April 2020

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Most people associate the word “Fruit” with succulent fleshy plant structures but botanically the concept is much wider than this. All fruits develop from a flower – the classification of which is based on which parts of the fertilised ovary expand in size. The fruit structures have evolved in various ways to enhance wide dispersion from the initial plant and improve the chance of seed germination. The basic classification of fruit types is:

 A.   Simple Fruits formed from a single ovary which may contain more than one seed.

 (i)   Fleshy fruit types – berries, drupes and pomes

 (ii)  Dry fruit types – legumes, follicles, nuts & capsules

B.    Aggregate Fruits formed from a number of ovaries in one flower fusing into a single fruit

e.g. strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

C.   Multiple Fruits formed from several flowers having the ovaries fused into a single fruit

e.g. mulberries, pineapples and figs. Multiple Fruits can be difficult to visualise but if the fruit development is observed on the plant,  justification for the classification can be seen.

Fleshy Fruits

BERRIES have a fleshy pulp containing the seeds centrally with a thin skin often  coloured conspicuously to attract  birds and animals.   Typical examples are the grape and tomato but also included is the capsicum, carambola, mangosteen, paw-paw, passionfruit, roseapple, sapodilla, avocado (oily flesh) and banana (seeds very rare).   The citrus family are special berries called  Hesperidia the name coming from Hesper a Greek mythological character who had a citrus grove.   The skin (rind) is inedible and  the inside pulp has a high juice content but all family members are similar – typical of lemons and oranges etc.   The Cucurbit family are also special berries called  Pepos.  I think Pepois Spanish for “Gourd”  but all the family members have a hard leathery skin including cucumbers, chokoes, pumpkins and watermelons.

DRUPES are distinguished by containing a woody pit or stone which encloses one or occasionally two seeds.   Drupe is a Greek word for “Olive” but possibly the Apricot is a better example with its large amount of edible flesh.   Other fleshy drupes are cherries, peaches, plums mangoes and lychees.   Some drupes have almost no flesh and the inner seed is eaten – examples being the Almond and Pecan.   The coconut  has an external covering that is thick and fibrous which promotes floating in seawater but it is nevertheless a drupe.

POMES of which Apples, Pears and Loquats are examples are so called from the French word for Apple.   The base of these fruits contains the residual structure of the flower called the Calyx and the main fleshy structure we eat is called the Hypanthium which  surrounds the “core”  containing the seeds.  

Dry Fruits

LEGUMES of which beans and peas are typical develop a pod which splits down both sides when the seeds are ripe.

FOLLICLES of which the Macadamia is typical, split down one side of the husk to release the so-called “nut” botanically described as a Locule.  We crack this Locule to get at the seed typically called the Kernel.  

CAPSULES to my knowledge do not produce edible structures but a good example is the Poppy head which resembles a salt shaker when ripe.

NUTS are not common – the Acorn and Hazelnuts are good examples with their special “cap” and hard leathery skin enclosing one seed.  Most commercial so-called nuts (Almond, Pecan) are Drupes.

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Here in Manatee County, (Florida USA) we are favoured with a climate that permits a large number of tropical fruits, but these are variably sensitive to cold. This has to be considered before you decide what to buy for your location. It makes sense to buy a tree that would encounter a killing freeze about once in five years only if you are prepared to defend it when that freeze happens. Extremely sensitive varieties should only be tried if you live on the beach, or if you want to grow them in a container that can be moved inside on cold nights. Many tropicals can be grown to beautiful, fruitful trees in containers. But, how do you protect trees planted outdoors from the cold?

First, reserve the warmest spots for the most sensitive plants. Wooded areas if you have them, or close to your house on the south side are usually the warmest places. There are really only two ways to protect a plant from freezing.

First, you can try to conserve the heat stored in the ground by covering the plant. This buys time, delaying the drop to damaging temperatures until, you hope, the sun comes up and temperatures rise. Cloth covers work best. Don’t use plastic.

The second method is active protection—adding heat to the environment. Place a heat source, such as a light bulb, under the cover. Oil lamps, kerosene burners, candles, etc. are fine if you are mindful of the fire hazard.

Probably the best active protection is to keep a spray of water on the plant until freezing temperatures are past. Most tropicals will stand 32 degrees F, but many are damaged when the temperature drops lower. Water freezing on the plant forms a protective shield, keeping the temperature at 32 degrees F as long as water is supplied. Water releases a large amount of heat in the process of becoming ice. There is risk that the tree may suffer damage from the weight of accumulated ice, but the water, being much warmer than the air, helps to limit the thickness of ice. City water, rather than well water, will eliminate the risk of a power failure.

Trees that have survived three or four winters get large enough to have better resistance to cold damage. If your tree does suffer damage, be patient about cutting it back. Sometimes vigorous new growth will start from branches you thought were dead, and sometimes a tree you thought was gone will start to grow back from the ground. In the latter case, if the tree was grafted, it will need to be grafted again.

http://www.mrfc.org/articles/freeze.html

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Copper has been used for over 100 years as a fungicide in horticulture but what does it do to sensitive beneficial non target organisms like earthworms? The Good Soil project funded by the National Heritage Trust has found that the use of copper based fungicides can have detrimental effects on the earthworm populations of the north coast.

Copper is an essential element and required by all organisms, in fact deficiency results in reduction in biological function. However, elevated concentrations of copper are toxic and when found in soils may result in a range of effects including reduced biological activity and subsequent loss of fertility.

Why is copper such a problem?

Firstly, copper, being a metal, will naturally accumulate in soils binding to the clay and organic material. Secondly, the section of the soil where most biological activity occurs is also the place where most copper will accumulate when applied as fungicide, that is in the surface layers.  This is why it is of such concern for the biology of the soil.

What did the Good Soil Project do?

The project looked at earthworm numbers and earthworm avoidance in orchard soils contaminated by copper from fungicide use . Earthworms are often used, as indicator species’, to determine detrimental levels of a variety of chemicals in the environment as they are very sensitive to changes in the soil environment.  Worms are mobile and can move away from areas where excess copper (or any other chemicals) will harm them which shows, very clearly, where and when damaging chemicals are located.

As worms move away from areas high in copper the vital functions they perform are removed. Earthworms are vital in maintaining a health soil, through their feeding and burrowing activity. They aid in decomposition and incorporation of organic matter, increase the number of water soluble aggregates, improve water infiltration, aeration, drainage and root penetration, and increase microbial activity. Earthworm casts and burrow walls have higher concentrations of total and plant-available nutrients than surrounding soil and it has been recognised that surface feeding species distribute micro-organisms, spores, pollen and seeds both horizontally and vertically, Earthworms also reduce plant pathogens through digestion of fungal spores. By removing worms from orchards soils, this vital link in the soil biology is removed, and soil degradation will follow.

