October 2020

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Dragon Fruit can last for up to 2-3 weeks in a plastic bag if kept in the refrigerator. You can also freeze dragon fruit but the texture will be altered and it will best be used in a sauce or sorbet.

Simple Dragon Fruit Ice Cream    ref: Raymond Patterson – Pitaya yahoogroup 2 cups dragon fruit 2 cups half and half (half light cream and half milk) 1 cup sugar

I’ve experimented with other sweeteners to cut down sugar level, so far the only working alternative I’ve found is agave nectar, as the cactus sweetener seems compatible with the dragon fruit.

Pashionate Dragon Ice Cream   ref:  llnickers – Pitaya yahoogroup Warm 1 cup milk in a small saucepan.Whisk 2 eggs with ½ cup sugar in a separate bowl. Slowly add the warm milk to egg mixture continuing to whisk. Pour mixture back into the pan and heat slowly until thickened, stirring constantly. DO NOT BOIL. Let cool to room temperature Add 2 cups of cream or half cream/half milk plus 2tsp vanilla and chill overnight. Put in a 1 quart ice cream maker and follow manufacturer’s instructions.

Add 1- ½ cups peeled dragon fruit cut into ½” cubes dragon fruit chunks and ½ cup passionfruit (strain out some of the seeds) just before the end of the freezing process – or ¼ cup lemon juice can be substituted for passion fruit.  Makes about 1 litre.  Yum!

Dragon Fruit Ice Cream using Coconut Milk Cut your dragon fruit in half, use a spoon and remove all the fruit and process in a food processor.

Combine 1 can full fat coconut milk (475ml), 3 egg yolks, 1 tsp vanilla and a pinch of sea salt in a sauce pan over medium heat. Bring to a mild boil constantly whisking. Remove from heat and let cool. Add your dragon fruit to your cooled coconut milk mixture. Once mixed, place in your refrigerator to cool, for at least 2 hours but you can leave it overnight. Remove from the fridge and immediately use in your ice cream maker after you mix it slightly to ensure nothing settled. This ice cream will not turn into a brick like most coconut milk ice cream. Enjoy once it is done. Live on the edge a little and serve in the shell of the fruit. Enjoy.  Ref:  http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/recipes/desserts/dragon-fruit-ice-cre…

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A mineral element is considered as essential, when plants cannot complete reproductive stage of life cycle due to its deficiency. Deficiency must be corrected only by supplying the element in question and when the element is directly involved in the metabolism of the plant (Arnon, 1954). Based on these criteria, sixteen elements so far were identified as essential. These are: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum and chlorine. Most of the carbon as carbon dioxide enters the plant from the air; hydrogen and oxygen are taken up as water. The rest of the elements are taken up from the soil solution as mineral nutrients. Among these nutrients N, P, K, Ca, Mg, and S are considered major or macro-nutrients, because they are required in large quantities that range between 1 to 150 g per kg of plant dry matter. Fe, Zn, Mn, Cu, B, Mo and Cl are minor or micro-nutrients that are required at rates of 0.1 to 100 mg per kg of plant dry matter (Marschner, 1997a). Chloride is essential in micro quantities but can accumulate in the plant in large quantities when present in high concentrations in the soil solution, (Xu et al., 2000).

All the essential nutrients are required by plants in balanced proportions. Deviation from this may result in nutritional disorders. Early detecting of nutritional deficiency stress is important. Stress might extend to the entire plant with loss of yield if relief of stress is not employed. Continuous shortage of a nutrient or nutrients might cause plant death. When two or more elements are deficient simultaneously, the composite picture of symptoms may resemble no single known deficiency. Mineral deficiency symptoms are sometimes confused with other complex field events such as damage caused by insect-pest, disease, salt stress, water stress, pollution, light and temperature injury (Bennett,1993) and herbicide damage. Toxicity of Mo or Se is similar to P deficiency (Bennett, 1993), Fe deficiency in Mango is similar to Chloride toxicity (Xu et al., 2000). Therefore, it is necessary to critically observe and define these deficiency symptoms. The deficiency symptoms might be distinguished based on the plant part that shows deficiency symptoms, presence or absence of dead spots and entire leaf or interveinal chlorosis. A description of initial appearance of deficiency symptoms on leaves is given in Fig.1 and the associated text below. Generally, nutrient deficiency in the plant occurs when a nutrient is insufficient in the growth medium and/ or cannot be absorbed and assimilated by the plants due to unfavourable environmental conditions. Nutrient disorders limit crop production in all types of soil around the world. Table 1 shows soil conditions associated with nutrient deficiencies of various nutrient elements.

Visual symptoms of nutrient deficiency – Photos   http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/min-def/list.htm

Boron (B) 
Boron deficiency causes yellowing or chlorosis of youngest leaves and stems (Yu et al., 1998) which starts from the base to the tip. Rosetting of terminal shoots of potato (Roberts and Rhee, 1990). Leaf tip burn, elongate and become whitish brown in rice (Yu et al., 1998). Death of terminal bud occurs in extreme cases. Boron deficiency causes brown heart in radish (Shelp et al., 1987) and crown choking in coconut (Baranwal et al., 1989).

Calcium (Ca) 
Calcium stress in plants results in chlorosis of young leaves along the veins of birdsfoot trefoil (Russelle and McGraw, 1986) and blueberry (Tamada, 1989), if deficiency persist longer, bleaching of upper half leaf followed by leaf tip curling do occur in black pepper (Nybe and Nair, 1987) and sugarcane (Nautiyal et al., 2000). The growing bud leaf becomes chlorotic white with base remaining green, the distortion of the tips of shoots i.e. dieback was observed by Edwards and Hortan, (1997) in peach seedlings. Similarly, Spehar and Galway, (1997) found brown spots on leaves, reduced expansion and premature leaf senescence under Ca stress in soybean crop. Stress during fruiting in tomato increases susceptibility to blossom end rot (Adams and El-Gizawy, 1988; Sonneveld and Voogt, 1991 and Ho et al., 1999). Calcium stress is also responsible for other disorders such as bitter pit in apple (Ford, 1979; Monge et al., 1995 and Silva and Rodriguez, 1996); leaf tip burn in cabbage (Miao et al., 1997) and lettuce; black heart of celery; cavity spot of carrots (Scaife and Clarkson 1978); vitrescence in melons (Jean-Baptist et al., 1999).

Chlorine (Cl) 
The symptoms of chlorine deficiency develop first on the older leaves. Discrete patches of pale green chlorotic tissue appear between the main vein near the tip of the leaf, downward cupping of some of the older leaves of Kiwifruit was observed by Smith et al., (1987). The leaflets of youngest leaves shrivel completely, older leaflets develop a brown necrosis which start near the tip and extend backwards particularly at the margins of red clover (Whitehead, 1985).

Copper (Cu)  
In copper deficiency, visible foliar symptoms appear on young leaves as chlorosis changing to necrosis (Conover et al., 1991; Del, 1994); rolling, wilting and twisting of leaves in wheat (Owuoche, 1995). The later affected leaves appear papery and twisted in rice (Nautiyal et al., 1999 ).

Iron (Fe) 
The principal veins remain conspicuously green and surrounding portion of the younger leaves turn yellow tending towards whiteness in chickpea (Mehrotra and Gupta, 1990 and Saxena et al., 1990); groundnut (Reddy et al., 1993); radish, cauliflower, cabbage and sorghum (Preeti et al., 1994); lentil (Zaiter & Ghalayini, 1994) and soybean (Fonts and Cox, 1998). Under severe deficiency, most part of the leaf becomes white (Russelle and McGraw, 1986 ).

Magnesium (Mg)
Magnesium deficiency causes yellowing, but differs from that of nitrogen. The yellowing takes place in between veins of older leaves (Makkanen, 1995) of Picea abies and veins remain green, this is followed by necrosis of tissues in birdsfoot trefoil (Russelle and McGraw, 1986), melons (Simon et al., 1986). black pepper (Nybe and Nair, 1987) and blueberry (Tamada, 1989). Mg deficiency my be induced in tomatoes by high levels of ammonium in the nutrient solution (Kafkafi et al., 1971).

Manganese (Mn)
The principal veins as well as smaller veins are green, the interveinal portion become chlorotic in Ailanthus triphysa (Anoop et al., 1998) followed by necrosis and browning of interveinal tissue in melons (Simon et al., 1986). The affected young leaves remain small and abscise before older leaves in birdsfoot trefoil (Russelle and McGraw, 1986).

Molybdenum (Mo)
The common symptoms of Mo deficiency in plants include a general yellowing, marginal and interveinal chlorosis, marginal necrosis, rolling, scorching and downward curling of margins in poinsettia cultivars (Cox and Bartley, 1987; Cox, 1992) and in various field, horticulture and forage crops (Gupta and Gupta, 1997). The deficiency of molybdenum in cauliflower causes the disorder described as ‘Whiptail’ ( Duval et al., 1991).

Nickel (Ni)
Plant growth is reduced and older leaves turn chlorotic giving plants a nitrogen deficient phenotype, when grown on urea-based nutrient solutions not supplemented with Ni in tomato and soybean (Shimada and Ando, 1980; Krogmeier et al., 1991). Similar results were obtained in oilseed-rape, zucchini and soybean by Gerendás and Sattelmacher (1997).

Nitrogen (N)
The characteristic deficiency symptom of nitrogen is the appearance of uniform yellowing of leaves including the veins, this being more pronounced on older leaves as expressed in rabbit-eye and blueberries (Tamada, 1989); Fescue (Razmjoo, 1997); Ailanthus triphysa (Anoop et al., 1998); chili (Balakrishnan 1999) and sugarcane (Nautiyal et al., 2000). The leaves become stiff and erect. In dicotyledonous crops the leaves detach easily under extreme deficiency condition. Cereal crops show characteristics ‘V’ shaped yellowing at the tip of lower leaves. O’Sullivan et al.,(1993) observed relatively small and pale green leaves with dull appearance in sweet potato. If such condition of nitrogen stress do persist, the result is a decreased foliage growth and shoot growth. See for example: black pepper (Nybe and Nair, 1986); douglas-fir (Friend et al.,1990) and sapota (Nachegowda et al.,1992).

