Unknown 1 fig tree

Update 2017/05/29: Sold as a Kadota, but most likely Col de Dame Grise?


I've recently found out that fig trees do well in containers, so this Kadota fig recently joined the garden:

It's a reasonable size - about 1 metre tall, and is in the largest pot I could find. There are about 5 figs on it that haven't fallen off yet.

Apparently the Cape Brown and Cape White are good dwarf variety fig trees for containers, and I will get these set up in pots as soon as some healthy specimens are available.

Already planted in the ground in the garden is a White Genoa which is slowly settling in after a year of neglect standing in a black plastic bag. There is space for another in the ground and I'd like to plant a variety called Parisian, but this might not be readily available so will probably end up as a Black Mission.

The fact figs do well (or at least OK) in pots, gives some scope for experimentation.

Update 2017/01/10:

Showing good signs of growth after about two weeks in the pot, with new leaves on many of the stems.

Apparently this variety is rarely seen without figs, making it difficult for young plants to get established. Does this mean knocking them off? Reluctant to do so...

Got myself a Cape White,and an Avignon, but the Cape Browns for sale still don't look healthy - they're supposedly very susceptible to the fig mosaic virus which messes up their leaves.

Update 2017/01/16:

Description from "The Fig" by Ira Condit (1947):

"Dottato (Kadota, White Pacific, White Endich). Dottato is the principal drying fig of southern Italy where it has probably been grown for centuries. It may be the same variety which Pliny said was brought by Lucius Vitellius from Soria to his villa at Alba. The name comes from the Italian fico addattato, or adapted fig, undoubtedly referring to its wide adaptability to soils and climatic conditions as well as to possible uses. The literature on this fig, its history, culture, and uses has been reviewed by Condit in 1920 and 1927. In California it forms the basis of the canned fig industry and is also marketed both fresh and dried. The tree bears two crops.

Brebas large, pyriform with a distinct, thick neck; color green or yellowish green; meat and pulp violet tinted, sweet and rich; quality excellent. Figs of the second crop medium, spherical to short-pyriform; stalk up to $4 incn long; eye medium, closed by scales, often sealed with a drop of clear gum; skin greenish yellow to lemon-yellow; pulp amber, almost seedless, sweet but lacking character. In cool coastal districts, figs pyriform, grass green, with violet-tinted meat and pulp."

Update 2017/01/21:

An ichneumon fly caught in the act of sucking sap out of a baby Kadota fig. It sat there for a good half hour, just like a fruit mosquito. Struggled to get focus.

The insect was about 20mm long and darkish brown. The fig it was attacking maybe 2mm across. It looked like it knew exactly what it was doing.

Update 2017/02/20:

Update 2017/03/25:

Unexpectedly!

These have suddenly started getting bigger and ripening.. and to think I nearly pulled them off a month or two back.

It's getting quite cool in the evenings and the tree isn't getting that much sun at this time of the year.

The breba crop for next season?

In passing, the figs all ripened, but didn't taste that wonderful.

Update 2017/03/27:

I'm not sure this is actually a Kadota? The colour and shape of the ripening fruit are wrong, as is the date of ripening - it's very late. In the Lotter fig book, the most likely candidate is a Brown Turkey fig, but who knows?

I'm starting to strongly suspect that none of the labels on the figs I have purchased are even remotely correct!

Update 2017/05/27:

This fig is definitely not a Kadota. I bought a real Kadota a few days back from Starke Ayres, and it looks nothing like this. So, what did I buy from Sunnyside?

Update 2017/05/29:

Perhaps a Col de Dame Grise? The following description/characteristics seem true, apart from the flesh colour:

"One of the latest ripening figs. The main crop ripens from March onwards and sometimes even into winter."

"Rated as one of the best tasting fig varieties available. Keep in mind that taste differs though.

It is not overly sweet with distinctive savoury undertones."

Update 2017/05/29:

Or a Brown Turkey? The thin neck of this fig isn't right for a CDG....
Or Brunswick?

Thysanoptera damage to green peppers?