Orchards with high levels of copper in their soils surveyed in the project were found to have fewer worms in addition to other indicators of poor soil health. Mulch remained on the soil surface longer as there were fewer soil organisms to break it down and there appeared to be very little bioturbation ( mixing) between the soil and mulch above. In fact, earthworms were shown to avoid soil residues of copper between 25-50mg/kg, residue levels which can be attained by only 2 or 3 years of fungicide application.

How do you prevent this happening?

Once there is excess copper in the soil it is impossible to remove as it doesn’t break down. The best thing to do is prevent the accumulation in the first place. Using less copper based fungicides and/or using alternatives is a step in the right direction. If soils are high in copper, it may be possible to dilute the effect of the residue by applying organic material and maintaining the soil in a generally healthy state. This will reduce the bioavailability of the residues making them less toxic.NSW Agriculture, through sponsorship from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) Organic Sub-Program, is currently conducting a review of alternatives to copper for disease control in the organics industry. Many of the findings of this review will be applicable to conventional horticultural production.

For more information:

Merrington, G., Rogers, S. L. and Van Zwieten, L. (2002) The potential impact of long-term copper fungicide usage on soil microbial biomass and microbial activity in an avocado orchard. Australian Journal of Soil Research 40(5) 749-759.

Abigail Jenkins,  Soil Advisory Officer NSW Agriculture  Ph:  02  6626 1357

abigail.jenkins@agric.nsw.gov.au

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I was invited to be the Guest Speaker at the Tucson Rare Fruit Growers. Interesting issues which arose were that their County which is the equivalent of our Shire would not let them grow Mulberries or Olives as the Russian non-fruiting Olive is a pest and the pollen from the male Mulberry gives many people allergies. I also attended the San Diego Chapter meeting of the California Rare Fruit Growers. (refer notes in last issue) The other difference that amazed them was the fact that we can’t get our hands on varieties that are under PBR (Plant Breeders Rights). All they have to do if they want a certain cultivar is go to the centre that has them and pay US$2.00 royalty for budwood. Both groups operate their Clubs more or less along the lines as we do. Guest Speaker/Fantastic Fruit Suppers/Raffle/Sales. Roger & Shirley Meyer hosted Bob & I and this time we were able to visit their farm which is approx. 1½ hours south of Los Angeles. Roger has invited you all to visit whenever you are over there so email him at: xotcfruit@yahoo.com.  I was able to taste my first Jujubes and Asimina triloba whilst there and just loved them. The Jujube I tried was just like a tiny crunchy apple.  Roger has for sale “Jujube Primer & Source Book” put out by himself and Robert R. Chambers. He has given us some seed  of Asimina triloba to share around so if you haven’t received any as yet, then let me know and I’ll post some out to you. When they were over staying with us last year, Roger left us a CD which Noel Ramos from Florida put together of the many Annona varieties. It’s wonderfully colourful so those of you who were at the December meeting will have seen it. Tasted the Valencia Pride Mango; very large, elongated and just delicious. They are able to acquire dozens of varieties of Mango and Oro is polyembryonic as is Nam doc Mai. They have a yellow Cashew, Praying Hands Banana – two hands together! Fiji Longan which is 5 times bigger! and the Emporer Lychee which is very large. Don’t bother with the Bael they said. I came across a couple of books I hadn’t seen before: Uncommon Fruit Worthy of Attention by Lee Reich and the excellent Fruits in Colour – Brunei Darussalam by Haji Serudin Datu and Setiawan Haji Tinggal who was Senior Lecturer in Biology at the University of Brunei Darussalam. 1992

Pinon Pine Tasted them both raw and roasted while I was there. They only come in their shell and, due to their small size, although they are tasty like a Pine Nut, they’re very fiddly to get a decent feed from.

They also have Date Milkshakes & Cactus Shakes!

Sweet Potato Leaves – they cut up the stems and sauté in garlic/soy and sesame.

Travelling through Canyonlands in Utah we saw a large Potash Mine. Potash was first discovered in Germany in 1839 and deposits are found within the USA in New Mexico, California, Utah and Canada. One of the largest deposits of potash in the world lies in the Paradox Basin which extends from Green River, Utah to the Four Corners Area in Colorado. This vast basin covering 11,000 billion tons of Potash and that’s enough to supply the entire world for 500 years. The Cane Creek mine we saw is located 20 miles west of Moab Utah and is unique because of the method used to extract the Potash ore. The mine began as a conventional underground excavation in 1964 but was converted in 1970 to a system combining solution mining and solar evaporation. The process is summarized as follows: Water from the nearby Colorado River is pumped through injection wells into the underground mine. The water dissolves the potash salts in the walls and pillars of the 340 miles of underground headings. The brine-laden water is then brought to the surface and piped to 400 acres of shallow ponds about th3 ½ miles southwest of the mine. There the water evaporates, aided by 300 days of sunshine a year and an average of 5% relative humidity. A blue dye similar to food colouring is added to assist with the evaporation process. It has been estimated that if electric power were used to evaporate the brine, it would require power burning 400,000 tonnes of coal each year. The solar ponds are completely lined with heavy vinyl to prevent the valuable brine from leaking into the ground and the river. A series of holding ponds have been constructed to catch any spills and return the potassium-rich brine to the ponds. The crystals remaining after evaporation are scooped by giant 25 ton scrapers which take about 7-10 minutes per load and are laser guided from the edges of the ponds so they do not dip too low and tear the vinyl pond linings. The crystals from the ponds are returned to the mill where the potash is separated by flotation method. They are then dried and screened into premium grades of white potash.  Around 1000 to 1500 tons of potash per day are produced by the mill. In the US it is used to supply nutrients to potato, corn alfalfa wheat and soybean crops as well as fruit and nut trees.  (to be continued!)

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During a journey through Peninsula Malaysia in February 2006, I saw industrial-scale Oil Palm and Rubber Plantations from one end of the country to the other, broken up by small holdings containing a diverse range of annuals and tree crops e.g. Sugar Cane, Tapioca (Cassava) Rice, Maize Melons, Pineapple, Banana, Papaw, Mango, Guava, Pummelo, Lemon, Longan, Soursop, Rollinia, Starfruit, Dragonfruit, Duku, Durian, Coconut and Teak timber. For me the highlight of the peninsula was the Cameron Highlands, a high-rainfall area of rainforest-clad mountains, 200 kms north-west of the capital Kuala Lumpur. Ideal conditions for horticulture are provided by the cool mountain air at an altitude of 1500-1800 metres together with higher than average rainfall and reasonable-looking orange-brown soils.