Phosphorus (P)
In phosphorus deficiency, leaves remain small, erect, unusually dark green with greenish red in sweet potato (O’Sullivan et al., 1993), bluish green in chili (Balakrishnan 1999), brown in birdsfoot trefoil (Russelle and McGraw, 1986) or purplish tinge in sugar maple (Bernier and Brazeau, 1988); blueberry (Tamada,1989) and sugarcane (Nautiyal et al., 2000). The under side develops bronzy appearance. The root growth is also restricted under phosphorus stress in black pepper (Nybe and Nair, 1986). Anthocyanin pigment increases in leaves of barley (Hamy,1983) and Arabidopsis thaliana (Trull et al., 1997) under phosphorus stress,

Potassium (K)
Under potassium stress condition, yellowing of leaves starts from the tips or margins of leaves extending towards the center of leaf base. The yellowing is interveinal and irregular in the leaves of tomato (Besford, 1978) and blueberry (Tamada, 1989). These yellow parts become necrotic (dead spots) with leaf curling in tobacco (Arnold et al., 1986); sugar maple (Bernier and Brazeau, 1988); sapota (Nachegowda et al.,1992) and sugarcane (Nautiyal et al., 2000). There is a sharp difference between green, yellow and necrotic parts.

Sulfur (S)
Sulfur deficiency cause leaves to become yellowish in black pepper (Nybe and Nair, 1987); potato (Gupta and Sanderson, 1993) and Brassica oleracea (Stuiver et al., 1997) and it appears similar to nitrogen deficiency, but the symptoms are first visible on younger leaves (Russelle and McGraw, 1986). The affected leaves are narrow and the veins are paler and chlorotic than interveinal portion, especially towards the base with marginal necrosis in sugarcane (Nautiyal et al., 2000).

Zinc (Zn)
The leaves become narrow and small in chili (Balakrishnan, 1999), the lamina becomes chlorotic in sweet potato (O’Sullivan et al., 1993), sour orange seedlings (Swietlik, 1995) and chickpea (Khan et al., 1998), while veins remain green. Subsequently, dead spots develop all over the leaf including veins, tips and margins under sever deficiency, shoot growth is reduced (O’Sullivan et al., 1993; Swietlik, 1995 and Yu and Rengel, 1999). Khaira disease in rice results due to zinc deficiency (Gautam and Sharma, 1982; Sharma et al., 1988 and Sahi et al., 1992). Shoot elongation is reduced and a tuft or rosette of distinctly narrow leaves is produced at the shoot terminal in apple and pear. The symptoms are termed ‘little leaf’ or ‘rosette’ (Hanson, 1993).

Sheryl:  Annette McFarlane’s new book on Organic Fruit Growing has a list of all the nutritional elements and what they do so do have a look.

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I want to talk to you tonight about a way of controlling insect pests without using insecticide. The technique is called ‘mating disruption’. I’m also going to talk to you about sex because that is what we are manipulating with the technique. It makes use of pheromones, which are defined as chemicals emitted by an individual to send messages to others of the same species. The work is made up from two Greek words – Phero meaning “to carry” and Hormone meaning “to excite or stimulate”. There are a number of different kinds of pheromones but tonight I’ll be talking about sex pheromones, which are a bit like perfumes and are used for attracting mates. Each species has its own unique pheromone and, in the case of moths, are almost always produced by the female.

I work exclusively with moths, although many other insect orders also have pheromones. In moths pheromone is produced and released from a gland that sits at the tip of the abdomen of the female. When the warehouse moth (Ephestia cautella) releases pheromone, or ‘calls’, she curls her abdomen up so that the gland sits above the wing tips. Some species curl the abdomen down and other species don’t do anything obvious at all.  The pheromone is carried off downwind and is detected by the male, who then flies upwind towards her. Pheromones are pretty powerful things  – males only needs a few molecules to excite them, so a little bit goes a long way.

How can we use sex pheromones? One application is as baits in traps, where a small quantity, similar to the amount that a single female would carry, is evaporated from a substrate such as a piece of rubber tubing. In other words the bait is a synthetic version of the female.  Males pick up the scent and come to the trap thinking that they’ll find a female. But all they do is come to a sticky end! Pheromone traps can be used for monitoring and surveillance. For example the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) uses them around ports to detect the Asian gypsy moth, which is harmful species that can come in by accident. The traps can be used by growers to determine what pest populations are doing. If they monitor their traps on a regular basis they can see whether or not the population is increasing and so decide when to put on control measures or they could use them to indicate whether they have the pest at all.

Mass trapping is a technique that was once thought to have potential as a means of pest control. It was assumed that by trapping and removing enough males, populations would decline and control would follow. However it very rarely works for moths because most males can mate more than once. Even if you trap 80 or 90% of available males, and that is almost impossible to achieve, those that are left behind can still mate with enough females to cause significant damage.

‘Attract and kill’ is a bit like mass trapping except that you use a pheromone in conjunction with an insecticide. The two are put out together as a paste so that when the male is attracted by the pheromone he gets a fatal dose of insecticide. This method is relatively new and is still being evaluated.

Pathogen distribution via moths attracted by pheromone to inoculation chambers is another relatively new technique that has some potential for insect pest control. After the male enters the chamber he gets infected with a pathogen, such as a fungus, which he then takes back out and spreads to others within the population. The pathogen is fatal and causes the insects to die within a few days of becoming infected.

I’ve already mentioned mating disruption briefly and now I’d like to tell you about how we developed the technique for control of a clearwing borer moth in persimmons. It involves releasing large quantities of synthetic pheromone in the orchard. This confuses the males, who simply don’t know which way to go to find the females. If he can’t find a female no mating takes place and we get control.

George Is there only the one signal they use to find a female?

Richard In most cases with moths it is. Some insects use sound and/or sight too: butterflies for example use sight as well as pheromones. But for the moth species we work with it’s almost exclusively odour, at least until the males get very close to the female, when visual cues are sometimes used.

To be honest, we’re not 100% sure how mating disruption technique works – there are a number of possibilities but a likely scenario is that releasing all that pheromone creates a lot of false trails that the males follow without finding a female. It is also possible that with so much synthetic pheromone about the male’s sensory systems become overloaded and are no longer able to detect the small quantities of pheromone released by the female. It’s a bit like us when we come across a bad smell. If we are exposed to it for long enough, our sensory system becomes adapted and we get to the stage where we no longer notice it.

The insect that is creating a real problem in the Persimmon industry is a clearwing moth. Until a year or so ago it was known as Carmenta chrysophanes but then the taxonomists got hold of and changed its name to Ichneumonoptera chrysophanes. It’s much easier to say Carmenta, but tonight I’ll just call it a clear wing moth! Unlike most moths, this one responds to its pheromone during the day, which is a bit of a luxury for us because we like to see how our moths are behaving and with most species that means going out with night vision goggles or infrared light just to see what’s going on.

George Is it a native?

Richard Yes but there are related species in many other parts of the world.

George I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.

Richard No, but you might have seen the damage that they do. In terms of their appearance there’s quite a bit of difference between the male and female, but for most of the moths I work with there isn’t any obvious difference between male and female.

Sheryl What size are they?

Richard About 1cm long. These moths don’t touch the fruit – they ringbark. They’re called borers because the larvae get into the timber itself and cause damage around new shoots as well as old ones. I’ve seen whole limbs that have dropped off trees and in one case in Redland Bay an entire tree had fallen over. I’ve been told by a couple of growers that this insect is limiting expansion of the industry because they haven’t got an effective control measure, other than netting the orchard. The industry had heard of our success with some other fruit tree pests and approached us to see if there was anything we could do for them. There are no chemicals registered for use with this pest and as you can imagine, once the eggs have been laid and the larvae burrow into the tree, they’re almost out of reach of insecticides. New damage is often seen at the base of young shoots (Fig. 1), where small piles of fresh frass are left as larvae burrow in and feed on the layers beneath the bark. Older, larger wounds (Fig. 2), sometimes at the juncture of branches with the main trunk, may also be evident.       

Fig. 1. New damage at base of shoot                                     Fig 2. Old damage

The moth has a number of alternative hosts, including several Eucalyptus, Wisteria and Ficus species as well as Alphitonia excelsa. It has also been recovered from galls on Exocarpos cupressiformis. Its distribution is mostly confined to the east coast of Australia, although one specimen has been recorded from the ACT. When this project started I was approached by some growers in South Australia who also have a borer problem. They have provided some of the funding for this project, but unfortunately it appears that the pest they have down there is not the same one that we have in NSW and Qld. I’ve not been able to get specimens of adults from SA so I still don’t know just what is causing their problem.

Conventionally pheromones are identified by extracting the contents of the pheromone gland and feeding them through a gas chromatograph (GC). Then the components are tested in field trials to confirm that they are attractive to the insect. Now as you’ll probably be aware, the persimmon industry doesn’t have a lot of money for research and so when they came to us to see if we could help we indicated that because of the limited budget we would take a few shortcuts in trying to identify the pheromone. Then we would see how we could use it for control purposes. Our initial research was done down at Redland Bay and subsequent trials were done on Ben Jeffers’ place up near Nambour.

Fortunately the pheromone for many of this insect’s close relatives had already been identified, which made our task much easier. It turned out that, almost without exception, their pheromones were confined to 4 or 5 different types of chemicals, so we knew right from the start we had a good chance of making an identification simply by putting out combinations of these components and seeing what we could catch. With each successive trapping trial we refined our blends until we had something that we were confident was an effective attractant. We tried a number of alcohols and acetates on their own and in combination and eventually found that a 90:10 ratio of the acetate to the alcohol caught more moths than any other combination. Then our chemist offered to run a sample of pheromone extracted from the gland through the GC at no charge, just to confirm that the compounds and their ratios that I’d identified in my trapping trials were similar to those in the gland. Sure enough, I had the right components and they were in the right ratio.

The next stage was to see whether we could control the insects using the pheromone as a mating disruptant. This is a typical pheromone dispenser. It’s a polyethylene tube with a wire on one side to tie around the tree and the pheromone column on the other side. This particular pheromone doesn’t have any smell that my nose can detect, although some do. One dispenser contains pheromone equivalent to about 100,000 females! We recommend putting out a 1000 per hectare, so you’re talking about the equivalent of 100,000,000 females. Now perhaps you can see why the male could get a little confused!

Sheryl How much are they?

Richard It depends on the chemicals that go into them. This is now a commercial product and I think they are selling for around $300-$400 per hectare. Bio Control is the agent for the dispensers in Australia.

We set up the trial at Nambour in an orchard with two blocks about 50 m apart. We put dispensers in one (the ‘treated’ block) but not the other (the ‘untreated’ block) and in both we put in pheromone traps. If mating disruption is going to work then males should not be able to find pheromone traps where dispensers are present. And we assume that if they can’t find a pheromone trap then they’re not going to find a female either, although there are some exceptions.  What we hoped to see in the treated block was very few or preferably no catches in the traps but plenty in the untreated block. Likewise in terms of damage, we hoped to see much less damage in the treated block than in the untreated block. The trial ran for 9 months – the adults are around for a long period in this part of the world – and we caught large numbers of moths where there were no dispensers but absolutely nothing in the traps where there were.

