August was a
relatively mild month, temperatures fairly steady in the mid-30s C without any
high spikes. The river ceased flowing on 10th August which meant a
cessation of irrigation. It has ceased for the last few years now, and I am
beginning to expect that to be normal. The first few years we were here it was
more reliable. Fortunately, having bought the tractor mounted sprayer as
intended I was able to cart some water to the most susceptible olive trees –
young ones bearing a heavy crop, and keep them from losing their fruit.
What a
difference that sprayer has made. It was not off the tractor for over 3 weeks
from when I bought it. I sprayed against weeds all along the tree lines in less
than a day. It used to take me the a week with knapsack sprayers. I also had
complete protection from olive fly and gafa with the first clean crop I have
harvested.
I know many
people are opposed to using chemical protection of crops, but there really is
no alternative here. Neglected groves abound and they are a permanent source of
spreading diseases and pests. A loss of table quality fruit and the resulting
low oil yield from the damaged fruit that is harvested is simply not an option,
so spraying is necessary. I used the sprayer too to clean up the edges of the
tarmac drive where weeds, and particularly couch grass were beginning to damage
the surface. It also proved useful in spraying in and around buildings against
insects, as well as treating the goats for the same problems. Biting and
sucking insects, as well as flies, are a great problem for livestock in the
summer.
In the garden,
we continued to harvest lots of gherkins and then a year’s supply of the
peppers which were just beginning to fruit when I posted in July. They are
indeed a welcome new crop and very pleasant. To save anyone checking back to
July, Marconi Red is the variety we used. I only had nine plants, but they
cropped for many weeks. It is not a big blocky pepper, but has a very small
cavity and is easily prepared for cooking or freezing – so my wife tells me. I
just grow and harvest crops, she does the rest.
The potatoes
followed their usual form of not being particularly brilliant. The property
just seems not to be suited to grow them. Mona Lisa definitely outperformed the
Picasso – both potato varieties, nothing to do with art. I will try Mona Lisa
again next year, and maybe something else new. I just cannot accept that with
all my experience I am unable to produce our own potatoes for all year round
supply. Those available in the shops are of such poor quality that we eat them
much less frequently than we like, using rice or pasta instead.
The olive
harvest was rather late with very slow ripening of crops around about. I was
picking ripe fruits as I could because I knew it would take me too long if I waited
for full trees to ripen. The days become shorter and rain always stops picking.
I was storing the picked fruits in vats of water until I had sufficient to take
to the mill, when we received a sharp frost on the morning of 21st
November. This was followed by a mild few days and then a string of frosts
right through to 12th December. The first one had damaged all the
olives remaining on the trees so it became a race against time to pick them,
whatever their state of ripeness, before they disintegrated. Our son and family
were visitng for a week and I was almost finished, with only one remaining to
be picked, a very old and very tall tree, close to the house on the west side,
that acts as a sunscreen to the cellar entrance and shades part of the house too.
The day after their arrival we finished the tree, with my son doing all the
climbing. I did not purposely plan it that way but I was pleased not to have to
spend an hour climbing amongst the branches. His wife and I took care of the
lower fruit.
As expected the
oil yield was very low because of the frost damage to most of the crop,
Fortunately due to a total lack of insect and fungal damage the fruit had
retained a reasonable amount of structure and was acceptable at the mill. After
allowing for the miller’s 18% processing deduction we ended up with 10 kilos of
fruit to the litre. This meant a production of one litre to approximately eight
and a half kilos of fruit. Very acceptable under the circumstances. At first I
thought I might have been looking at a loss of much of the unharvested crop,
and if I had not sprayed the resultant lower yield of even the sound fruit
would have been a disaster.