Large tea estates are commonplace throughout, especially on the less-accessible slopes higher up. These were founded from the 1920’s by British expatriates with colonial experience from India. Some have their own tea-processing factories on site, together with workers’ quarters villages for the hand-pickers who can earn up to AUD$16.00 per day (paid at the rate of 8 cents per kilogram). Apart from the tea and he odd tiny plot of bananas or citrus, no formal orchards of tree crops were seen. Some scattered durians and bananas are grown semi-wild along the forest margins.

The predominant activity is the growing of vegetables. Enormous shade houses cover almost every available bit of flat land; steep hillsides are infinitely stepped and terraced; and channels and pipes from hilltop springs and ponds feed irrigation networks throughout. Whilst some Cabbage, Beans Chilli, Choko, Tomato, Taro etc are planted out in the open fields, the majority of growing appears to take place under the filtered light of various types of shade-houses. These are built in many different styles. Whilst the very latest versions include permanent portal-frame steel constructions like our own industrial buildings, most are flimsily built with light steel tubing or light hardwood posts set into concrete or rammed-earth footings, supporting flat or igloo-shaped coverings of green/yellow/grey woven fabrics, flat or corrugated fibreglass sheeting or heavy-duty clear plastic wrap. A lot of this super-structured appears fairly weathered and new constructions are commonplace. Considering the big picture with many hectares of valleys and hillsides sheeted over with short-term plastic coverings, I expect there would be a significant waste disposal problem. Underneath the shade-houses, the various crops are planted either directly in the ground in cultivated rows or in individual pots fed with micro-drippers or in hydroponic piping at waist height. Commonly seen were strawberry, tomato, cabbage cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, Asian greens, chilli, capsicum, ornamental pot plants and various cut flowers including roses. Less common were orchids, cactus and butterflies.

In the various small towns, farm-supply warehouses provide the infrastructure needed for packaging and freight-collection for trucking the produce down to the closest lowland city of Ipoh and beyond. Technical support is provided at the largest town of Tanah Rata by a government research station – a branch of MARDI (Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute). Visits by appointment only.

Throughout peninsula Malaysia, civil engineers have prioritized soil erosion control in view of the high intensity rainfalls of around 2000-2500 throughout. Even more so in the highlands with bigger downpours, steeper slopes and disturbed groundcovers. Even the most minor public road is sealed and provided with generously sized drainage culverts. The road-cuttings on the mountain-sided accesses into the highlands are mostly cut with stepped sides, often completely sprayed over with pumped concrete and always drained by an intricate network of concreted channels, often fitted with their own pipe spout “fountains”. Anchor bolts commonly lock the rock-faces back into the hillsides; and the latest “permeable” trend is towards using blocks of loose rocks encased in wire-netting, stacked up against the slopes like sandbags.

When all else fails, roadside landslips are temporarily stabilized by wrapping with huge swathes of blue poly tarp or clear plastic to keep the rain off. Other attractions of the area include numerous forest walking trails, waterfalls and excellent tourist accommodation, making this a very desirable destination for anybody contemplating a visit to Malaysia.

Note from Sheryl: Robert is a long-time member who lives at Lillian Rock in NSW and grows tamarillos commercially.

His previous trip was to Cambodia and Laos. 

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I recently had the pleasure of spending six days at Alan and Susan Carle’s Botanical Ark in Mossman which is about 70km north of Cairns. A lot of us know of this amazing garden and what a wonderful attitude the Carle’s have to preserving the fruits and plants of the tropical rainforests. I didn’t go there to enjoy the view; I went there to get my hands dirty!

Michael Fabian ex Limberlost Nursery in Cairns is a man with the most amazing knowledge of grafting, marcotting and seeds I have met and is helping Alan marcott many of the rare trees that have never had that process applied to them before including Garcinia varieties, Durians, Nephelium (Rambutan, Pulasans) and Baccaurea. After Mike had cut off the marcott from the parent plant, my job was to pot them up and put them in the mist house. Over 2 days, we did 500 plants. The idea is to sell them through the local market and nurseries so keep your eyes and ears open for further news and you may be able to add to your collection of tropical plants.

Marcotting is one of the easiest ways of getting new plants that I have seen. Now I know a lot of you know what marcotting involves however Mike said the real trick is aftercare. For the first six weeks, the marcott has to be in high humidity constantly. Don’t apply fertiliser because the developing roots cannot take up nutrients and may burn. Once the roots are strong enough, the plant must now be placed in a shaded area for a further six weeks (these are estimated times for our sub-tropical climate) before being planted out. If you do marcott, the potting mixture should be coarse sand with some perlite in it.

The rest of my stay involved helping Susan with some catering for various groups from all over Australia. After picking the last Mangosteens for the season, Durians and the South American Sapote Quararibea Cordata, most nights were spent eating these fruit and although I have previously mentioned how to pick a good Mangosteen, here it is again. Hold the fruit in your hand, press your thumb on the skin and if the skin gives, then the fruit is OK. Sometimes you may see a bright yellow sap coming out of the skin – do not buy this fruit as it’s no good. When the fruit is as hard as cannon balls and you have managed to saw through it, the flesh is often rotten.

 I have volunteered my services for another week next year so I will let you know how I go.

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I spent five weeks travelling the length and breadth of the country and arrived mid Oct. which is considered the off-season and is the cooler time to visit with Feb-Mar the optimum.  Watermelons are grown on a raised bed with plastic just as strawberries are grown here. There are two types of coconut: the land type and one that grows in water. They use the fronds from the water type to make thatching for their roof which will last 5-6 years. I visited a coconut candy factory which was very interesting. Nothing is wasted of the coconut. The candy tastes like a soft caramel. I bought some to bring back for you to try but when I was getting a bus back to Saigon from the Mekong, I declined the seat in the back as the mini-bus was full so they put the two passengers that were in the front seat into the back and I was given their seats. I was so embarrassed to put them out of their seat that I shared the caramels around. I had already been in a situation in the north-west where there were 21 of us on a 9 seater! I never saw any orange citrus – they suffer from Greening disease so don’t change colour. Pineapple 20 cents, Dragon Fruit 50 cents; 10 bananas for a $1.00; Pummelo 50 cents – $1.00; Rambutans 30 cents kg. Now these are the prices the Vietnamese pay – not what they charge foreigners! I bought a kg of Mangosteen for $3.00 and most had to be thrown away. I’ve since learnt from Asher that when you buy Mangosteen, you must pick them yourself and the outside of the fruit has to be soft when you squeeze them and mine were rock hard! There are a lot of low-lying islands in the Mekong delta (reminds me of Venice – much flooding during the rainy season) and I thought there would have been midges everywhere but no sign of them.  They use open irrigation canals about 5 metres apart and a metre deep with Longans the main fruit grown in the area I visited. The trees are grown quite close perhaps 2-3 metres apart and have been cinctured many times and you’ll see where they’ve taken out one main branch. The bees I saw to pollinate their trees are of the non-stinging type but look very different to our native bees. Fish are raised in the canals so that would avoid mosquito larvae. In other larger fish pond areas, their method of collection is a battery pack on their back and two rods in the water to stun the fish. Rubbish bins don’t appear to be used for waste collection and the curious thing for me was that I never saw any ants/flies swarm onto the rubbish.