Dispensers were put out in September and as some damage was already evident when we started the trials, some mated females may still have been present, meaning that further damage could arise even once the dispensers had been installed. What we hoped to do was limit damage to well below that sustained in the untreated block. We conducted two damage surveys – one in December and the final one in the following June. Seventy six trees were inspected in both blocks in the first survey, of which 2.7% were damaged in the treated compared with almost 19% in the untreated block. Damage levels in the June survey were quite high in the treated block – 20.5% , but much higher – 57%, in the untreated.

A feature of this sort of control programme is that it can take a couple of years to get damage down to an acceptable level. We and the growers were quite happy with the result, providing that in subsequent years damage could be reduced even further. We’re now into the second year and have 19 growers using the technique. Time will tell whether we can push damage levels down any further, but the results are quite encouraging. One adjustment we will recommend is that instead of having only one set of dispensers go out into the orchard in the hope that it will last the entire season, we will recommend that a second set go in around New Year.

Data we collected when we first began these trials indicated that after nine months pheromone release rates had dropped to less than 4 mg/hectate/hour. When you think that for at least one species we worked with we had to keep the release rate above 6 mgs per hectare/hour for mating disruption to be effective, it may be prudent to add a second set of dispensers and keep the release rate a little higher.

There’s a closely related pest that gets into currants in Tasmania and New Zealand and we have the pheromone for that. There’s another one that’s a problem in peaches in America. Again it’s the tree that suffers – not the fruit.

Mating disruption is not a system you can use in your backyard – it’s only suitable for reasonably sized orchards.

George   I’ve tried wicks but they’re only suitable for fruit fly.

Richard The wicks contain interesting compounds. They’re called psuedo or para-pheromones because they are not actually what the males produce themselves, although the true pheromones may be derived from them after they have been ingested. Fruitfly para-pheromones are very powerful attractants.

Jim Were you using the same materials in your attraction technique in the SA examples or were you trying something different there. 

Richard The same compounds – we know it’s a different insect but I’ve not been able to get the adults I need for identification purposes.

Sheryl So what can we do for the backyard – netting? Can you put a piece of wire in and dig them out?

Richard Netting has been tried by some growers and apparently does work. However digging larvae out isn’t likely to be effective. They get pretty well into the tree and you would probably do more damage trying to dig them out. In any case I don’t think you could kill enough for it to be effective. You’re not going to get them all.

George When you dig around, how many do you see?

Richard We tend to see only singles or 2 or 3 so it’s likely that the female lays only a few eggs in any one spot. Little is known of the insect’s life cycle, but the relatively few generations a season (possibly only two) may reflect the food that the larvae are getting. You can imagine that the nutrient value of bark and wood is not as great as fruit might be, so it takes longer for the larvae to mature. The climate, at least in Queensland, means that it is warm enough to enable development to continue for much of the year, which may be why we have such an extended period during which adults are about.

Richard The larvae spend their entire life cycle in the tree. They pupate in the tree as well so there is no immature stage of the cycle that is not on the tree.

Sheryl What’s your next project?

Richard Diamondback Moth on cabbages. I mentioned at the start of the talk that pheromone could be used to bring males in to an inoculation chamber, where they become infected with a fungus that they take out and spread amongst their own population. We ran some trials about 18 months ago to test the concept and they worked quite well.  Now we want to scale up.  I’ve spent most of today writing a grant application for some funds to finance the project.

George These techniques aren’t going to work on the Fruit Piercing Moths

Richard No. However I believe Harry Faye at DPI Mareeba is about to patent an attractant for the Fruit Piercing Moth. It’s not a pheromone – it’s a food attractant. With this moth the difficulty is that they fly in to the orchard in response to the smell of the fruit, feed on it and then leave. In other words they are not resident within the orchard for very long, which doesn’t give you much time to do anything about them.  I’m generally a bit doubtful about the likelihood of food attractants succeeding, simply because there’s so much competition in the form of natural food. For this reason artificial baits have got to be much more attractive to the insect than its natural food.

Sheryl – I remember Peter Young saying that they really like Carambolas so if you put out a bait with these perhaps you can distract them.  Is there any other research happening with fruit?

Richard Geoff Waite DPI at Nambour has been working on a pheromone for Fruit Spotting Bug. When the project started six years ago the claim was made that there were six components to the pheromone, five of which had already been identified, but as far as I’m aware there is still no effective pheromone for this pest.

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The Club was invited to visit Paul and Glenda’s property, and invited to bring along secateurs and pruning saws to gain practical experience in the correct method of pruning custard apple trees.

Background
Arrived 25 years ago, when the property held 100 Pinks Mammoth and 100 African Pride, a large dam but no reticulation system, surrounded by bush.  Then he started growing small crops down in what is now the ‘lychee patch’, and bananas.  Five years (2005) ago all bananas went, and Paul concentrated on replacing the bananas with lychees, and custard apples.  The latest ‘patch’ is KJ Pinks Custard Apple variety, about 5 years old, and there was also a smaller patch about 8 years old.

Pollination, and tree spacing If Paul had his time over, he would probably go with the V trellis systems (see note, below).  When Paul took on the property, the early plantings had been done (in the 1970’s), they were big trees and needed heavy pruning over a number of years.  The trees are at 10m by 8m, the original plantings were on a 7.3m by 7.3m (25 foot square) which was too close together.  For better access, Paul is picker, packer and all the rest, he would now consider even planting one in between those trees.  There are 10m in between rows, which he likes, but he would prefer more of a hedgerow system.  However, he is not planning to develop more, there are 360 custard apple trees now on the farm, which are more than enough for him to hand pollinate and keep up with (prune, fertilize etc.) plus the lychees.  He would like to try the new (trellising) system, but it would probably require more staff and he would prefer to keep his simple one-man operation. He does not like the KJ even though they are great for fruit set, because he believes that the time and labour required to thin fruit repeatedly is more than to hand pollinate his other varieties to produce a large marketable fruit (KJ don’t require hand pollination).  He grows primarily for export market which returns higher prices for larger fruit.  However he considers that the (genetic/rootstock) material of the trees, his old stock, Pinks Mammoth, may be a factor in the better size of his fruit, and he has another block of 60 Hillary White which he feels are great fruit.  As he hand pollinates his old plantings selectively, he prunes a block, waits for them to come on and then prunes again, so he can systematically go through pruning.  But since he planted the KJ, about 139 of them, he worries that he will not be able to keep up with picking the KJ over an extended time compared to pollinating systematically one block at a time, which then can be picked out and move onto another block.  The KJ are the only variety he has to de-fruit to obtain marketable size fruit.  KJ flower from each leaf axial, they normally get 3 flowers out, they also get doubles, and he has seen numerous triple fruit at each leaf axial.  Sheryl asked Paul about the new ‘Tropic Sun’ variety and he replied “there’s one just up there, it’s prolific enough for a home garden, DPI are just grafting up now and it should be released this season … through Fitzroy Nurseries (Rockhampton)”, Sheryl “Yarrahapinni was also doing it.”  Only about 4,000 – 5,000 plants will be released in 2011.

Paul hand pollinates his Hillary White but says that with age, after about ten years, they do start self-setting.  However, he prunes quite vigorously which doesn’t leave a lot of the tree for self-setting to occur, so he hand pollinates so he can put it on and count so many months later, and pick the whole orchard at once on a schedule.  He has 22 trees of African Pride, which he uses as pollinators because of their prolific flowering, and because he gets a lot of flowers from them at once.  At 2.30 pm he picks the male flowers, after picking he removes the petals which are then placed into a sieve waiting for the stamens and pollen to fall, at 4.00pm he goes out with the collected pollen and starts pollinating.  He has used KJ at different times, but prefers African Pride because they start flowering earlier in the day than all the other varieties and the pollen separates earlier than that from Pinks Mammoth flowers.

Fertiliser
Paul fertigates from a dam over a kilometre away and pumps water to a holding tank.  He fertigates every 2nd week using potassium nitrate, urea, calcium nitrate and magnesium sulphate.  He recommended chook manure and ECO 88(s) (http://www.qldorganics.com.au), for home gardens, and prefers to fertigate small amounts and often.  The only other fertiliser he uses is Nitrophoska®, which he uses before he prunes a block then leaves the prunings to lie on top of the fertiliser, and as long as the soil temperature is sufficient this practice helps to “kick” the growth along.  He likes Nitrophoska® because it has lots of trace elements, but the main reason he uses it is to kick the trees along so he can get on to (pruning) the next block.  When he does use it, Paul applies chook manure gradually so as to control the trees’ vigour, however his trees are vigorous regardless and he hasn’t seen that much difference with chook manure and hasn’t used it for a while.  According to Paul, not many growers (including himself) use the chicken manure clumping methods any more.

Soils
Paul has red Chromosol* soils, a clay/loam soil, and his water profile is sideways across the orchard (see http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/science/slr/queensland_soils.html, 14/1/2011).  He has soil moisture metered across his orchard (tensiometers http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter,nsf/WebPages/RPIO-4ZK6CS?open, 14/1/2011) and a small data logger which measures the vacuum in the tubes, one 30cm and one 60cm, and can download the data onto a computer which charts a dry and wet point for him, so he knows when and how often to water.  His soil pH doesn’t seem to change very much, occasionally he will have a soil pH test done.  If there is a need for change, he amends the soil through his water supply. He hasn’t had a custard apple leaf analysis for years, the soil is currently about pH 6.5.  Sugarcane mulch and fertilizers have been applied over the years, but finances and physical demands of mulching have reduced those activities.  He now just leaves (custard apple) leaf clippings as it’s too much effort to remove them, they are on ground which is “bare ground is dead” ground, they help retain soil moisture, provide organic carbon. * Chromosol – soil has an abrupt clay layer down the soil profile.  They occur in most districts and may have impeded internal drainage.  The geological setting is in the Neranleigh Fernvale beds that are predominantly infertile old sediments but there as some volcanic beds. – Bruce Ham Elephant Weevil (Orthorhinus cylindrirostris) The problem he had with the prunings when he first started was that the bigger wood favoured the elephant weevil.  He has counted up to 20 in a tree at times, they sit in the leaf axial, and if there is a fruit there they ring bark the fruit stem and the fruit drops off.  The beetle has to be picked off because “nothing kills the damned things, except two fingers and a brick”, and the beetles can be seen at any time of day.

Fruit Spotting Bug (Amblypelta lutescens or A. nitida)

Fruit spotting bug has been a problem, but because over the years he has kept on top of it, it’s not a big problem.  Paul sprays Endosulfan (this is currently a highly controversial agrochemical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosulfan, 16/1/2011) about three times, the first around late November early December when he sees them moving in.  A strawberry mango tree and other trees, which may host the bug, are sprayed along with his custard apples.  He does not have “trap” trees, although he did mention that there is a certain variety of Murraya that attracts the bug, but then added “why introduce something” that will attract them when they are going to come in any way, and that there are already many native species in the bush that the fruit spotting bug come out for anyway.