Most of my green pepper and chilli plants are showing signs of thrips damage - the new growth and flower buds are wrinkled and unhealthy looking, even though the rest of the plant looks OK. Any fruit that sets from the buds is misshape, with scars. This damage is probably due to thrips, but I'm not sure... and have no real idea what to do about it. Looking at Google images, there is only a partial match - there isn't any leaf "spotting" associated with the crinkling.

I thought I'd got away with no garden pests this season, as there were zero aphids to be seen the whole growing period. A few slugs in the early days, but they diminished over time.

Maybe all associated with growing tomatoes nearby? A virus?

Update 2016/04/27:

The C.F. Jacot-Guillarmod Thysanoptera collection. Boxes of microscope slides with the thrips mounted under cover slips in canada balsam.

The catalogue - these are mounted cuttings of journal/newspaper articles/snippets on A4 sheets in 3 ring binders. My dad had a formidable correspondence with entomologists from all over the world and exchanged articles with them. It mirrors the sort of thing he did with articles on Basutoland/Lesotho, which are in the Cory Library.

Thanks to John Midgley, the entomologist at the Albany Museum for showing me around. The top floor of the John Hewitt wing has changed since I was a youngster visiting my dad. Gone is the evocative smell of Ethyl Acetate, mothballs and Xylene. Closure of a sort, I suppose.

Cow apocalypse 2

Raided again last night - they definitely climbed over the low wall (one metre high about) as evidenced by a trail of cow pats. More damage this time - mielies gone, beetroots uprooted, kale munched, other grape vine nibbled down, lemon and lime tree munched quite vigorously. The narrow passageways between tyres were no deterrent this time.

Strung up some security braided wire to increase height of fence, but this might just lead to ripped down gate post if cows blunder through it. It'll have to do until new year, when it can be done properly.

I wonder what attracts them from a distance of maybe 30 or 40 metres? The low wall is on the diagonal opposite of the garden area, with an intervening house. Some sort of cownip?

Update 17h00:

An observed break in attempt, foiled by the newly strung wire. The perpetrator is quite a large (tall) brown and white tollie, who eventually gave up and headed down the street with his three chums. Lets see if this deterrent lasts...

I suppose this is a big issue in rural areas.

Cow apocalypse

 This being Grahamstown, where quite large herds of cows roam the streets, it was, I suppose, just a matter of time.

Last night or early this morning, my garden got raided by a cow, or cows. I have no idea how they got in as the middle gate was closed. The wall near the garage is low, but it'd take a determined cow to lumber deliberately over it. Perhaps they were deliberately let in, and out? Their main target was chinese cabbage.

Anyway, I still haven't had any aphids.

Autumn Royal grape suffered an early pruning.

Pepperdews lucky to be only half munched. Same with the larger plants.

Baby red cabbages took a hit.

Cow prints in the pea patch.

Cow prints in the asparagus patch.

Swiss chard, not quite munched to the roots.

Most of the damage was on the edges, so a solution might be to plant untasty things there, like hot chiles. The rows down between the tyres may be too narrow for comfortable grazing.

Interesting is what wasn't munched - squash, Jerusalem, artichokes, tomatoes, beans,

More chili's

"Black Pearl", which claims to be "very hot"...

In the ground, between tyres, next to guava tree. Bought in Cape Town.

Leftmost rear is "King of the North", and seven seeds planted a few weeks back have taken. They're at the two leaf stage.
Rightmost rear is "Sweet Banana", but only three took. I planted a few more today.
Leftmost front is "Giant Aconcagua", planted today.
Rightmost front is "Nu Mex Big Jim", also planted today.

I'll do "Giant Jalapeno" tomorrow in the spare tyre near the Pepperdews.
Update 2015/11/15: Done.

Update 2016/01/28:

Leftmost front is now Brown Poblano, Rightmost rear is replanted Sweet Banana.

Update 2016/02/14:

This is the Nu-Mex Big Jim. Two plants have survived and seem pretty healthy. The three chili's are big - so far about 10cm long - and reputedly hot. There's more on the way.

So, that took exactly three months.

There are a few Brown Poblano and Sweet Banana seedlings at the two/four leaf stage, and there are quite a few King of the North plants flowering, with some small fruit.