Cassava must be processed to remove naturally occurring toxins and reduce spoilage. It is milled into a flour. They also slice it up and dry it by the side of the road in great quantities and feed it to their pigs.

At the Sofri Research Station they hang 2 strands of video tape around the trees but put it up only during fruiting time as they don’t want the birds/bats to get use to it. They don’t know why it works but it does. They told me that you will have more of a problem with birds/bats in a small backyard situation but farmers there found that when they have a large number of fruit trees, they don’t seem to get the problem.

Pitaya are grown on square concrete posts 1½ mtrs above ground, 25cms thick, 3 mtrs apart and cuttings are grown on all four sides and then taped to the post. With this particular variety when they reach the top, they just trail down. There are no wires between the posts for them to climb along.

Sapodillas are ripe when you scratch the skin and it appears brown – this technique avoids the grainy/gritty texture and won’t harm the fruit. It’s nice blended with crushed ice as a juice.

Pollination   The ornamental betalnut is used for pollination in the orchard as it attracts the stingless native bees.

Carambola   loves water

Guava     There are 21 different varieties. They just use plastic bags (any colour) around the fruit to keep out fruit fly because there’s no spray that is effective however this year they are trialing baits.

Longans   They girdle only one variety of Longan ie ringbark 1cm all the way around the branch and remove the bark after the flush of new leaves are nearly mature – the Du Yabour variety. (the skin of the fruit is brown in colour) There are tropical and sub-tropical Longans and the sub-tropicals will never ever flower in tropical conditions. If you want them to flower, you have to apply Potassium Chlorite KCL03 and this is applied when the new leaves are fully mature – 30gms per metre for radius or 15gms per sq.mtr of the canopy. After fruiting, all varieties are pruned.

Mangoes  There are 130 varieties of Mangoes and they can manipulate the tree to produce flowering at any time of the year. To induce flowering from the vegetative state to reproductive growth, they water stress and use chemical fertiliser. We stop fertiliser or use just a minor dose of nitrogen to make the roots weaker. If this does not produce results, then we cincture the trunk. Sheryl What stage of plant growth do you cincture?  A. After fruiting we promote new growth to get new flushing, then we consider when we want the fruit and from that point we count back to the time we apply this technique and it’s used 6-7 months before we want to have fruit. Sheryl So you cincture the trunk 30cm from the ground ie 2-3 months before flowering and Coaltar is used as a growth retardant in conjunction with this process and is applied directly on the tree trunk. Our Mangoes give 2 crops per year – one main crop and then a minor crop.

Pineapple The farmer prefers to grow the very sweet slightly serrated leafed Queen variety because it’s easier to grow and sells well. The other smooth leaf variety with a few slight serrations around the tip is Cayenne but is not as sweet and is used for canning and juicing. 

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The tour was conducted by the now retired owner Bob Brinsmead. The farm covers 170 acres.

Sheryl How did you get into this Bob?

Bob I had some farming background and this use to be the experimental farm and I use to come out here as a boy so I was familiar with it then they moved the Station so when it came on the market, I bought it

 Sheryl What were you growing beforehand?

Bob Sugarcane, bananas and pineapples. 

Sheryl How much water do you put on? 

Bob We rely heavily on rainfall – I don’t think we are even irrigating. We tend to irrigate mostly young trees.

Abiu  (Pouteria caimito) We’d have about 80 of these but not many bearing. We have seedlings which are doing just as well as the grafted.

Acerola  (Malpighia glabra) If you prune you miss a year’s crop – they won’t bear fruit on young wood.

Ambarilla (Hog Plum) I’ve selected out 3 that have a better flavoured fruit from the Malcases. They call them the Poor Mans Mango. The best way of processing them is that if you use them when they’re green and you grate them up, you can use it in a salad. Willie The leaves are also nice for cooking and to use in a raw salad. You can also pickle the young fruit.

Araca  (Eugenia stipitate) Very sour like a big soft guava but they make a beautiful juice. Got them from a chap up at Mossman. They bear quite heavily.

Avocadoes  Sheryl What type of fertiliser do you give your Avocados? Bob Cracker Dust and mainly foliar fertiliser – liquid Nitrophoska twice a year. A really nice Avocado to eat is Reed. Peter Do you inject your Avocadoes every year? Bob We tend to spray with Phosphorous Acid but we have been injecting them this year. The Linda variety is very large and doesn’t grow brown when you cut it.

Black Sapote  I have 3 varieties. I like the Mossman the best, the big flat one. They’re a very vigorous tree, we don’t fertilize or irrigate them but we do spray to keep the black soot off.  Joe  We have one that’s a rusty colour inside. Sheryl  Sell the tree under PBR and make yourself lots of money!

Canistel It’s very sweet. This group of fruit along with the Mammy Sapote tastes a bit like pumpkin. You can eat the skin of this fruit. You can put this in a pie crust with a bit of cream and it reminds me of an American Pumpkin Pie. They’re a bit dry if they’re not fully ripe.

Ceylon Hill Cherry   It’s a very beautiful shrub

Citrus  I got these bare-rooted from Fitzroy Nursery in Rockhampton. You would never grow Citrus in this area commercially. You would never get colour in this climate that you would get in a dry Mediterranean climate. You would never compete with a Californian type climate. Gayndah is the closest type of climate as well as South Australia. California will grow a cleaner more coloured fruit. 

Sheryl  So you need the water in winter as opposed to summer?

Bob Too much moisture in the air around summer but the Citrus have been so popular with some of our Asian visitors that we’ve just grown a big patch of Mandarins so they can just go and eat them. 

Sheryl  The Californian Coast gets very high moisture in the air when the cool air meets with the warm current and the whole coast mists.

Feijoas  Prefer a colder climate

Green Sapote  Just mash into a creamy consistency and have with ice-cream. It’s the best of all. Some seedling trees are OK but others are not.