Fruit Piercing Moth (Eudocima phalonia)
They don’t appear to be a problem with his custard apples, however he says mangos may get more affected than he realizes.  He has only seen them once, on the lychee netting two years ago.  Paul does a lot of controlled burning (in the bush areas) and thinks this may help keep them down, by controlling the vine they are attracted to, and has mainly a Sclerophyllic woodland (hard leaved open woodland) around rather than a wetter rain forest.

Scale and Wooly Aphid (Coccoidea)
He sprays Bio-pest®, he only sprays hard chemicals because he wants to make a living.

Mealybug (Pseudococcidae) This is Paul’s biggest pest problem.  When he first started hand pollinating, the fruit produced were “immaculate”, but over the years mealy bug became more entrenched, as the trees got bigger and denser.  He has been advocating on the committee of Australian Custard Apple Growers Association (ACAGA) for a suitable chemical for mealy bug, because even though Bio-pest® and Supracide® are good chemicals, although he doesn’t like spraying Supracide®, as it’s a contact chemical, and because of the nature of (the shape of) the custard apple and the density of the tree, complete cover is needed to get good control.  He has been buying in Cryptolaemus montrouzeri (Mealybug and Scale predator), and hopes to have Leptomastix dactylopii (a very effective parasitoid for Citrus Mealybug). ACAGA currently has a project developing use of a Confidor®-type chemical, which he does not want to use topically, but as a drench under the tree.  Using a chemical in this way he hopes to not hurt existing beneficial insects, get a good kill rate, and not worrying whether to spray or not if he buys Cryptolaemus in.  ACAGA is also hoping to do some research on a similar (not a perfect match) product to Confidor® called Samurai® (Sumimoto Chemical), an insecticide currently used to control mealybug in apple and pear orchards.

Paul sees mealybug as custard apple growers’ worst enemy, even now in NSW getting into KJ.  African Pride don’t seem as susceptible as Pinks Mammoth because of the Pinks Mammoth heavy carpel; he thinks mealy bug likes Pinks Mammoth more.  NSW industry is growing more into Pinks Mammoth, so as the change is made over from African Pride to Pinks Mammoth, it is important to get good quality fruit.  It is more the sooty mould, which affects the appearance of the fruit, and is associated with the mealy bug, which causes a problem.  AzaMax™, which is a registered pesticide, was also mentioned as producing good results, as was Azadiractin (a chemical compound belonging to the limonoids, and present in Neem seed) the active ingredient found in some commercial insect growth regulators.

Water Paul has 200 litre/hr sprinklers, and waters according to his water gauges.  He pumps from a diesel pump at the dam to a 30,000 litre tank at the top of the orchard, because if he is watering one custard apple block it drains the tank in a short amount of time.  He tries to stress the custard apples a little and dry them out over winter, however if it is a dry year there is still a need for a certain level of moisture required in the soil.

After pruning he gives a bit of fertiliser to try to get the carbohydrates back into them if there’s been a heavy crop load, then eases off watering over winter, but continues to monitor the soil moisture gauges.  In August if it is dry he will start pumping the water in, his two thresholds on his gauge are 10 and 25, so he allows them to dry out to 25, but the ones he is pruning he loads up to 10.  He doesn’t usually suffer a lot of fruit splitting, as long as he gradually builds the watering up (as long as he is able to allow for natural rainfall).

Defoliation Paul would prefer natural defoliation to happen before he prunes, but he has tried defoliating a few times.  He believes natural defoliation allows the tree to pull (nutrients) back in from the leaf.  He does a ‘tip and strip’ with the KJ in January if enough fruit is not set.  He will reduce the stem lateral down, and take off just the last two leaves because energy is required in the last two to get a good flower.  He does not take all the leaves off in the middle of August as growers used to do (which he used to do with 25% urea), as he had trouble with limb dieback. Paul believes if you defoliate too early and push the tree too early, it can cause a “sour sap” which in turn leads to limb dieback.  “Sour sap” can also come from pruning the tree too early.  Custard apples develop slowly, they don’t come until October, a bit later on they start swinging in, unlike nectarines (for example), which are a “Spring tradition, bang we’re away”.  “If you push them too early and it’s still cold, and you get cold snaps, you get that (limb dieback from defoliation) problem”.

Because many of his trees were very large when he started out, their limbs were too high and required heavy pruning to allow ease of hand pollination.  He pulls down big long laterals and ties them to a certain point to try and start new frameworks coming out.  Ideally he would like to stump them all at one time then prune for good structure afresh, but instead will he have to do this gradually to avoid loss of production.

Fruit fly (Bactrocera tryoni) Richard Bull (Research Entomologist) did a lot of work with Dick Drew (Centre Director for The International Centre for the Management of Pest Fruit Flies) and Paul uses Amulet Cue-Lure® (Cue-Lure, foam blocks) which he places every 25 metres according to directions on the packet, now (August-September).  Fipronil (a slow acting broad spectrum insecticide) is the active ingredient, and Paul says the research suggests that the lures seem to improve after a little ageing.  They come in a pack of 16, however because he picks fruit mature green, fruit fly is not a big problem as long as baiting and lures are maintained; he does not cover spray (fruit fly stings in the stem end of mature fruit).   When there are a lot of fruit on his old mango trees he targets those trees.  As well as Amulet Cue-Lure® he baits, every tree gets 10ml of bait (Bugs for Bugs, fruit fly lure yeast autolysate).  If he is worried about fruit fly, he will let the ‘seconds’ ripen, then cut them open and check for maggots.

He removes larger off-cuts from the orchard in order to discourage the Longicorn beetle (Family Cerambycidae), which used to occur in his African Pride, causing gnarling of the limbs.  He loses young trees to wind, and wallabies, which will rip young trees down from below the graft.  He believes that until custard apple trees reach about 8 years old and in his type of soil, they are not rooted well and he stakes out his new plantings.  Over 25 years with old Pinks Mammoth, he has lost probably 2 trees, however since he started planting KJ he has lost numerous trees, apparently due to poor rootstock, some larger growers have lost hundreds.  The grafts are low on the KJ trees.

Pruning and Thinning
Paul explained that compared to his old Pinks Mammoth trees, what he intended with the KJ because they are close spaced and he didn’t want to be high up picking, was to have a small widespread tree.  However with the KJ he lost 3 years of growth when he tried to encourage a lot of lower branches, and because of KJ prolific fruiting those branches finally touched the ground and had to be removed.  Now with KJ he lets them grow up, and then lets them cascade over.  He does not have much trouble with sunburnt tree limbs after pruning, and even when he has pruned some of the older trees hard, and they are half sunburnt on the top, they still appear to thrive.

Paul does not paint tree wounds after removing a limb, although he used to.  When he prunes long laterals he breaks them up small so that they rot down faster.  To kill grass around the trees he uses Gramoxone® (herbicide registered for commercial use only Ed.) at the label dose, using it often and keeping the perennial weeds down, Paul still uses Roundup® occasionally in the orchard but mostly in non-commercial areas.  He related that Glyphosate is deactivated by clay, and because avocados have the feeder roots up in the mulch, they can uptake it, he had related problems with lychees, and a backyard stonefruit.

He also had read a report of growers with very sandy soil having similar problems due to low soil clay content.  However he likes to use Roundup® to kill ‘blue weed’ or ‘Billy goat weed’ (Ageratum spp.) which grows up and smothers any other grass he has.  Bob Cosgrove relates that Gramoxone® at half strength with urea proved efficacious and saved money, as long as the urea was dissolved before adding to the spray equipment, Sheryl Backhouse added a reminder that when using powdered urea with a stainless steel tank that the urea must be completely dissolved.  Paul uses carpet grass (Axonopus) wherever possible, it mows easily and produces good mulch that is thrown under trees.  When harvesting fruit that is no good he drops it on the ground and the wallabies soon take care of the rejected fruit… Transcribed and edited by Russell Reinhardt. [Note:  The KJ Pinks Custard Apple variety (PBR# 2002/049) has been awarded Plant Breeders Rights in Australia and is protected against illegal propagation.  This exciting new custard apple variety sets heavy fruit crops without the need for hand pollination (41% set vs. 3% of standard varieties).  It is a self-pollinating sport from Hillary White Pinks Mammoth.  This variety is well suited to high-density, mechanically pruned orchard systems for viable production systems.

Timely pruning to encourage out of season flowering will make reliable Spring/early-Summer fruit possible in suitable climates. http://www.anfic.com.au/kjpinks.htm, 29/12/2010.  See also Custard Apple Industry Report 06/07.  Maroochy V trellis is planted at between 750–1,300 trees per hectare compared with about 300 trees per hectare for the standard open vase system.

Consequently, early yields on this system are significantly higher than for vase-trained trees.  On a commercial farm, six-year-old trees on Maroochy V trellis produced six trays per tree, or about 5,000 trays per hectare, and at full maturity, it is predicted that this system will produce in excess of 6,500 trays per hectare (http://cms2live.horticulture.com.au/industries/Custard_Apple, 7/1/201010 for new ways of managing custard apples.] Ref: Russell Reinhardt

Birdwood Nursery has now released to the public the self-pollinating Custard Apple ‘Paxton’s Prolific’.  The other name for the same plant which they have been selling to commercial growers under Plant Breeder’s Rights is ‘KJ Pink’, named after Keith & Judy Paxton from Woombye who noticed a branch on their Pink Mammoth which always produced fruit which they didn’t have to hand pollinate.  There will also be another new custard apple variety for retail sale, ‘Tropic Sun’ from Fitzroy Nursery in Rockhampton.
Sheryl   I was told that when you prune a custard apple to always take off the nearest leaf as it will sit there otherwise for 12 months. 

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The Myrtacae family of plants is useful in that they have very useful Essential Oils in them. This is very good for rubbing on skin to prevent insect bites such as Midges, Mosquitoes etc.

The Millaa Millaa vine (Elaeagnus triflora) has the nicest berry and the Sunshine Coast is its southern most limit (in nature it occurs coastal NE Qld). The berries of this plant are really nice to eat, but the vine doesn’t have any berries on currently because the flowers are eaten by a tiny caterpillar (that you need a microscope to see) called an Indigo Flash (Rapala varuna simsoni) I actually thought there were male and female plants but the flowers are eaten by caterpillars, making it impossible for them to reproduce.

