ON THE PLOT
Essential maintenance tasks for winter
B
brushcutter.
In the vegetable patch, the
last of your summer crops
should have been harvested,
frozen, bottled or otherwise
preserved, and seedlings of
your winter crop should be in
the ground, covered protectively against frost.
In the future ~ late July or
August ~ you can look
forward to pruning and
spraying your fruit trees and
From page 23
roses.
And so now you have six to
K Victims must receive a
eight weeks of early winter
tetanus shot to prevent
down-time in which to put
infection.
your feet up and contemplate
Some scorpions have the
your navel? Well, no, you
ability to produce sound by
rubbing together certain body don't. Because now is the
parts. This is called stridulating time to do the maintenance
and repair tasks that one
and is normally used as a
doesn't get time to do during
warning sign to intruders.
the rest of the year when one
Arachnophobes will be sorry
is busy ploughing, planting,
to hear that scorpions
harvesting etc.
generally have a life span of
about four to 25 years.
First and foremost, you have
y now, all your
preparations for the
winter fire season
should be complete. You
should have cut your fields
and baled, or stacked, the
hay. You should have burned
or ploughed firebreaks, and
cleaned any remaining long
grass around any fence posts
and other fixtures with a
probably used your mower
for the last time this season so
before you forget it, prepare it
for winter.
Start by draining the remaining fuel from the tank and
fuel line, using this in your
tractor or another machine
such as a chainsaw or
brushcutter that is still in
winter use. That's because
SCORPIONS
26
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petrol, although an oil
derivative, is hygroscopic ~ it
absorbs moisture ~ which
means that, come summer,
you will experience difficulty
in starting your mower using
the old fuel.
If the fuel tank is made of
metal coat the inside with a
light machine oil to prevent
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