Used My Prized Chopper for Garden Work

C

coote

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Apr 3, 2006
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Tomato planting season is nearly here in New Zealand. This year I intend training at least some of my plants up strings. I will tie the bottom of the strings to a peg driven into the earth next to the plant. So I needed some pegs.

I slung a BK9 on a baldric cord under my jacket prior to taking the dog for a walk. We walked to an overgrown area where there is a lot of gorse (a pest plant). I whacked a few branches off and carried them home. I found that I could cut right through some of these branches with just one blow from the mighty '9. I then sharpened them ready for use.

Below is a picture of the pegs. The plants you see are mostly tomatoes. I really only have room for about ten or a dozen plants, but growing tomatoes has become a bit of an obsession and I'm trying to find varieties that suit my environment. I grew maybe 100 plants from about twenty different varieties of open-pollenated seed. I might be able to squeeze 22 plants into our yard, and I will give the rest of them away. I'm hoping that the folks I give them to will label them correctly and inform me of any outstanding performance that they experience. So far one of the most reliable varieties has been Stupice. It is an excellent cooking tomato and makes great sauce. When eaten fresh off the vine though, the flavour has been fairly bland. We grow some really tasty cherry types, but these are a bit small for processing. My 'ultimate' tomato will be medium-sized and have a fairly meaty, dry texture so it is well-suited for making sauce and drying. it will also have a mind-blowing flavour straight off the vine, as well as being healthy, reliable and productive. I still have a few good gardening years left in me, and I will have some fun trying to find this ideal tomato. I'm beginning to think that I should be networking with other local tomato enthusiasts rather than just scouring the net for glowing reviews. The most experienced gardeners in my area may not spend much time on a computer.

GorsePegs_zpsg6vhnoed.jpg
 
Its always good seeing the 9 being used for different tasks. I wish i could grow a decent garden. Thanks for sharing.
 
Hey Coote.....

One of the many delights of hanging out in here are the posts from the Southern Hemisphere..... You and the the Aussie cousins are a real joy in so many ways and I love picking up the little details of life in your area......

I have read about gorse my whole life and had no idea of what it is other than something that showed up around heather...... So your casual mention of an invasive species a half a world away from Scotland finally got me to look it up!.....

Anyway, thank you.....

I never did the "string thing" with my tomato gardening but will be interested in how it works out...... My favorite two tricks for fantastic tomatoes is to use a bit of blood or blood meal and a little fish emulsion ..... seems to work wonders.....the only drawback is that it draws Raccons and possum like all get out..... watering it in well for a couple of days helps a lot...... The blood meal is, if memory serves, about five percent nitrogen and the dead fish is 5-1-1..... both seem to have a multiplier effect however.....I started to mix a bit of the old fish guts and the blood meal in a bucket wth the sifted compost I used as starter and kept in the shed away from the coons and possums for a few days until it had lost it's most delightful aroma..... I am still trying to forget praying the entire yard...... Almost checked into a hotel for a day ot two...LOL....

All the best ....

Ethan
 
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Gorse grows extremely well down here. It is a legume/nitrogen fixer. In some areas where our own native plants can be stunted, the gorse can grow almost 'normally'.

While it is a pest plant that invades farmers' fields, it is also an effective pioneer plant helping to re-forest cleared areas. The gorse grows very quickly providing shade and nutrients for slower native species that eventually can push their way up through the gorse canopy.

Here is some gorse bloom and fresh spring growth:
GorseBloom_zpsqjjj5xhf.jpg


Sometimes animals like sheep, goats and maybe deer will feed on new gorse growth. (The new growth is relatively soft.... it takes a while for the spikes to harden). With this animal browsing, individual gorse bushes can form 'topiary' shapes and they can be nicely rounded up as far as the animals can reach.

As gorse matures, the inside and undersides of the bush seem to die off. Bushes like this are quite flammable. As a kid I was allowed to burn some of these free-standing bushes on my Uncle and Aunt's farm. The fire and smoke can be quite spectacular.... particularly to a ten year old with a box of matches. A gorse scrub fire can burn really quickly. We have hills behind our city that have burned more than once. Burning gorse does not eradicate it. Fresh growth appears from the ground in a comparatively short time. Seed production is prolific.

