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Like the bones of a bleached whale |
The recent Spring weather has been memorable for a number of
reasons, but not entirely pleasurable. Unfortunately the very strong winds over
the past Month have made garden preparation difficult, but the resulting damage
from Thursday's "Big Blow" finished off the remains of our Commercial
Gardening operation. The last of our Polyhouse roofs started to split in the
middle on the Monday and on Thursday it started to tear off completely and
began a process akin to unzipping a jacket. The roofs were 55metres long,
14metres wide and the twin skin polythene had to be imported from Canada and it
was an awesome spectacle to see these huge pieces of polythene being smashed
around like little pieces of a plastic shopping bag.
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A curtain of wrecked polythene |
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Fortunately (and unlike the 1st damaged roof that was destroyed a
couple of years ago) the pieces have remained stuck to one another and are now
lying quite tidily to one side of the building, completely out of the way! Our
task now will be to completely strip the existing plants, the growing wires and strings out of the ground
before it becomes a nightmare of weeds and unwanted vegetation. Amazingly
enough, we have had Capsicum plants still producing a reasonable crop 9 years
after being planted and although we haven't been using the fertigation system
in recent years a regular watering has produced some good size fruit.
Unfortunately the birds, possums and other flying insects have had easy access
to the planted area and it is only the sheer number of plants (1200) that have
meant we could pick anything edible. We had anticipated the roof being
destroyed at some stage, merely because of the length of time since it was
installed and without regular maintenance, the degradation through sunlight,
wind and rain etc, we were surprised it lasted so long.
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Ready to send to Market |
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During our time as Commercial Growers we were able to produce
excellent quantities of Capsicums that were collected by truck twice a week and
dispatched to Auckland to be auctioned off. Over the years we developed an
excellent rapport with our marketing company and we often had comments that our
produce was top class and had a number of regular buyers who sought out our
label. The company had been called Racecourse Gardens after the old racecourse
that used to be in Waipu, but we called our company "The Pepper Plot"
which was a play on words, i.e. Capsicums are related to Peppers and we grew
them on a Plot of land. Needless to say some folk misread it as the
"Pepper Pot", but we were included in a farming magazine once in a
list of quirky Agricultural businesses. There was "The Country
Pumpkin" a
sheep farm named "Ewesful Acres" and a few other funnies whose names
elude me now.
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Our top quality Capsicums |
For a couple of years we experimented with a range of colours including red,yellow,orange,purple,white and brown, but we could never grow enough good quality except for the reds and yellows. Capsicums are related to potatoes and
tomatoes and we had to contend with battling the same diseases such as
botrytis, white fly, green bugs, snails etc and because they love warm
conditions and we grew them through Winter to get the premium price, we had
horrific power bills for our two large electric heating units.
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Mother Nature's Work |
Soon after we began growing the Government of the day decided in
it's wisdom to allow the importing of Aussie Capsicums, which were grown
outdoors all the year through in Queensland and because the quantities were so
huge, the domestic prices collapsed. There were a number of issues with the
imported Capsicums including a number of endemic Australian pests such as
Western Flower Thrip and a type of Nematode and the imports were supposed to be
soaked in dimethoate for 2 minutes before being exported. Many of these pests
are now rampant in New Zealand and it shows that these controls weren’t very
effective, which is what we said at the time!) The final nail in our commercial
venture coffin was the proliferation of huge glasshouses in New Zealand
supposedly growing for export. Some of these huge enterprises were larger than
our entire farm and with the new technology available they were able to grow
huge quantities each season and their option to dump large quantities on the
local market meant we just couldn't compete.
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The End of an Era |
Surgery for Melanoma in 2001, restricted my involvement for a period and
then we were lucky enough to purchase our publishing business, which resolved
the crisis for us immediately. We now spend our "Garden Time" growing vegetables for ourselves and have become self
sufficient for most of the year. Gardening is fun and is an enjoyable way of
getting outside for some fresh air as our publishing business involves a lot of
time in front of a computer and it is a great feeling to harvest a crop of
fresh produce, which makes any effort worth while.
I can't imagine never having
a garden and the old commercial growing area will be host to new banana plants,perhaps another Avocado or even a nice Granny Smith Apple tree!