The Native Ginger (Alpinia caerula) berries are really nice – especially if you’re exhausted and you need a little bit of a pick-me-up – they taste of lemon but be warned – you take the dry outer coating off and chew/suck the seed and find it has a little hotness to it. Every part of the Native Ginger plant is edible  – you can use the leaves in cooking to wrap food but very often you’ll find that cut-bees have taken a little circle out of a leaf. These cut-bees use the leaf portion to plug up the hole of their nest – which is a mud nest usually in the bank of a stream – there you’ll probably see some pretty serrated leaves.

The other favorite of mine is the Midyim (Austromytrus dulcis) It has lovely edible berries which can be made into jams but it takes an awful lot of picking, my mother has made Midyim jam, and it is delicious, The berries fall off quickly, but if you crush and smell the leaf, you will know that it’s in the Myrtacae family, which is related to the Eucalypt tree. The Midyim berries taste different depending on the area in which it grows. Moreton Island grows the most succulent big berries as big as your thumbnail but this only happens after rain. 

The Black Bean (Castanospermum australe) was originally thought to be edible but obviously it isn’t. The Aboriginees used to soak the seedpods in running water for six weeks, then dry them then put them back into running water for another six weeks. They were then taken out and roasted, and then they were edible – they would be pounded and turned into a flour.  You’ll see them listed in textbooks as poisonous, and if you eat 6 of these you’ll get stomach cramps – the leaves and bark smell of cucumber. If the leaves are up too high, get your car keys and scrape the bark to identify the cucumber smell.

One of them is the Bandicoot Berry (Leea indica) and in some of the books they say it is edible but they can really sting the mouth.

The lovely powder-puff Lilly-pilly (Syzygium wilsonii) has a white berry – it is edible but quite tasteless. Most of the Syzygium have lovely edible berries.

The Cabbage Tree Palm (Livistona australis) is edible – you can take the heart out and eat it as a vegetable but you actually kill the tree – you do it with lots of things like the Tree Ferns and the Piccabeen Palms (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana) and they have a cabbage flavour, but of course you kill the tree so I’d better not tell you about that!

The Walking Stick Palm (Linospadix monostachya) has beautiful berries – I was very gingerly not eating this one because I saw the movie about the Stinson Plane Wreck and a survivor came up with a berry in his mouth which he fed to another survivor.  I thought this was a peculiar thing to do and blamed the eating of the berry for the act, but the fruit isn’t really poisonous, and really tastes quite nice to eat. Plant the seed after you’ve eaten it and grow a walking stick palm. The Weevil Plant (Mollinaria) is not a Palm.

There are several vines which have edible fruit – the climbing Pandanus (Freycinetia excelsa) is all through the forest here – it has a Pandanus like fruit – red and succulent and if you get them before the birds find them, you’re lucky as they’re always at the top of the canopy.

The Lomandras have little teeth on the ends of their leaves – if you pull them up you can eat the little white bit at the base – it tastes a little like coconut but sometimes people mis-identify them and they try and chew some sedges or grasses so it’s important to know what you’re eating.  The Aboriginal people would collect the fruit called nuts and pound them up to make a flour – there’s male and female plants – these plants are used extensively in landscaping.  You can eat the light green tips but as soon as it turns dark green, the chlorophyll makes it bitter.  Anything light green is yummy and chewy when raw.

The Cocky Apple (Planchonia careya) grows from Bundaberg to North Qld. and quite often they have big round fruits which the cockatoos eat but quite often they have a big witchity grub in them that the Aboriginees ate.

The natives also ate the gall from the Bloodwoods (Corymbia) they were called Bloodwood Apples, and they would have a very nice witchery grub inside them. 

There are several plants in the bush which are very good for getting rid of sandflies and mosquitoes. They have a remarkable smell – each one has a different lanolin type smell and this particular variety is the one which has the most oil in it – it’s called the Sandfly Bush – the best one is Zieria smithii –you rub a couple of leaves on your skin – don’t strip the tree – you only need a leaf or two.  The oils will coat your skin and stop the insects from biting you. As you sweat the smell wears off so keep a sprig in your pocket to reapply when needed.  Some of the chemical companies are using it in their repellants. It doesn’t keep mossies/sandflies away if you plant it in your garden – the leaves have to be crushed to release the oils.  It also works on leeches. I tested it on my brother – I got him to rub it on one leg before he went down to Kondalilla Falls and when he came back up, he was riddled with leeches but only on one leg so I said to him “Doesn’t that prove something?” and he replied “It’s not very scientific!”

Another bush tucker plant are the Backhousias.  B. myrtifolia is good for making tea – if you crush the leaves, it smells like juicy fruit – you can have a one leaf cup or a two leaf cup – just add boiling water to the crushed leaf. Young leaf is best! B.citriodoria is also good for tea and can also can be used to keep the moths and silverfish out of the linen cupboard and there is also B. anasata which smells like aniseed. 

The Orange Thorn (Pittosporum multiflorum) (previously known as Citriobatus) has lovely berries which the birds eat but it’s prickly so it allows the birds to hide in it and it’s good to plant where you don’t want people. There’s a thornless one out around Cooroy.

The Brown Pine (Podocarpus elatus) has a plum-like fruit which fall from the tree and are quite delicious – used in jams and liqueurs – you can’t tell when they are a small plant if they are male or female – you can try the wedding ring over the top but I wouldn’t recommend it – I tried this when I was pregnant and I was suppose to have 2 boys and I had 2 girls!!

The Leichhardt tree (Nauclea orientalis) has pretty flowers and when the fruit fall they become soft and juicy and you’re suppose to be able to eat them but I’ve tried other people on them but they said it was just OK!

The really nice one is the Candle Nut  (Aleurites moluccana v moluccana) – grows really fast and is very large – on the ground you will find little rocks which they produce as fruit – you can roast these they are quite a nice nut – like coconut – roasted is best because it has a lot of oils in it – roasting will take the oils away – the toxicity is in the oils. The fruit were threaded by our early pioneers and used as a candle and it use to burn for a long time because of the oils in the fruit. Candle Nut is a laxative! They crossed the Qld Nut (Macadamia integrifolia) with Maroochy Nut M. tetraphylla and found that the fruit were even better and called it “Home Beauty” and it has nice pink flowers. 

We have to start thinking of keeping plants which are indigenous to our area – the more trees you bring in the more pests you may have in the future. The Davidsons Plum (Davidsonia pruriens) – some have fruit on the stem and others have fruit on an axil – you need to stew them or make a jam – they’re very tart if eaten on their own.  It’s a very large tree so keep it pruned to the height you want and it will reshoot. You’d do this to get the fruit. There’s a Nth Qld variety and a Southern variety which is called Davidsonia pruriens v.jerseyiana which is the nicest one – very useful as an indoor plant – will even fruit inside!  When it is flowering, take it outside as it smells like a mouse has been through the house.

The Monkey Nut (Hicksbeachia) have lovely looking fruit – I’ve never eaten it as I’ve needed the seed to grow.

The Burdekin Plum (Pleiogynium timorense) has male & female trees and the fruit is lovely when stewed.  

Flax Lily (Dianella spp) – the possums love to eat my berries and although a lot of the different species are very tasty, you should only try one or two as they were not a part of the Aboriginal diet in the areas where records were kept so never use them as the major ingredient if you are cooking with them – different species have different colours.

The Swamp Hisbiscus (Hibiscus diversifolia) has an edible flower but suffers from beetle attack so spray them with lemon or garlic you won’t have any problem.

If ever you get bitten by anything from a spider to a jumping ant, rub the sap of the Spider Lily (Crinum pedunculatum) on it and it will cure it within 5 minutes – the aboriginees used it as a treatment for marine stingers – I used it for a jumping ant bite and it lasted for 4 hours – after that I couldn’t hold onto the steering wheel of my car but I also gave it to a fellow who had been bitten by a redback spider and I saw him sitting there in agony so I fixed him with the Crinum which fixed him – the doctor rang me up afterwards to find out what plant I had used on it. What I think happens is that the bite is acid and the plant was alkaline and it was neutralizing it. The Crinum which are growing around Floras Restaurant here can be used with any bite eg ants, spiders and Aboriginees use them if they get stung by marine stingers and bluebottles. 

Cunjevoi (Alocasia brisbanensis) All parts are poisonous but if you are stung by the Gympie Stinger tree you can use the sap on your skin and after you peel off the dried sap it will then take the glass particles out of your skin – sticky tape also works. 

Mistletoes don’t always kill the host tree. If the tree didn’t want it on, it would cut off the circulation from that branch and the branch would then drop off. This particular one specializes on Wattles Amyema congener ssp congener – beautiful flowers and lots more nectar than other flowers to ensure pollination. Each mistletoe species is host to a different tree and what I want to know is how the bird knows what tree to sit on.  If a tree is unhealthy you’ll notice that the Mistletoe will attack the weakest tree. The bird carries the Mistletoe seed and expels it out which spreads the Mistletoe around. Pipturus argenteus – there are male and female in these trees has little white translucent fruit which you can eat and they’re lovely and sweet and the Mistletoe bird loves them so if you have one of these in your garden  you’ll have the continual delight of the Mistletoe bird song which is cheery, happy and sweet. There’s about 8 other birds which share it with the Mistletoe bird.

Most grasses have fibrous roots and the sedges have rhizomes and somebody said that Blady grass (Imperata cylindrica) must be a sedge because it has nice white rhizomes but it also has fibrous roots – the white rhizome of the native Blady grass is very nice to eat – it tastes like coconut. Although it is an undesirable here, they sell it in Melbourne to put in their gardens. Cows can’t graze it as they have difficulty in digesting it and it has poor food value . It can also be used for thatching. The lovely plant  Psychotria loniceroides has clear coloured berries and as they’re so small it takes a lot to have a feed but when you’re on a long bush walk they’re pretty good.

The Brown Pine (Podocarpus elatus) have male and female trees and of course only the female have fruit which is nice in jams. 

The nicest part of the  Scrambling Lily (Geitonoplesium cymosum) to eat is the new young growth but all parts of the plant are eaten – it’s like snow peas.

The native Quince (Guioa semiglauca) has male and female trees.

The Sandpaper Fig (Ficus coronata) is edible and it has a lovely way of getting pollinated – the fig has flowers in the centre of the fruit – the male and the female wasp pollinate the fig by going inside the fruit – the male is born blind and wingless and he mates with a female and doesn’t leave home so watch out when you’re eating a fig that you don’t bite into him!

The lovely Fern (Culcita dubia) was used in the old days to pack strawberries – it’s not bracken and quite often you read in books that the bracken’s fiddlehead (ie the new shoots) were eaten by the Aborigines but I think they mistook it for this particular plant because I know that tree ferns were used in such a way that they’d cut down the top to eat but that would kill the treefern as it did with palms also. It tasted a bit like cabbage but the cabbage tree is really good for tiny marsupial mice – Antichinus. This fern likes to grow in the shade whereas the Bracken (Pteridium esculentum) grows out in the sunlight. The Bracken fern is cancer producing (poisonous).