Here is some typical dead undergrowth:
DeadGorse_zpsp5eiwyog.jpg


Gorse can grow fairly big. Although I've never measured it, I've seen bushes with trunks that are maybe eight inches in diameter. Here is a photo I took this morning on my 'dog walk'. This is a low forest of gorse I can walk through. If I need pegs for the garden, this is where they might come from:
GorseForest_zpsqn6onae1.jpg


Wild pigs often hang out in gorse. Hunters become accustomed to travelling through it. Although the spines break off and fill my clothing, I find that I don't get too many spines break off in my skin if I'm careful. Crawling under bigger bushes is sometimes a good option.

The plant that is the biggest problem to me is blackberry. It is tough. The spines can be hooked and they really grab and penetrate. In the heat of the chase I may not be so aware of the damage, but for a few days after some hunts I can be squeezing and digging out a lot of spikes.

Here's a slightly out-of-focus blackberry vine:
BlackberryGorse_zpsl9vk2urs.jpg


An invasion of young blackberry. Soon this will be virtually impenetrable without gloves, protective clothing and a sharp machete (unless you are chasing a pig):
AdvancingBlackberry_zps3g6lyuld.jpg
 
I agree that fish emusion and blood & bone are great fertilizers. I've used both of them. I used to work at a fish processing factory where fish meal and emulsion were produced. The wet fishmeal in the garden can be a bit smelly and roving animals do take an interest in it.

I make a liquid fertilizer from comfrey. I stuff leaves into a plastic rubbish bin, and cover them with rainwater. They break down eventually into a dark liquid. The mix can really stink.

I also, ahem, pee in a milk jug (not the ones in the fridge)... and then use it diluted with water.

Although I haven't done any scientific tests, I've been really impressed with using the liquid that drains from my small worm farm. Unfortunately my farm drowned during a particularly wet period, but it should recover if I work at it.

Recently I've been thinking about the need for a phosphate fertilizer, and I've been reflecting on all the phosphate-rich animal bones I leave in the hills after successful hunts. After my last hunt I brought some goat bones back home. I borrowed my mother's 8 quart pressure cooker and extracted some excellent stock which formed a jelly when cool. I then put the bones on my barbeque grill to char so that I could crush them to use in the garden. Even though the bones had been steamed for a long time, they soon created quite a blaze in the barbeque.... with flames coming out from the vents in the hood. I didn't want to spray cold water on my barbeque, and I didn't want to create a mess with a fire extinguisher. I grabbed a jar of baking soda and sprinkled it over the flames. It worked really well and the flames subsided immediately. The smoke re-ignited within a short time, but after the next sprinkling of soda it went out completely. Most of the bones were reduced to charcoal.

After doing a bit more research, I learned that bones can become quite soft after lengthy pressure cooking. We bought some chicken frames to make more stock, and I steamed them for about ten minutes. I then removed the meat and set it aside... added more water and steamed the bones for another fifty-five minutes or so. At the end of this time I could crush most of the bones between my fingers. The crushed bone would have been great for the garden, but the dog claimed it. Yesterday I ordered my own large pressure cooker and I look forward to more experimentation.... and some delicious, quick meals.
 
Ughhh... Blackberries... I have TONS of them around my place. I could fill 5 gallon buckets with them. I pick them, I can them, I eat lots of them, I hunt around them and while you would think I love them it is certainly a love/hate relationship. First reason is the prickers. They can tear me up. The second is ticks. Arghh... The lowest creature on the planet. If I am stomping around in the blackberries either hunting or picking them I have to tie my pants at the bottom, tuck my shirt in and ideally wear some clothes treated with permethrin. I just found another one of those bloodsuckers on me the other day and it must have been there for a couple of days before I found it. I had juust been out looking for bear sign. It was a mature female deer tick, the vector for lyme disease, and I have read that 1/3 of deer ticks here carries Lyme disease. So far so good. :-/ Ticks are the second most common disease vector in the world after mosquitos. Do you have ticks in NZ? The final reason I don't lilke them is when you have as many around your house as i do it attracts bears. There have been bears on my property all summer. Of course, now it's bear season and the blackberries are gone and I haven't seen a single bear since the start of the season. Thanks for nothing balckberries!
 
Nope, no ticks down here. And by the sound of it, that is a good thing.

We're quite fortunate when it comes to nuisance or poisonous creatures. We have a couple of venomous spiders, but they generally aren't fatal for most folks. No snakes.

If it weren't for the prickly bushes, it would be safe enough to roll around naked in the undergrowth.
 
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