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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Loading the pit pits

The day's come out all sunny following a squally morning and I've been in the outside world for a break from writing, to load up my pit pits with pits. I was given a bowl-full of apricot pits at the weekend by an avid pit-collector who had been to Central Otago and brought back with him, dozens of Morepark apricots, from which he extracted said pits. "Crack them before you put them in your pit pit", he said, so I did, with a hammer. I found it's best to strike the pits on their edge just hard enough to feel the case 'give'. Any harder and they split right apart and the kernel falls out. They are all tucked in now and I'll be watching in the spring to see how many of them break the surface with an apricot shoot.  They are sharing the pit, I must add, with hazel nuts, horse-chestnuts, paper almonds, walnuts and acorns, all of which I'll plant out and about the district in an attempt to boost the gleanables in the deep south. Right now, I'm off to check the plums I guerrilla-planted last spring. They've done really well and are calling out to me for some hazels to join them in their inexorabble march toward the bridge, a mere kilometre distant.

2 comments:

renetsil said...

....but what is a pit pit and why?

robertguyton said...

I've built a 'pit' from timber, filled it with sand and compost and am putting fruit-pits into it in order that they sprout in the spring.