Guavas  Prune them and open them out and you’ll have better fruit. I don’t market any of them but we let the tourists come in and eat what they like.

Ketembila  Slightly astringent but makes a beautiful jam, round purple fruit.

Kwai Muk  (Artocarpus lakoocha) Related to the Jackfruit but it’s never fruited.  George There’s one in the Botanic Gardens

Langsat  We only had one survive on the property and as they take about 15 years to fruit but it may be too cold here for it to fruit.

Lucmo  Very slow growing – very much like the Canistel

Lychee  Netted for protection against birds.  Sheryl Ever had hail here? I notice there’s no gaps for hail to fall down. Bob  We had to get a new net! There’s was so much hail that it dropped right down to the ground. Urea twice a year and Nitrophoska now.

Mabolo  (Diospyros discolour) Velvet Apple Fruit has dark brown velvet skin, creamy flesh and sweet flavour.  It’s now a seedling as the graft died.

Malay Apple ( Sy. malacances) In the same family as a Lillypilly, Wax Jambu, Water Cherry, Malay Apple and well worth growing. Another one which is really beautiful is the Giant Lau Lau from New Guinea

Mamey Sapote Sheryl  How do you know when it’s ripe? Bob  You scratch the base of the fruit and they should be going brown but if they’re still green then leave them alone. There are 2 varieties Pontin and Gray. There’s also the Magana which is a big one and it has a courser flavour – they’re great in milk shakes and this variety has a pointy end. The round one is Pontin. In Spanish it’s the Mother.

Mammea Americana  It was a male/female but we lost the male. We had a late cold snap in October and itwiped out the new growth. George There’s suppose to be bi-sexual ones as well. Sheryl  They were fruiting up at Maroochy.

Mangoes  The whole district has had a poor crop this year. I feel like putting a chainsaw into them. What I think I’ll do is inject them with round-up but not enough to kill the tree so it keeps it very sparse and let the Pitaya run all over it. We’ve tried 50 varieties of Indian Mangoes but none of them do any good here.

Matisia  (Matisia cordata)  They’re a bit like a Black Sapote but sweeter. They’re just surviving here as they’re more tropical.

Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) Grow in semi-shade 

Monkey Pot  (Lecythis pisonis)  Has tasty large nuts

Olive It only had 4 olives on it!

Pawpaw  They’re looking a bit unhealthy but unless you keep up with a bit of fungicide on  them this can happen and we don’t like to spray. They get the marks on the skin at the end of the season.

Persimmon   You need a cover over them to stop the birds from getting at them.

Pitaya We have just fertilised and watered them recently and they’ve just gone through a  dry spell – 2 or 3 weeks when they were stressed. Besides the Cracker Dust and  Fowl Manure we give them an NPK dressing every 6 weeks so after the water and  fertiliser, these will really start to bud everywhere in 2-3 weeks. They need a heavy structure to support them. Large upright posts and a post-rail on top and perhaps put in 2 rows a metre apart so they can go over each side. When they get too large, just go through with a cane knife and hack them off. We’re going to plant more yellows.

Sheryl One of our members John Picone has imported different varieties from  Vietnam.

Bob Chili is probably the biggest grower, Columbia and Israel where they  grow them under solarweave because it’s too hot.

Pitomba Haven’t done real well yet – very nice tasting like an apricot – but they take years to  fruit well.

George If you had it in a more sheltered spot it would grow a bit better.

Poshte Tastes like a red Custard Apple

Quirsaros Jeff  I get a lot of flowers but no fruit

Sapodilla   Very slow growing and need a lot of nitrogenous fertiliser and they will bear heavily  when they get old – it’s is one of the highest sugar content fruits and belongs to the  family Sapotecea.

Soursop  (Annona muricta) We haven’t had much luck with grafted ones. The Puerto Rican one is doing OK but Unlike Custard Apples it has to be ripe whilst still on the tree.  You can’t pick it green so it’s not ideal for marketing as it doesn’t have a long shelf life but we sell a lot here. It can go a bit jelly inside when it’s too ripe. I like a squeeze of lemon over them. There’s quite a variation among them.

Sheryl How do you tell the difference?

Bob     They have a different skin. The smoother skin one is mucosa, the bareba is a white flesh. Most of these will bear fruit in the autumn but a few will hang through to winter but if you try and eat this fruit at the end of winter, they taste yucky – no  flavour – but once the sap starts flowing, then the taste comes back.

Star Apple  are in the same family as Abiu. You don’t get a lot out of them and if you don’t eat near the skin, it’s quite pleasant. Don’t eat them too green or too ripe. Don’t grow the ungrafted varieties as the crop is unreliable.

Joe What particular variety? Peter  How do you get them to fruit – mine flower but no fruit?

Bob  I had one like that and I got rid of it and put in another variety.  Sheryl Do they need cross-pollination with another? Bob It may help.

Star Gooseberry Very sour but if you cook them up in brown sugar and boil and boil till they turn red they’re nice. Willie Chica acida formerly known as Philanthus acidus

Wax Jambu Very beautiful tree with lovely red fruit

Yellow Mangosteen Can be grown from seed. Good flavour.

Fertiliser – We use Cracker Dust It’s a blue metal and we mix this with fowl dung (about 3:1) but you can change it as there’s no rules but it has a number of advantages. There was an ABC programme on it. There are a lot of minerals in it and its pH is about 9 so it’s nearly as good as putting lime on the ground so you mineralise your ground. 

Sheryl What’s the difference between Cracker Dust and Blue Metal?

Bob Fineness. Blue Metal is too course. I’ve found that just by putting it around trees, that the roots come up into it and it’s very inexpensive. You can use it instead of top soil because it’s easier to spread and the grass will green up where you’ve put it – put it on at anytime of the year.

Down at the bottom section there’s a sign “Lava Tree” so guess who fell for that one!!! 

Compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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I’ve been managing this orchard for 10 years and grow about 2,500 Persimmon and 1,200 Avocados.

Weather has badly affected the orchard this season which has taken the edge off the quality of the fruit so there’s a lot of skin damage though it doesn’t affect the internal quality. We may look into rain covers but that is a fairly intensive capital exercise. The orchard here is 10 years old. They’re a long lasting tree – not like Stonefruit or Citrus which have reached the end of their life after 10-15 years. The oldest orchards in Australia would be 25 years and they’re still producing commercially. My father put in a Persimmon orchard in 1985 – one of the first in Australia.

If you eat a green Astringent Persimmon, it’s like a green banana and very unpleasant and the Japanese discovered a few genetic mutations 200 years ago and they had lost their astringency.  So they started selecting varieties and 3-5% of their crosses actually had this non-astringent quality, so over that period they settled on two main varieties – Fuyu and Jiro.

