What Roof? ... The End of an Era at the "Pepper Plot"

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.

A curtain of wrecked polythene

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.

Ready to send to Market

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. 

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. 

 

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. 

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!