Annie Hope

Thanks for these quick replies.  So basically if it is a runner from an older plant that has not put out canes at is base before, it is a new plant?    Could you grow raspberries by every few years putting down beside the old plant two one metre rows of weed matt with a gap between the two, and letting the rows make a new row of raspberries in the gap, and slowing ""Walking" them across the garden bed over the decades?

I am trying to match the advicd that raspberry plants last about 10 years with the fact that they put forth canes very year from roots and are propegated from root canes.  How do you start a new "young" plant?  I am wanting to start a new raspberry crop in a flood free zone. (as we have very bad water table flooding at times that sits for months)

I have self-grown kiwifruit plants in pots for their fifth year, among other things, waiting for a horizontal trellis to be made for them.  I have heaps of post, batten and wire fenceline, however, that a could grow them along.  Is there anyone out there that has successfully grown kiwifruit vertically along a fenceline?

Hi,

(Partly because there are so many modern options to chose from) I am wanting to replicate traditional French Mesclun mixes.

I have found the below details, but still have some questions.  Is the Provencal mix ratios according to seed weight or volume or seed number?  Or should it be the ratio of the plant according to size at picking?

What about the ratio of the other two mixes? Would four parts lettuce to one part each of everything else be about right?

This website also has nasturtium leaves and flowers, is this traditional in French salad: https://lavierustic.com/__trashed/

DESCRIPTION OF MIXES...

https://harvesttotable.com/mesclun_the_french_mix/


Provencal Mesclun (originated in Porvence, France): includes lettuce, fine curled endive, rocket and chervil. The traditional recipe calls for one part arugula, two parts chervil, one part curly endive, and four parts lettuce. It is made up entirely of leaves, mild tasting or zesty.

• Mesclun (originated in northern France): various lettuces and endive cultivars and cress, corn salad, and spinach.

• Nicoise (originated in Nice, France): Mediterranean salad leaves including dandelion, upland cress, rocket, chicory, lettuce and curly endive./

Thanks for this - L. Johnson, what other mulches would you recommend for annuals?  Out of interest, would you use woodchip for cane berries?

Is there anyone out there that uses woodhchip on a market garden.  Looking online, it seems that most market gardens (esp small ones) use bare earth rows (esp for things like salad greens when many seeds a direct sown) or rows with weedmat and holes in them for putting transplants.

Transplanting could happen in woodchip easily, but what about direct sow?

I am wanting to resurrect a raspberry patch that was planting 5 years ago and neglected due to various crises.

One thing is that it will need both wind and bird shelter.  I would also like a semi movable system to rotate  wind / bird / frost protection.

Hardwood is not available here in New Zealand - it is all chemical treated radiata pine or untreated can rot within a year.

Make arches with 1.95m x 4,5m cement reinforcing mesh (similar to cattle panels) and put netting or plastic on top.  This  sounds the easiest, esp something I could set up alone.

The two main options I am looking at are firstly metal T-posts / star-pickets / Y-posts / Waratahs.  2.7m high hammered into 1.8m high (6ft).  Then put caps on top, and wire in the top rung, and pull netting over them.  For a larger garden this would be more cost effective than multiple arches in terms of netting required, but not so easy to put up / move.

I am also thinking of moving the rasperries to an existing  "post and batton" fence line away from animals, and stretching netting over the fence.  The wood was treated, but is now at least 30 years old, and judging by how many are rotten, I think most preserving chemicals have gone.

As an option in a few years, I am also looking at the 6m+  high poplars that grew through the holes in the plastic planter bags and weedmat below in our tree nursery before they could be planted out.  What if I was to plant poles in a 3m x 3m grid, and when the trunk got to 5cm / 2" diamater, I cut them at 2m high,  and then kept the side branches well trimmed for goat food, do you think I could successfully use them as living poles to support netting?  My uncle had a wire fence line were many of the fence posts had grown into huge poplar trees with the wire grown into them.  

A friend that is going to Fiji and is looking at owning a goat or cow or milking made the comment that cows in cool climates can give 24L of milk where in hot countries they can only give 2L.  I presume this is meant to be based on per milking and twice a day milking.

I raised the issue that the cows that can give 24L of milk are also fed a lot more food to get the 24L of milk.

This made me thinking - how do the two compare when these are considered...

- How much feed is required per litre of milk in a 50 and 4L per day cow?

- IF you also value the calf and plan to breed them for meat, how does this affect the equation?  (E.g. What is the total food value of 1 dairy cow and one calf, or 3 dual purpose cows and 3 calves and what is the feed required to produce them).

- Could 50L per day be obtained from a fully grass-grazed cow or do intensive supplements need to be given as well?  If they do, what is the environmental cost of the extra milk?

- Does temperature really affect milk production that much?

Hi,  This is taking this post in a slight tangent.  I already have 8 acres divided into 10 paddocks.   We have just reaching the longest day in New Zealand, and I have a few months of pasture in well fenced back paddocks even if a sudden draught was to start, and so far we have had enough summer rain to make the water table flood.    At the front paddock where a car went through the front fence and a tree fell on the side fence (so not about to put the animals in there in a hurry) is heaps of long grass in seed.  

I can understand using rotational grazing to avoid buying hay, but if there is excess grass standing there from Spring excess, does it not make sense to hand cut it and get regrowth for winter, plus a store of hay, rather than to leave it till winter?   Our winters go to -3 overnight, so we have frost that melts by mid-morning at times, but never enough to kill the grass totally.