few holes in the bottle in the top part.  Keep the bottom intact.  In it you pour some Parafin or Lamp Oil with water and hang this container in the fruit trees in your garden.  This mixture you can replace every two to three weeks.  You will find a lot of our insect friends in there. 
I want to take the opportunity to really ask all the town small holding farmers to take trouble in this fight against the six legged organisms.  They don't contribute anything to our fruit industry and really create a big problem especially to the late season cultivar fruits.

Town of Dreams



 
Well the last few months anyone visting our little village would have noticed a lot of work done on the overall look of the town.  Barrels with succulents later being replaced by other plants with some more thorns to take the possilbe use as seating out of the equation.  This is all done from lately a project of 'Droom vir 'n Dorp' which started in a small town of Bonnievale with huge success.  The application of the same principles to Calitzdorp was done with the driving force of the local Tourism association.
Withoek and James of Spekboom Cottages decided to make our contribution by replanting the edge of the road which enters the town from the North - that is the Groenfontein side of town.
We planted two rows of trees with some aloes and other succulents and also installed a drip irrigation system.  The plan is later to introduce more plants and also some resting places for the community of Besemkop on their way home after shopping on a Saturday or a walk to town any other time.  We found that their is not many places for a person without transport to rest if he / she walks into town and or returns. 
The trees planted are all plants made from cuttings by the workers at Withoek.  There will be a few Wild Fig trees,  Olive (Mission) trees,  an Oak,  Pepper and Karee.  An real collection of types found on the Herminashof property. 
We hope that this will better the view for the incoming traffic from this beautiful valley in our town.  Anyone who want to contribute a plant feel welcome.  Advice is also very much appreciated.

Withoek Vegetable project

At Withoek we decided with the current economic conditions as well as current state of employment we will try and produce at least some of the food for the community.  Withoek Boerdery will provide the land and water and the workers as well as community members the work force. 
The plan is that the work would be done after hours and that the workers will take the responsibility for the day to day running of the garden. 
The garden which will grow eggplants,  cabbage,  tamatoes,  pumpkin,  beans and carrots will cover about 0.3ha and will be drip irrigated.  Let us hope this project is a success story.