Jiro has a couple of bud sport variations known as Maekawa Jiro and Ichikikei Jiro, and we grow Ichikikei Jiro which is the big square fruit and also a few Fuyu trees. Fuyu is probably the world standard – a nice sweet round fruit, a bit smaller than Jiro. The taste is very similar. The Fuyu is supposed to be a bit sweeter and Fuyu have a tougher skin, but if you eat the skin, then it’s not as pleasant as a Jiro, and Fuyu is a more vigorous tree.

We also have a handful of the Astringent Nightingale in the ground. The Italians are probably the biggest market for astringent persimmons. Anywhere in China, Japan, Korea are probably our biggest market, they don’t eat the soft astringent persimmon. They do grow a whole range of astringent varieties as well but they treat them with carbon dioxide while they are still crispy which removes the astringency. They put them in a carbon dioxide cool room for about 24 hours and that takes the astringency out.

The Israelis grow a small astringent variety called Triumph and sell it as Sharon fruit and the Spanish have developed a new astringent variety called Rojo Brilliante which is proving quite a hit in Europe where they have undertaken a major marketing campaign.

Sheryl:      Can you explain the difference between Fuyu and Jiro and why you grow Jiro?
Stephen:   I started to grow persimmons because I thought it was easy but unfortunately every year it seems to become more challenging for various reasons.  But when we planted Jiro there was an opening in the market because most of the Australian crop at the time was Fuyu picked in April. Unfortunately, a lot of people thought the same as me and there are very big orchards of Jiro at Gympie and Gatton so I wish I was growing Fuyu now and as Jiro get older, Jiro fruit tend to mark very badly as the trees get more crowded.

The DPI have conducted trials on various aspects on quality and production and one of the interesting things we have found is that if you look at the first row on the outside of my orchard, we have a NZ product called Extenday® plastic mulch which reflects light back into the tree.  It’s a mat you roll out on the ground. The fruit quality is better and earlier and the skin quality has held up to the rain a bit better. It gives colour and sweetness to the fruit so although we get enough light, we’re just trialling it. It’s available in 100mtr rolls and costs $300.00 from a Victorian agriculture wholesale company. They use it in Victoria on their Pink Lady apple orchards for 3 weeks just before harvest so the fruit gets a nice blush otherwise the fruit just gets red on parts of it and green on other parts.

The other difference between Jiro and Fuyu is (that) Jiro is less vigorous and this keeps our labour costs down while also being quite a productive tree. Fuyu tend to be more vigorous and can get 3mtr shoots, but we’re working on ways to control vigour, so commercial orchards look at plant growth regulators, but also getting fruit on the tree is the best way of controlling vigour. I’m trying to hang my Jiro late to get a sweeter fruit and colour but we got caught this year with the rain. To get seedless, plant a Fuyu or Jiro as they don’t produce male flowers. We get seed from most of the astringent types. A lot of persimmons produce male and female flowers. We graft most of the year, particularly in early spring through to summer, but the most successful is to put a side bud or a side graft on in February to early March (late summer).  I use a chip bud as a T bud doesn’t work as the bark is not flexible but I mostly wedge graft or you can use a side graft. Jiro is best done in early spring as it only gets one flush, whereas Fuyu will keep growing most of the summer so we do that later.

Planting Out
Best time to plant out is June or July (early winter). It’s best not to disturb their root system. Keep as much of it together as possible. Dig a hole a lot bigger than the tree, work in a lot of manure or organic matter, a few handfuls of Dynamic Lifter and a heap of lime and dig it all into the soil under the tree. Don’t plant the tree on top of any concentrated fertiliser, don’t ever pour a handful of fertiliser at the base of the persimmon as you will kill it, make a little basin to catch a little water. In spring water a couple of times a week and when you fertilise at this time, put a band out away from the tree and only a very small amount for the first couple of years until they are established – about a couple of handfuls of Dynamic Lifter at a time. If they are in a windy exposed site they won’t establish well. Best to plant in a sheltered position but not too sheltered. In Japan, they plant them bare rooted when they are dormant but if you disturb the roots in a growing time, the tree will 90% of the time, die.

Sheryl:    When I plant a tree, providing it is not root bound, I cut the base of the plastic bag away, place it in the hole then lift the side of the bag up so you are not disturbing the roots.

Member: What are the issues with grafting a Fuyu onto an astringent Nightingale?
Stephen:  You can pretty much graft anything on to any Diospryos kaki (oriental persimmons).  They’re all compatible. There can be incompatibility with the American persimmon (diospyros virginina) which you sometimes see growing on the roadside. It has a small date sized fruit. There’s a native persimmon that grows in the rainforest in Southern Qld. We’re collecting a few different rootstocks from around the world to try, but most of your backyard persimmon is Diospyros kaki the Japanese Persimmon. There’s a bit of variation in growth, but we don’t know a lot about rootstocks as yet, and the industry has a 10 year project which has started and which is pretty much the minimum time to learn anything about rootstocks, although it’s usually 10-20 years to select some rootstocks, graft and evaluate them and try them in different growing conditions.

Sheryl:  If you have both the astringent and the non-astringent planted together in your orchard, will they cross pollinate?
Stephen: If you plant the seed of any persimmon, 97% of the seedlings will be astringent. The non-astringents will get seed in them if you put in a pollinator variety, but we’re not producing pollinator varieties anymore because the industry has stopped using them and we’re going for seedless fruit. Seedless fruit crop OK but can drop if you don’t manage the trees properly – they’ll get very dry. Seeded fruit tends to hang on the tree better.

Nets
We put the nets on at the end of January and we’ll take them off as soon as we take the crop off.  There are advantages to keeping a canopy on as it seems to produce a better environment for the fruit. We get the UV stabilised NZ nets in from James Grigson in South Australia in 100mtr rolls which have a 10 year guarantee but it should last for 15 years. The Chinese ones tend to break down.

Sheryl:     How long will the fruit hang on the tree for and how do we tell when to pick?
Stephen:  We do a sugar test and pick when the brix is over 14. They tend to only colour up well once you get a few cool nights so during the warm February – March nights, the fruit is maturing but not colouring up a lot. They will hang over winter but that is rare in the sub-tropics, but if you go down south in Victoria the tree will lose all its leaves and the tree will be covered in red fruit, so in Melbourne it is very popular as a garden tree. The birds won’t eat them when they are green and astringent. We have to net the trees – there’s no alternative!

