Does anyone who watched 4 Corners last Monday night know why there was in one scene a female with a stick belting tomato plants...is it to aid pollination seeing as the tomatoes were growing in a sealed shed or was she just working off her frustrations at being underpaid?
I think it's an old Italian method when a plant is not doing well.. Is to belt it and it seems to send hormones or whatever out there to fix any damage .. I thought it was roses and grape vines ?
Slightly but only a little. I had a lemon tree in a previous life that just didn't want to play so had been told about this hitting it around the trunk with a stick, yeh sure! I only look silly.
However, one night while no one was looking I hit it around the trunk a few times moving around so all the trunk copped a bashing. Yep, you guessed it, started to play like a lemon tree should play. Eventually I pulled the tree out as I was never home to look after it and when I did get home there were rotting lemons all over the ground.
Don't even have the house anymore. I'm the one playing now
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Noticed it myself, hardly belting, more like tapping.
I suspect its a non chemical way to remove aphids, they are pretty easy to dislodge in this way, another method is to spray the plants with a garden hose.
I guessed they were tomatoes but probably wrong. I think the places where they filmed were big operations and not 'organic' so they'd have plenty of poisons on hand plus one of the reasons they grow them in the hot houses is to control bugs so maybe they were doing what the missing bugs normally do - pollinate the fruit by physically shaking the plant to release pollen etc like birds and bees stuff (what's that?).
Regards
My story about belting trees that are not doing the right things.
My home had a vacant empty block next door with out a boundary fence which I mowed part of to keep my place looking like someone owns it.
Well I did see a weed growing occasionally but just mowed it.
Unbeknown to me the area was a fruit orchard and it was a lemon tree, latter when a home was built and a fence put up, the neighbours not moving in for a while the weed got fairly tall and before long was producing good fruit...
The moral of the story is bash it occasionally to keep it in line.