Update 2016/02/17:

Most of my chili plants are suffering from leaf curl despite growing vigorously. This doesn't seem to affect their flowering or the fruit that does grow. I've been googling this, and there's lots of theories about virus infection, lack of nutrients, plants being root bound, over watered, etc.

There was one comment about thrips (thysanoptera) being responsible. I'll have to see if I can capture some. Pity I can't ask my dad (Charles Frederic J-G) what they are - he always maintained that the only real world job an entomologist could get was one killing insects.

Update 2016/02/21:

Nu Mex Big Jim looking big.

Black Pearl going red... No thrips on this one.

Installation of pressure pump for rain water tank

I've had the pump - a Salmson "Jetson Portable" - for nearly a year, but had no reason to install it until today, when the municipal water pressure in my part of Grahamstown failed as more Makana infrastructure collapsed.

I've subsequently seen at least three other versions of this type of pump by different manufacturers for sale in various hardware/engineering emporiums, varying from R1400 to R2000, so clearly it's a thing. And quite a fast moving thing, as the piles of stock rise and fall quite regularly.

Interesting that it's French, and not Chinese... a recently purchased wheelbarrow is also French. Maybe a Wallmart type phenomenon now they're established in South Africa?

My rainwater tanks have been up in expectation of this for more than a year, and are full of clean water thanks to the first flush diverter/filter attached to the gutter down pipes on my roof. At that time the house plumbing reticulation was extended to the tank stand, an external power socket was installed, and an underground sleeve installed to route a power cord onto the pump stand. Everything, in short, except actually installing and connecting up the pump itself.

Stage 0 (above) - part of the preliminary work, done late last year - a one way valve between the house plumbing (off to the left) and municipal supply (off to the right). I don't want to donate my rainwater to the neighbours or the municipality when my pump starts up. Alternatively, I can close the stopcock and go "off grid" as regards water. Which wouldn't impact my account, as the municipality actually reads meters once or twice a year, if that...

It's nice living where there's little or no freezing weather, which means all the plumbing is on the outside walls. Easy to modify and extend, but also easy to steal if it's copper/brass.

You can see the remnants of copper water pipe theft from a few years back, when the miniature burglar busy ripping pipe off my walls was disturbed in the act. In his hasty retreat hopping over the fence into the neighbours garden he dropped a pair of rubber kitchen gloves (to disguise finger prints?) and the giant pliers he was using to break up the pipe into short segments to load up in his plastic bag. He had the decency to leave a bit of the pipe leading from the municipal stopcock sticking out of the ground and crimping it to stop the water spraying all over the place. Or maybe that was just in order not to be given away by a telltale fountain. Fortunately this was discovered about 11h30 on a Saturday morning, which gave me a chance to rush off and buy some polycop and fittings in order to effect my own plumbing repairs. I've now laid in a stock of plumbing essentials for future emergencies - and for homegrown plumbing extensions around the garden and outside room.

The patch of black spray paint on the wall was to disguise part of the original repair in order that it didn't appear too "coppery/brassy". Now most of the remaining copper pipe work and valves is hidden behind trellises, and the subsequent security upgrades round our perimeter seem to have driven wannabe opportunists to try their luck elsewhere. No doubt they'll be back when the neighbours catch up in the arms race and I again become an easier target.

Stage 1 - done early this morning under supervision of Antigone - bolting the pump to the tank stand so it doesn't develop legs and wander off. The trickiest bit was getting holes drilled into the over engineered concrete tank stand with my under powered drill. Thanks again to Andy Bradfield, who did in 15 minutes what I failed to do in a frustrating hour. The electrical conduit and polycop pipe were installed ages ago, and weren't ideally positioned as the pump has now been located on the stand so that it's not too visible from the street. The power cord was pulled through the sleeve and a 15 Amp plug installed. A quick power on/off test got the pump spinning. All OK so far.

Stage 2 - connect the rainwater tanks to the pump with 25mm PVC pipe. It's not yet a neat installation, as the manual talks about a two metre straight run of pipe leading to the pump intake to avoid cavitation problems. I'll see later if I can tie it to the stand somehow without putting kinks into it..