The Water Vine (Cissus) has lots of different qualities – it contains oxalic acid and the fruit has little crystals on its grapes and some people are sensitive to it. You can drink the water from the vine – I was given some juice from the vine and it tasted a little like sugar cane but it was a little hot. Cissus hypoglauca is another vine which can be very drying in the mouth – test it out on your partner first!! Another vine that is edible is Burny vine – it has male and female. 

The Blue Quandong (Elaeocarpus grandis) children seem to like it more than adults as it has a lemony flavour.

The Cabbage Tree Palm (Livistona australis) – the heart of this tree is edible. The buttress roots of rainforest trees have a way of channelling the water so that the tree will get enough moisture – you’ll notice that when the tree is on a cliff they will be stopping the water from flowing down so they’re planning to have as much moisture as possible by having large buttressed roots.  These buttressed roots on the rainforest trees aren’t very deep – they’re all on the top – that’s where most of the rainforest litter is held so that’s why they stay up on top.

The Candle Vine (Pothos longipes) is edible has a flat stem but resembles a candle and the leaf on the end looks like a flame – it has red berries but usually the birds get them before you do as it grows high in the canopy. The many vines are useful for food for the different birds because they’re at different layers in the canopy – the top layer has fruit, the middle layer has vines and the ground layer has the grasses and ferns.

The Corduroy Tamarind (Mischarytera lautereriana & Diploglottis cunninghamii) has a jelly-like fruit on it around Christmas just like the big tamarind and the pioneers use to use it to make cordial. You’d have to pick the fruit off the ground and you didn’t get dirty as it has a plastic membrane around it. The cordial has a lovely tingle as well and the reason it was called Corduroy tamarind was that it had stripes in the wood.

The Native Guava (Eupomatia laurina) has scented flowers – the Aboriginees called it Bolwarra. The fruit are taken when they’re soft and jelly like – it has a few seeds in it but save them to eat.  Eupomatia bennetii has a tuberous bulb, which contains water so if you’re in the desert you can try this one.

The Native Raspberry (Rubus) is very prickly – best one is Rubus moluicanas and this one doesn’t get out of control. The old adage that if a bird eats a fruit, then its safe for you is not true – a pure fallacy e.g. a bird can eat a White Cedar berry but it’s toxic to humans so testing your partner is still the best way!!!

The Native Mulberry (Pipturis argentica) has male and female plants and the fruit are juicy and tender – it’s a marginal rainforest plant. You can’t tell if they are male or female when you buy the plant.

The little Kurrajong (Brachychiton bidwillii) seeds taste like almonds but there’s a lot of irritating hairs around the fruit so its best to roast them – just take the little yellow casing off them after cooking.

Any of the Stinging Tree (Dendrocnide) fruit are edible and quite often I’ve eaten them and I’ve been told that if one of the stinging hairs got stuck in my throat, my throat would have swelled. What the Aborigines did was put them in their dilly bag and put them in running water.

The Celery Wood (Polyscias elegans) berries are purple and are hard to set seed so I decided that the only way I was going to get some was for a bird to eat them and collect the droppings – only trouble was I chose the wrong bird – a cockatoo chews and grinds their seeds and I should have chosen a fruit pigeon!! These plants can be transplanted very easily.

Wattle (Acacia) seeds are nice to eat with the nicest being Acacia fimbriata – quite often I’ve collected a bagful but once they come out of the pod the air  turns the seed hard so they are like very hard tiny rocks and I’ve discovered that if I leave them in the pod and let people take out the seed themselves from the pod  that they are just right to eat. The Acacia tastes a little bit like almonds – they’re ground up and put into cakes. Just a bit of a botanical lesson – all wattles have nectar glands and the nectar gland exists because they don’t have any nectar in their flowers so that’s why you don’t get any Honeyeaters in your wattles but if you hold your stem upright and look along the edge, you can see a little pimple-like structure and that’s a gland and as they have any nectar in their flowers they exude it from their leaves so you’ll often see them being eaten by insects. If you can’t see it, just run your finger along the top.  You might need a magnifying glass sometimes.

Ann has published some wonderful books. ‘Tree ID Made Easy’.

We had an article by her brother Tony Bean some years ago in our newsletter on Native Raspberries.

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine Pepper vines (Piper nigrum) propagated from cuttings and growing up to 4 metres in height on supporting trees, poles, or trellises. It is a spreading vine, rooting readily where trailing stems touch the ground. The leaves are alternate, entire, 5 to 10 cm long and 3 to 6 cm across. The flowers are small, mostly bisexual and produced on pendulous spikes 4 to 8 cm long at the leaf nodes, the spikes lengthening up to 7 to 15 cm as the fruit matures. The berries ripen in about 7 months. They are at first green, then turn yellow then dark red and the catkin can have berries in different stages of ripening. The fruit of the black pepper is called a drupe and when dried it is a peppercorn. Black, white and green peppercorns all come from the fruit of Piper nigrum. However, they are picked at different stages and processed differently which affects their flavour. Black peppercorns are the most pungent variety, followed by white, then green.

Black pepper is produced from the green unripe drupes of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The heat ruptures the cell walls in the pepper, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying. The drupes can also be dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. To test whether the berries are dry, bite on a dried berry. If it snaps in two, it is not dry enough. It has to shatter into little bits to get the go ahead for grinding. Once dried, the spice is called black peppercorn. On some estates, the berries are separated from the stem by hand and then sun-dried without the boiling process. Once the peppercorns are dried, pepper spirit & oil can be extracted from the berries by crushing them. Pepper spirit is used in many medicinal and beauty products. Pepper oil is also used as an ayurvedic massage oil and used in certain beauty and herbal treatments. In New Zealand the seeds of Kawakawa Macropiper excelsum, a relative of black pepper are sometimes used as pepper.

Green pepper, like black, is made from the unripe drupes. Commercially dried green peppercorns are treated in a way that retains the green colour such as treatment with sulphur dioxide, canning or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe drupes preserved in brine or vinegar. Fresh, unpreserved green pepper drupes, largely unknown in the West, are used in some Asian cuisines, particularly Thai cuisine. Their flavour has been described as piquant and fresh, with a bright aroma. They decay quickly if not dried or preserved. If you can’t use them immediately, blanch them in boiling water for 1½ minutes then dip into ice cold water. Seal in a bag and place in the coldest part of your freezer to snap freeze and keep frozen til ready to use. The vine bears green berries, which may be canned in their unripe state. These green peppercorns give a pepper flavour but without much heat. They can be used in subtle ways and will not overpower poultry or fish. If these green berries are dried rather than canned, they darken to form the familiar black peppercorns. If, instead, they are left for longer on the vine to ripen, they turn bright red. One method of cleaning the red skins off the berry is by fermenting in hot water but it will need several changes of water. Fruit club members John & Lyndall Picone grow pepper at their property at Tyagarah NSW and sell the fresh peppercorns at the Byron, New Brighton and Mullumbimby Farmers Markets.

White peppercorns are made by taking the ripe, red berries and removing the skin and pulp. The inner white seeds are then dried in the sun. White pepper is more expensive and less aromatic than black, but it is preferred for use in some sauces where black pepper would look unattractive. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week, during which the flesh of the pepper softens and decomposes. Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried. Sometimes alternative processes are used for removing the outer pepper from the seed, including removing the outer layer through mechanical, chemical or biological methods. Ground white pepper is sometimes used in Chinese cooking or in dishes like salad, light-coloured sauces or mashed potatoes where black pepper would visibly stand out. White pepper has a slightly different flavour from black pepper due to the lack of certain compounds which are present in the outer fruit layer of the drupe but are not found in the seed. A few years ago, I visited the Kampot area in Cambodia that specialises in White peppercorns.

Pink peppercorns are the berries of a different tropical bush – Schinus molle or Schinus terebinthifolius. Schinus terebinthifolius is classified as a weed in certain areas of Australia. You’ll see Schinus molle growing along creek banks on the Darling Downs. Here in Brisbane they are very susceptible to a borer. They are picked ripe and then dried. Pink peppercorns have a fruity heat and spicy flavour that is reminiscent of both cinnamon and allspice, but must be used sparingly as they are toxic when eaten in large quantities. All dried peppercorns should be freshly ground in a mill to maintain their flavour, which is quickly lost after processing. An opened can of green peppercorns can be transferred to an airtight jar and stored for six weeks in the refrigerator.
There’s a commercial farm at Silkwood in Nth Qld which was affected by Cyclone Yasi a couple of years ago.

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Sheryl  This talk was taped by member Ted Newton who attended Nimbin’s Open House and Garden back in 2013. Led by wild food expert Peter Hardwick, this tour took you around the back streets of Nimbin. Many thanks to Annette McFarlane for typing it up. Edited by Peter and myself.

Peter   Many modern illnesses are often a problem because of modern diet and if we get wild food phytochemicals back into our diet we may be able to treat chronic illness like high blood pressure, inflammation and cholesterol.

The enemy of the urban food forager is the whipper snipper! An unmown path is a bountiful thing with the biggest range of wild foods! One of my favourite tricks when I was young was picking hibiscus and nasturtium flowers when wandering the streets and eating them to shock my friends.

Vary your diet
It’s interesting to look at the diet of some of the preserved bodies of people who have been dug up (eg the Bog man of Denmark – 5000 years old). His last meal was a mixture of 46 different food ingredients. One of the strategies that people can take from this is to eat a range of different things rather than big helpings of one thing. Feasts did occur seasonally (if they came across a bountiful mulberry tree for example), but the range of wild greens that they ate, were often very mixed and not just a single ingredient.

Some were eaten raw and also cooked as stews and wild seeds were mixed into breads. The boiling process with cooking greens often helps to lower toxin levels to a tolerable/safe level.  As a back-up, we also we have the liver to detoxify plant toxins.

Some vegetables can be eaten raw like milk thistle. With boiling, toxins go into the water and you discard the water. Steaming does not reduce the toxin in the same way as boiling, so if instructions say boil, make sure you boil.

Boiling reduces alkaloid levels (especially in black nightshades). Black nightshade in Europe is used to make a cooked salad, but you need to know what you are doing. No one has really investigated them here. I do not recommend eating any black nightshade plants unless you have specific cultural knowledge (like people from Cypress or Greece) on preparation and consumption of this wild green. This is critical with toxic greens such as these.

Black Nightshade
The shoots of black nightshade can be eaten if boiled to remove alkaloids, but please note that steaming would not achieve the same effect. If references suggest to boil a particular wild food, be sure to boil it and do not substitute steaming.