Pruning Schedule
To keep your tree to say 3 mtrs or whatever height you want, cut it off in winter.  Prune to an open vase shape but if you want fruit, don’t cut off all of last year’s growth as they fruit on last year’s flush. We espalier our trees. They set very heavy crops so we thin back to one or two fruit i.e., if it sends out a shoot with 8 flowers on, we wait until it sets fruit then take most of them off if it doesn’t do so naturally. Taking the flowers off is ideal but you can’t tell which fruit is misshapen.  If you’re espaliering, I’ll cut off to a less vigorous lateral – you can’t allow them to keep growing out forever and what we are finding is that if you prune too hard, they don’t get enough fruit and they just want to grow all the time so we are looking at ways to crop all the vigorous shoots, take some out and leave some.

I’m not exactly doing a proper espalier on my trees – I’m shifting to cordon training; vertical shoots coming up, crop them for about 3 years, then cut them out and another replacement grows.  So you’ll notice I’ve left some pretty high branches here to crop, and a couple of Fuyu growers have told me that it’s the only way they were able to tame the trees, to load them up with massive clusters of fruit and let them all hang down, but we don’t have that problem with Jiro.

When pruning, if the diameter of the vertical was one-third more than the horizontal sub-leader, you cut it out. I went to NZ a couple of years ago and looked at how they grew them, and they grow them a lot flatter than we do and I think it is probably a better system for controlling vigour.  So this palmette system that I had already put in place by the time I went there probably grows the tree a bit too vertically; and they’ve gone to growing their main tree to a T that sends up big shoots and they bend the shoots over so the tree actually covers the whole orchard in the middle, so it’s just a wall of persimmons and their orchards are very productive.

When we grew our first trees, we planted a single row of trees and decided to open them up into a V and on each side of the V, we would grow an espalier tree.  It’s proved reasonably successful – the only thing is that the net sits a bit low so that’s why you should have a fifth wire when espaliering to make it a bit higher.  The low net keeps humidity in the orchard which exacerbates the problem of rainy weather.  We’ve grown a double trunk, then espaliered a branch onto each wire so we have two leaders, then as the tree grows we try to crop to the outside of the wire and keep the centre fairly open so you get a lot of light into the centre of the tree, which is very important and persimmons initiate next year’s fruit in January.  So this January, next year’s persimmon crop, which we will be picking over 12 months later, was initiated in all these little buds, and they tend to only initiate fruit in the buds that get a lot of light.

We try to look for dapple light on the orchard floor, and if you have a solid blocked out orchard floor under the tree, your canopy is a bit too dense for a commercial orchard.  In a home garden, it is not so critical.  We can get up to 250 fruit per tree.  We don’t wax the fruit for sale – just polish it.

Sheryl: When I was in NZ recently at the Treecroppers Conference, what they said was that you lie down on the ground, look up into the canopy and you must see dappled light.

Fertilise
We fertilise in August (late Winter) just before they flush in spring and also fertilise as soon as we pick the fruit e.g. 1kg of Nitrophoska per tree in Autumn and that builds up the trees reserves for next season.

Ph      Persimmons like a high pH of 6.5+ and you can’t give them too much calcium, so apply dolomite and gypsum.  We do soil testing and leaf testing and try and match the two together to see that what you are putting on the ground is going into the tree. Because I have a variety of soils here and we have high manganese which persimmons don’t particularly like, so the industry is currently revising the standards as the calcium weren’t sufficient and we were getting a lot of fruit quality problems as a result. I work on 5.8 – 7 and that’s with annual lime applications in the winter, and if need be I’ll put on a second application in the summer.  Put on 3kg per tree.  We also put on a large handful of dolomite on each tree in the nursery during winter.  People have told me they’ve planted a tree over some old concrete rubble which is highly alkaline and they’ve done very well.

The trees do best in calcareous soils particularly limestone soils in South Australia.  I’ve been getting my soil tested lately over in WA.  I use to get it done elsewhere and have noticed there is a bit of inaccuracy in all of them.  It’s not a science.  The best idea is not to change your method too much – you look for trends rather than actual figures, so I’ll take a walk through the orchard and take samples from the same place every year so when you hand them to the same lab.  My biggest fruit has been 700gms.

Fruit Drop 
Persimmons will naturally drop a lot of fruit – they might set 600-800 flowers and drop ¾ of them but the things that contribute to fruit drop is poor nutrition, drying out and water logging.  If you get a lot of cloudy weather in spring, it causes carbohydrate stress in the tree and this drops the fruit as well.  Young persimmons are also prone to heavy fruit drop and you’ll see where there are lots of little short stems where there were flowers which haven’t held through to fruiting but as they get older they hold the fruit a bit better.

Fruit Fly 
They’re highly susceptible to fruit fly.  Every roadside within 50kms has guava trees and they should be eradicated, but we control by baiting 2-3 times a week with Lepidex® as the insecticide, mixed with Q-Lure put out by Bugs for Bugs in Mundubbera – yeast autolysate – every other bait I’ve tried doesn’t work.

We spatter spray which means that in an area of a foot square in every few trees, you spray a very course spray with distinct droplets that don’t run together on the leaves or the bait spray won’t work as well. We bait the whole orchard, particularly around the edge of the orchard which gets hammered a bit.  We spray where there’s no fruit.  With the nets on, we often don’t go right through the orchard – just mainly the perimeters  We also spray it on the grass, power poles.  We start baiting mid December so the fruit is about 3-5cm across but the fruit fly seem to be getting hungrier every year.

Propagating
We use Parafilm® from Fernland Agencies in Nambour for grafting.  In the winter when the tree is dormant, we will cut off to the graft which has taken and check them first to see if they are still alive. August you get good sap flow.

Pests
Borers and limb destroyers. There’s a clear wing moth which bores into Persimmons and that’s become a major problem especially with the Fuyu variety.  Jiro doesn’t seem to get affected but I’ve seem them ringbark a tree and kill them.  The industry is controlling it at the moment with pheromone mating disruption so we put out dispensers, and the male can’t find the female to mate with, it’s been very effective.

Diseases 
We have a fungus called Cercospora leaf spot that will take the leaves off the tree, we spray 3 times a year with Mancozeb.  There’s also the yellow peach moth, and the orange fruit borer which will get under the calyx of the fruit starting in Jan/Feb, and they’re a bit of a problem.  We use a product called Mimic, which is one of the new generation of insecticides which tend to be very specific – non-toxic to humans or mammals but highly toxic to little loopers and grubs.  There’s a whole generation of them like the old organo-phosphates on the way out, but some of the new generation pesticides which they call “soft” work well because they don’t create other problems by knocking out all your predators.

Problems 
If you get excessive rainfall you get a gap around the calyx of the fruit and you’ll get a bit of blackening down inside which makes the fruit go soft a bit earlier.