It wasn't necessary to use the blowtorch to "heat shrink" the PVC pipe onto the elbows and connectors, but I'm getting creaky and like to avoid unnecessary to-ing and fro-ing to fetch stuff from the other side of the house.

Interestingly, when the valve between the two tanks was turned on, water went straight through the powered off pump and poured out of the unconnected outlet. I hadn't expected this. When powered on, water shot from the outlet at reasonable pressure.

Even though there is a drainage plug and a priming plug on the pump body, they haven't yet had to be used.

Stage 3 - connect to the house plumbing, using polycop pipe and mainly PVC fittings. These fittings are wonderful - they don't leak, even if imperfectly aligned and tightened, they are reasonably priced, and are eminently unstealworthy having no scrap metal value.

The brass stop valve leads to the house, and the PVC valve to a vertical pipe so that if necessary in future I can fill my tanks with municipal water, or pump water from the tank straight back into the tank - useful if you're distilling moonshine and want to modify it slightly to run coldish water through a condenser. At the moment the vertical segment is quite short and terminates in a stop end while I work out how to get it neatly into the top of the tank without introducing mosquitoes as well.

At this point, powering on the pump showed that it worked pretty much as expected. It goes into "alarm" mode if the wall switch/motor switch sequence is done incorrectly, but can be reset either by power cycling on the wall, or pressing the reset button.

One issue highlighted by this is a tap in the bathroom with a slow drip, which seemed to be causing a slow pressure drop, and making the pump kick in more often than expected to maintain pressure, about twenty seconds pumping every minute. But further thinking about this made me look at what happened in Stage 2 - there's no internal one way valve in this particular pump, so it quite quickly loses pressure back into the rainwater tank. Other versions seem to have the valve built in,

A hurried trip back to Albany & Bathurst Engineering before they closed for the weekend at 15h00 and I got the missing ingredient.

A 1" one way valve, plus the requisite PVC fittings to install it inline into the 25mm PVC pipe from the tank..

Stage 4 - One way valve installed the correct way between rainwater tanks and pressure pump. Now the pump maintains pressure in the house plumbing for nuch longer periods. I took the opportunity to add more plumbers tape to the fittings attached directly to the pump, as there were slight leaks.

It also means I can leave the pump switched on even when the municipal water is also switched on and feeding into the house plumbing. Without the one way valve, I'd fill the tank with municipal water even if  I didn't want to, and be unable to control overflowing. Now the only water going into the tank is from rain.

At the moment I've got the municipal water turned off, and things are working fine - the slight anomaly is that when a tap is turned on in the house, there is a low pressure start, followed after a few seconds by high pressure. I'll run like this for a couple of days and see what else crops up.

Still to do - find or make a cover for the pump to keep the exposed bits clean, dry, and disguised. A suitably sized PVC box or bucket with holes/slots in the relevant areas should do the trick.

Another thing to establish over the weekend is how to adjust the pressure - it seems to be set to 3 Bars by default, and I need to see if increasing it a bit might help with the coverage of my garden irrigation. On the other hand, I don't want to burst any pipes or geysers!

So, a reasonable conclusion to the day. I'm now actually making use of the water I've been collecting so diligently...

I suppose the downside of all this is no fluoride, but at this stage of my life most of my teeth are false, anyway. Just as well all our kids are grown up.

Update 2015/10/14:

Pressure with municipal mains connected is 10 Bars, which is the max reading on the gauge. One possible issue is that my cold water line is based on 13mm pipe and will need more pressure than if it was 20mm.

Update 2016/04/10:

I drained the two tanks last week, after my daughter noticed mosquito larva swimming around in the water she wanted to use for making ginger beer to sell in the newly established "Grahamstown Bakery". She reverted to getting brewing water from the spring on the Port Alfred road below mountain drive while I figure out how to mosquito proof the tanks.

Hmmm....

Update 2016/04/28:

A modification to allow water to be recirculated via the pressure pump that would allow it to be diverted through valves into something like the condenser of a still. You'll need to fit connections to the still onto the stubs.

Alternatively, it lets municipal water into the tank. There's no overflow detection.