Carrot weed or Wild Celery
Carrot weed has a really good flavour, but like all weeds it can be bitter following long periods of dry weather.  Harsh growing conditions can make the flavour a little bit stronger.  It is really rich in flavour and nutrients. This introduced weed is rich in good phyto-chemicals and has anti-cancer properties. You can eat the roots, flowers and seed heads of carrot weed. Chop it up in scrambled eggs or add it to salads as an alternative to parsley.

Chickweed
Chickweed is tenacious and I love it. I use it in salad and also cook with it. Environment will affect how it grows. There are three types of chickweed, Tropical chickweed (glaucous green) is poisonous, but medicinal. Mouse-eared and common chickweed are edible.  Scarlet pimpernel looks like chickweed but is poisonous.

Clover
Nice to add to a salad, (flowers and leaves), with sour thistle and celery and nasturtiums and chickweed. But look out and avoid any black mould on leaves when you are harvest.

Dandelion
Dandelion has anticancer properties. There is sound scientific research to support this. It is a fantastic medicinal herb. It is a bit bitter, but you can eat them raw. You can also cook it. Dandelion has a single flower stem and the cat’s ear has multiple flower heads. Cat’s ear leaf is also more coarse and hairy. That is how you can tell the difference between them.

Dock
Yellow curled dock is a great plant. The seed heads are like little hearts. Swamp dock is lower growing. All docks are edible, but all contain soluble oxalates, so boil them up and the oxalates will go into the water. They have found the seed of docks in prehistoric man. Was it just contaminated in their spelt or other grains?  Some people seem to think that it was deliberately included. The seeds are very high in tannins – including quercitin that you buy from the chemist as a supplement. It is probably in the leaves as well.

Docks have three uses – roots used as medicine, leaves as a spinach (boiled for about 5 minutes) and the seed/seed heads you can mix with your bread or in a pancake. It gives astringency to the bread. It reduces your blood sugar spikes. If you are oxalate sensitive do not eat docks. The other way of counter this is to eat oxalate containing foods in combination with dairy (for example weed spinach rolls with cheese).

Throw dock seeds into a coffee grinder and it grinds it into a fine brown flour. It is more husk than seed, but it is more of what we need and a really good food source.
Yellow dock root can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute.

Swamp dock is the native dock. It is easy to see the difference between the leaves. The seed heads on this attach to your clothing when they are mature. Yellow dock seeds do not stick to your clothing. This plant contains an anticancer compound in both the leaves and the roots called musizin. The roots of swamp dock are yellow. It seems to have a lower oxalic acid compound, but do not eat a lot of it raw (it can give you nausea). Boil or blanch the leaves.  Use the roots as a medicinal.

Farmer’s Friend
Some people say this is edible but research from early last year indicates it may contain a nasty alkaloid toxin – we are waiting for follow-up research to clarify this. Farmer’s friend does not have a huge history as a food plant. It is used in South America as a medicinal. Comfrey has a similar toxin and should not be eaten. Some things are toxic no matter how little you eat ( comfrey and bracken shoots). As we learn more about phyto-chemistry in wild foods, we discover more about these plants and our ideas of on what can be eaten will change.

Madiera Vine
It is a local weed and you can eat it. It is related to Ceylon spinach. It is a garden escapee. Be careful when harvesting, never spread it around or it may escape into your garden or the surrounding environment. That is a risk with some of these weeds.

It is said to have been used as a laxative. Cook it up/boil to prepare. As a general practice I don’t like to eat huge quantities of a single wild green species. My strategy is to eat a mixture, so that you do not get too much of any one thing. Eat a range of things not big helpings of one ingredient.

I don’t eat Madiera vine raw. I boil it lightly, drain away the liquid and eat it as spinach. There is recent research from Indonesia indicating that Madiera vine is safe.

Nasturtium
Nasturtium has a multitude of uses and is a great garden escapee. Throw it in salads. Seeds can be pickled as capers. They are yummy. I like pickling them in bush lemon juice and salt and some spices (like Dorrigo pepper)

Paddy’s Lucerne or Sida
This plant has medicinal properties and mallow-like qualities (it comes from the mallow family). It stops dysentery. It is strong and bitter in the dry weather and has a yellow flower. You can eat the leaves raw in salads. Most of the sida species are safe to eat.

Plaintain
There is a broad leaf plantain and a narrow leaf one. They are both edible anti-inflammatories.  They were a staple of Celtic people. They have a mushroom flavour and a slight bitterness. I chop it up mix it with the leaves of clover and dock, boil them put them into a pie or a stew. The younger leaves are more tender. Just use a small amount. They are said to lower cholesterol. Psyllium husks comes from a type of plantain. Comment from participant – ‘The narrow leaf plantain is traditionally used as a poultice’.

Shamrock (Oxalis)
It is sour. You may have eaten them as kids. They contain oxalis acid. Just do not eat too much because of the soluble oxalate levels.

Shepards Purse – This is in the brassica family. It is a small, subtle herb and comes up a lot in cooking in Celtic/European history along with yarrow. It is used for food and medicine. You can eat the leaves and the seeds. I have not tried the seeds.

Lots of the weed seeds were distributed via ballast bags filled and pack into boats. The soil was tipped out at the docks and that is how the weeds were spread.

Sow thistle
One of my favourites.  You see this around a lot and it is common in gardens. It is a great plant and really nice in salads. The taste is similar to chicory or lettuce. When it is younger the leaves are quite big and lush. It has a yellow flower. It is a really good candidate for domestication (perhaps better than lettuce). It can be a bit bitter, but it is nice mixed in with other salad greens. Be careful with the daisy family, it’s notorious for having sneaky toxins. Do not eat thick head weed. Bracken fern was once thought to be edible. Then they found out that consumption of bracken fern fiddle was carcinogenic, even though this was a traditional part of the Japanese diet. That is why you need to be cautious. Some of the references on what is safe to eat from 20 years ago and now out of date.

Wild Mustard / Wild Brassica
You can eat the yellow flowers on wild brassicas. Wild radish is strongly flavoured. They grow wild in some areas and become naturalised on roadsides. They are full of glucosinolates. Wild brassicas have these compounds in much higher amounts than cultivated greens. It is best to boil brassicas really well.

Weeds to avoid
Morning glory is toxic (even though wallabies do eat it). Be cautious about bindii – I do not know precisely the toxicologically, but it is related to things like hemlock, so be cautious.  Watch out for fungus on grasses. Wheat grass is edible, but not all grasses are edible. Be careful with jute and do not eat kale every day, especially in drinks. The availability of phytochemicals is much higher in a green smoothie. Try sow thistle in a green smoothie but do not use yellow dock. It is too high in phytochemicals. The potency is so high.

Other Forage Foods

Davidson Plum (fruit)
Davidson plum blooms come out of the trunk. This tree is 12 years old. It is going to be a great crop this year. Parrots do love the seed. Put bags over the fruit down the trunk when they start to develop. They are rich in polyphenols just like blueberries and are great antioxidants and lower blood sugar levels. They are very sour, but they make great jam and wine. They can be preserved just like Japanese plums in brine. Also use it in drinks to take the edge off sweet juice or use it in salad dressing.

Dianella
I have some reservations about Dianella, because of the toxicologically the seed. From a traditional point of view there is a lot of history, but I think there may be a lot of variation between species. Aboriginal people do relish it as a traditional food but you cannot say all Dianella are safe.

Illawarra flame tree (seeds)
Illawarra flame tree the pods contain a mass of bristle covered coating around the seeds. Do not plant these where children play as the bristles can get into their eyes. Handle them with care. The seed is edible when roasted. Some people make a substitute coffee or pop it like popcorn then grind and use it as flour. Roasting destroys the toxins in the seed.

Lomandra
You can eat the seed of the Lomandra as a grain. Mix it with flour to make pancakes. you can also eat the leaves (you chew it and they are quite crunchy), You can eat the base of the flower stalks and the base of the leaves.  This applies to Lomandra longifolia, it may apply to some other species.

Macadamia
This macadamia or bush nut (M. tetraphylla) is one 100 years old. They have a sweeter flavour than commercial ones, but the nut does not keep as long. The shell is also thicker. Never pick them from the tree, wait for them to drop.  The bauple nut has the red husk around the outside and has a fibrous seed coat. The seed is not as oily and very high in calcium. You can eat it. Let them fall to the ground and fully ripen. They can be high in a cyanide compound if they are not fully ripe. Give them a light roasting.

Monstera deliciosa
You can eat the fruit of the garden ornamental. Wait for the outer layer of green to peel of the fruit. It has a lovely fruit salad flavour. It has calcium oxalate crystals in unripe fruit and is very unforgiving if you eat it too early.

Mulberry (leaves)
Mulberry are great cattle fodder and humans can them. Dolmates (grape vine leaves) can be made using mulberry leaves. Roll them in bundles of 10 leaves, tie them with fibre from a cordyline or banana, put them in boiling water for a five minutes and then put them in jars of bush lemon juice. Put the hole jar in boiling water to sterilize and preserve it after sealing. They are easier to roll than grapevines (minimal tearing). Use the young leaves. In China they use these as a tea to regulate blood sugar levels (a great counter balance to our western diet). I cut up the leaves, blanch them and eat them. They are strong in flavour, but they are full of nutrients. I love them with sweet potato.

Riberry and Brush Cherry
Riberry tree crop in about December. A lot of the native local fruit trees time their flowering for our dry springs and subsequent fruit set to coincide with summer rain. Brush cherry is also edible and grows into a tree.

Sandpaper Fig
I love Sandpaper figs. They can fruit several times of the year. Summer fruit is often the sweetest. The fruit from a good tree in January is delicious. You can also cook it up or put it in brandy to make a liqueur.

Native Grape
There are about half a dozen native grapes, but only one of them is sweet, so to make them tasty you have to mix them with sugar or brine. They are high in goodies that lower blood sugar levels.  They grow on the edge of the rainforest. Go on-line and do a search on kangaroo vine. They were fruiting a few months ago. Mix fruit with brandy or ferment it.

Other bush foods
Wombat berries have an edible tuber, but it also has an pulp around the seed. Members of the proteaceae family (macadamia and grevillea) can have very high cyanide levels. The characteristics of some members of a family tend to tell you to be careful about related plants. Just because one member of a family may be non-toxic, does not mean that others are non-toxic. This is the case with grevillea nectar/juice. Some Grevillea’s have a compound like poison ivy and can cause a severe allergy reaction.

Spray Zones
One of the things to look out for in urban foraging is spray zones. You cannot anticipate all areas that have been sprayed, but look for dead zones along fence lines and around trees. Do not harvest from these areas as the residues are too high. Also do not harvest wild greens from old building sites due to asbestos and lead paint. Look for plants in areas that have not been sprayed.