If you see a dark red fruit on the tree today (this is in the Fuyu Block), that will be fruit that has ripened prematurely due to some damage or other.  Often they’ll get calyx separation – they’ll get a lot of rain and blow up and the calyx separates away from the fruit.  Some of them soften because of water logging in the roots which will also cause the fruit to drop.

Sheryl:  How long can we keep Persimmon in the refrigerator? 
Stephen: Try and keep them out of the refrigerator – best is 15ºC for up to 2 weeks.  If you keep them in the refrigerator and pull them out after two weeks, they’ll go soft and jelly like. You can eat them two ways – hard and soft.  Slice them like you would a tomato and put it in a sandwich e.g. ham and salad which is very nice. Persimmon, cheese and avocado plus a bit of tuna is another nice variation. It’s a fruit that goes nice with diary.

Loquats
We put in about 8 different varieties from Birdwood Nursery to experiment with, we’re going to try and thin them to get a bigger fruit, and packing them in punnets.  If they get an early flowering I find it doesn’t come to anything.  We only start to get good fruit from the end of June/July from flowers that come on in late May.  I’m going to prune them to a vase shape and we might tie some branches down.

Avocados
We grow mostly Hass and a few Sharwill and Reed.  Sharwill is probably the best all round avocado for here.  They like lots of organic matter and lots of Dynamic Lifter.  You can fertilise them fairly heavily but just don’t concentrate it.

Don’t plant in clay soil – they need well drained sandy soil or they’ll drown.  They grow well on red sandy soil, well drained, and we prune massive chunks out of them every year with a long handled chain saw and cut out   to ½ out every year.

We also use a plant hormone product called Sunny which we spray on at flowering, that halves your shoot extensive growth and it gives you a bit bigger fruit.  After using it for 3 years, the tree starts to decline healthwise so gave it a break last year.  Only commercial orchards would use a product like this – you wouldn’t worry about it.

On this property are probably some of the 3 oldest Avocado trees in Australia – about 80-100 years old – seedlings planted when this was a pineapple farm and they have survived with no management in all that time, and they are highly prized by Birdwood Nursery as one of their rootstocks.  They pick off 3,000-4,000 fruit off per year for rootstock.

There’s another rootstock I use called Velvick.  Some avocados seem to have a more vigorous rootstock, and some types of avocado have a more vigorous root system which is not exactly resistant to phytophthora, but it regrows quicker so if phytophthora is constantly killing off the roots in the tree, and the tree is constantly growing new ones.  Some do it better than others and these 3 are much healthier trees for resistance to root rot, whereas a lot of avocado trees sold commercially are grown on highly susceptible rootstocks and require a lot of management.  We inject every year with phosphorous acid.

A lot of the seedlings don’t have a very nice flavour so that is why you should buy a grafted tree.

The trees require copper against Anthracnose, and use Endosulphan every 2-3 weeks for fruit spotting bug.  We do a residue test before sending to market which is compulsory before we can start harvesting.  Pesticides are broken down by microflora in the soil.  A healthy soil system is part of your whole lot.  We don’t overfertilise and we encourage organic matter. All the prunings go back under the trees. I’m more worried about Copper. Copper is a fungicide and tends to build up in your soil over time,  we don’t have a viable alternative but Copper would have a more detrimental effect on the soil microflora and the general environment of the orchard.  Copper is toxic to Persimmons unless you use it when they are dormant.  It’s actually a soft pesticide providing you don’t let it get into a creek.

There’s a couple of other pesticides around which you can use, but they tend to be broad spectrum so they tend to knock everything down.  We spray Buldock® for example, it kills all the predatory insects so you get massive mite explosions and all sorts of other problems – scale which you might never have had a problem with before.

Soil
All avocado country on this farm is deep red sandy soil and goes down forever into rocky sandstone.  We grow our best quality Persimmons in heavy clay, but mound them when you’re planting them out in this type of soil.  We manage our organic matter in the soil here by side-throwing the grass slashing, so all our grass row clippings go under the trees.  We also get a lot of winter legumes. We’ve just started experimenting with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and got very good results in the avocados – probably made the persimmons a bit too well.  I get it from Malcolm Foyle at Tanawah and we put it out with Urea 2 or 3 times a year and it fixes nitrogen out of the air.  The only problem with it in a commercial orchard is the difficulty in managing. Nitrogen is potentially lethal for a productive orchard – if you put too much or too little you can do damage, so it’s early days for us but it seems to produce good results.  Avocadoes are heavy nitrogen feeders and I think it has improved the soil health in the first season.

Weeds
We mostly use a product called Spray.Seed® which is one of the Gramoxone types highly toxic to humans, but very effective, and we try and spray before the weeds get too mature.  You use low rates in small dosages and often.  Spray.Seed burns and it only kills what it touches.  It works by burning off the leaf and the young leaves.

Glyphosate is systemic and the roots die as a result, and it won’t kill heavy grasses unless you repeatedly hit it.  We found in horticultural industry that glyphosate requires clay to become inactive, it attaches to clay particles in the soil and until it does, it goes down into the soil and gets taken up by the roots.  If you use it a lot under your orchard, you get tree decline, especially avocados as they have feeder roots.  We never use glyphosate under avocado and try and avoid it in Persimmons too.  If you hit a Persimmon branch with it in autumn, next year that half of the tree will be all deformed – it’s all to do with amine salts as to how it works.

Bob:  I knew a farmer who instead of using 10gms per litre of RoundUp use to use a handful of Urea and half it down to 5 so he got double the strength – it acidifies the water.  It works very effectively if you get your pH down to 3.5 – 4.00.  You can use a quarter of the rate.

Mushroom Compost 
I used it a few years ago around some avocados and nearly killed them.  I think it kept their feet a bit too wet.

Stephen grew up on a fruit and vegetable farm at Woombye, where his parents have grown a whole range of vegetables and subtropical fruits.  In the 1980’s they were one of the early commercial growers of persimmon.  On leaving school Stephen pursued his love of farming and worked on an orchard called Phoolbari Park at Palmwoods, learning to grow Avocados, Stonefruit, Custard Apple and Persimmons.  It was here he also became involved in the nursery industry, becoming a partner in Phoolbari Park Nurseries, a leading supplier of persimmon trees to commercial growers.  Currently he manages Pringle Road Farms, runs Fruitscapes Nursery (specialising in persimmon trees) and in partnership with brother Jon owns the retail outlet Yandina Fruit Market. 
Note from Sheryl: Stephen is President of Persimmons Australia Inc. Contact:  email: auspersimmon@yahoo.com.au     (M) 0408 769 987

This article was compiled by Sheryl Backhouse