Do your research. Take your toxicology seriously. Look for people who are obsessed with the quality of their wild harvest when searching information. Get a mixture of information from different sources.

Weeds can be bio-accumulators. So if there is pollution, they have the ability to pull up more pollution that other plants.

In undisturbed areas, foraged plants can be very clean because they are not fertilized at all. Even with organic food you have bio–fertilisers which may contain pollutants.

Remember that some chronic toxins in plants that they may take years to show up as necrotic lesions in your body (this is why I would not eat comfrey). Don’t make the assumption that you can eat the seeds of a plant on the basis that the roots or leaves are edible.

Final comment from participant: Years ago I once gathered broom flowers and followed a recipe in a book for a dinner. Twenty minutes after eating it everyone became sick. They started throwing up. Some people continued for 2 days.  I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that it was poisonous to horses. Yet it was still written in a book.

Final comment from Tim. Forget the idea of trying edibility testing that appears in lots of books (including Tim Low). Lots of the stuff about edible weeds comes from army survival training and is just bad folklore.

Notes on the author:  Peter Hardwick is widely known as a bush regenerator, bush food expert and environmentalist, but now he has another string to his bow – award-winning filmmaker. Peter’s first short film The Bouquet won the jury award at the Byron All Shorts Film Festival. It’s the story of a smitten young man who offers an expression of his love – a bunch of edible weeds that are then artfully transformed by the woman of his dreams. The idea sprang from a ‘weed walk’ Peter did last year at the Aquarius Festival anniversary celebrations. “I was thinking of trying to make a film about all the weeds you can eat that are under our feet and we don’t even know. But rather than some dry technical documentary with all those droll experts and talking heads, we came up with the idea of putting it into fiction and blending the technical information with something that was creative as well,” he said. It turns out that Peter’s co-director and main collaborator on the film, Pancho Colladetti, was on the weed walk, as were the two lead actors, Carla Muhling and Johnny Everson, though they hadn’t all linked up at that point. Peter, who works as an advisor to bush food restaurants, says he regularly harvests and cooks weeds to eat “but most of the leafy edible weeds are out in winter and early spring, whereas now I’m feasting on native fruits,” he said. There is no dialogue in the film and all the music was provided by Nimbin street musos Leif Larkin and Donato Rosella, who actually performed live as the actors were doing their scenes. “It was hard work for the musicians who were improvising   but it gave us such wonderful layers. I feel like we were foraging the streets of Nimbin for weeds and foraging street performers – who I think are one of the most wonderful things about the Northern Rivers.” They hope to have the film screened at other film festivals throughout the country.
Ref:  The Northern Star newspaper

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The Jerusalem Artichoke has found a new home in the dairy paddocks of Victoria’s southwest. It is most closely related to the sunflower and was first grown in North America. There is no clue to its origins in the name, and it may be reasonable to suggest it was given its title by a clutch of friends who, having met in a village inn to anoint the name, spent far longer on the task than planned.  It is pretty safe to say the agenda of the meeting obviously allocated more time to ale and mirth than geography and botany. Russell Johnstone and Jayne Olds grow Jerusalem artichokes on five hectares at Scotts Creek in Victoria’s southwest. They share land with local dairy farmers Peter and Kerry Rowe. Russell and Jayne also work on the 210-head dairy. Along with Jerusalem artichokes, the pair grow purple cauliflower, broccoli and other vegetables as the opportunity arises. When the artichokes leave the farm, they are trucked to a depot in Werribee and then transported to a supermarket’s processor in Sydney where they are packed and sent to the supermarket’s stores. “The Jerusalem Artichoke isn’t from Jerusalem and it isn’t an artichoke either” says Russell. The couple don’t know anyone else growing Jerusalem artichokes commercially in Australia.

Although the Globe Artichoke is the best known artichoke, the Jerusalem variety is nothing like this. While its bloom resembles a sunflower, it is the edible tuber that is harvested. Russell and Jayne started growing this root vegetable commercially last year in traditional dairy country, where the fetching valleys are greener than envy. For Russell, it’s a long way from home. He was born in the UK and completed an apprenticeship on the family’s Cheshire farm before setting out to see the world in 1988. When he first arrived in Australia, he was lured to a large cropping property in the wheat belt of Western Australia. The work there was profitable and Russell bought a campervan and set a course for Darwin. He put the brakes on at Ord River in Western Australia’s Kimberly region and “spent a lot of years up there working on fruit”. Russell moved to Tasmania in 2000 and worked as operations manager for a corporate garlic farm. He got to know Tassie and struck a friendship with a buyer from a large vegetable wholesaler. “He always spoke about the one product – Jerusalem artichokes – he’d love someone to come along and grow on a commercial basis,” Russell says. “I did a lot of research into them while I was in Tassie. It was hard and very expensive to come across enough seed to justify being a commercial grower. So I put it on the backburner.” The flame was serendipitously ignited when Russell moved to Victoria’s southwest in 2005. Just after arriving in the state, Russell and Jayne leased 4.8 hectares at Simpson and planted their first vegetables – a hectare of garlic and some purple cauliflower. And then he stumbled across his next venture. “I saw a lady with Jerusalem artichokes for sale at a local farmers’ market,” he says. “I went past her stall several times and nobody seemed to have bought any. At the end of the day I approached her and said I’d buy a dozen bags. “We got chatting. She said ‘we’ve got heaps growing wild in a block at home. If you want any I’d dig them for you’.” Two seasons ago, Russell and Jayne bought about 120kg of tubers from her (tubers bought via the internet cost from $12 to $30 a kilogram).

Aim to grow the perfect plant for your conditions so it won’t be as susceptible to pests and diseases. Russell has plant tissue analysed with BioAg Australia to identify strengths. He purposefully picked heavy ground to grow the Jerusalem artichokes – the tuber stays a little whiter and cleaner in heavy ground and will clean well for sale. For home vegie gardens, spray a mix of milk and bicarbonate soda on your vegies to help keep bugs and moths away. One word of warning from Russell: once planted the Jerusalem artichoke can be difficult to control. Jayne, Russell, their artichokes and other vegetables quickly outgrew the Simpson property. “We started hunting around for more acreage to fulfil what we wanted to do with our vegetables,” Russell says. They shifted down the road to Scotts Creek and now work on nearby land shared with farmers Peter and Kerry Rowe. “We approached Peter and Kerry in November last year,” Russell says. “We started growing artichokes in the December.” Russell and Jayne also work on the Rowes’ 210 head dairy farm and have plans to buy the dairy herd and expand their horticultural enterprise. “The two businesses complement each other,” Russell says. Last year, Russell and Jayne also grew purple cauliflowers and purple broccoli. The cattle graze over the vegetables not sold as well as the stubble. Naturally, many neighbours first thought them mad. After all, some years farmers have trouble growing turnips for cattle feed and the vagaries of this year’s weather might have proved the doomsayers right but raised beds were just one of Russell’s “secret” weapons. They proved a sturdy match for the summer, autumn and winter rain. “We used a rotary hoe with a bed-forming machine on the back to cultivate raised beds 300mm taller than ground height. The weather conditions – we’ve had a very wet winter – were challenging.” The couple’s funds don’t extend to running their own machinery so a contractor was used. Growing the crops on raised beds successfully beat off the wet and a financial disaster. “If we hadn’t used raised beds we’d probably be living in a caravan park bankrupt at the moment,” Russell says.

It takes a minimum of 150 days to grow a Jerusalem artichoke. The extremes of the weather can induce a little insomnia. “We’ve had a few sleepless nights because the plant can grow to about 3.3m tall before you get the yellow flower on top which they need for the tuber to mature,” Russell says. “It’s not so much the rain that bothers the plant but the high winds that come with it. It is crucial the flower atop a long and thin stalk tolerates the wind. Part of the ripening stage (of the tuber) happens after the tops start to die back.”  The Jerusalem artichoke is sometimes described as tasting like a water chestnut yet also has a nutty flavour. Most of their crop is shipped to Sydney where it is sold in three supermarkets. Not all of the 100 tonnes Russell and Jayne grew – the yield averaged 20 tonnes a hectare – is for market. “We needed to grow and harvest a minimum of 60 tonnes for us to continue next year,” Russell says. “We knew we could sell 50 tonnes to the supermarkets but we needed a good amount to plant for next season.”

Jerusalem artichokes can go wild (and is often considered a weed, according to Russell). The plant is a perennial, and leaving the tubers in the ground can be a fine practice for the home gardener looking to grow more of it. But this doesn’t suit commercial cropping. “A fresh plant needs to be grown,” Russell says. “If you don’t do this, eventually your yields are going to start dropping off.” Russell and Jayne are also breeding their own variety of artichoke. “For us to advance, we have to generate fresh seed and the only way to do that is to cross pollinate with another variety of Jerusalem artichoke,” Russell says. “We’ve hunted down 15 kilograms of a different variety (there is only a handful of varieties of the Jerusalem artichoke) and we’ve grown a line of ours and a line of artichoke imported from North America.” A nursery section has been established among the crop. “The tubers get planted with a potato planter (a two-row machine),” Russell says. “We fill one side of the machine with our own tubers and the other side with the imported tubers and grow them next to each other. When the plant gets up to the flowering stage, a friend who is a bee keeper comes along. We put the bees out to do the pollination work. We cross pollinate one plant with the other and then collect the seed.” Their day can start at 5am and, in summer when there is watering to be done, the finish line isn’t realised until 10pm. A capacity for hard yards may partly explain why Russell has returned to Cheshire just once in the past 20 years (though his parents have visited often). Despite undertaking daily marathons, this couple is undaunted. Their buyer has asked them to grow double the amount of Jerusalem artichokes next year.

FOUR WAYS WITH JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES
Not mush trouble Raw or cooked, your options with Jerusalem artichokes are wide open. Just as with potatoes, they can be baked, boiled, steamed, fried and microwaved. However, they will cook faster than potatoes and can easily be turned to mush in a matter of minutes if you do not monitor them closely. Keep your eye on them and remove them from the heat as soon as you can easily pierce them with a skewer.

Cheese and artichoke chowder

Melt some butter in a saucepan and soften a sliced onion. Add sliced Jerusalem artichokes and sliced carrot and cook for a minute before sprinkling in a little flour and then gradually adding some chicken stock to cover. Put on a lid and simmer for 20 minutes. Blend the soup until smooth. Add some milk and grated gruyere cheese and a dash of dry mustard. Season with salt and blend again. Pour into a clean pan and reheat gently; do not boil. Taste for seasoning. Garnish with julienned artichoke, carrot and the green part of a leek which have been blanched in boiling water and refreshed in cold water.

Lemon chicken with Jerusalem artichokes

Set aside the zest of one lemon and the juice from two lemons. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large, deep saucepan and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Season four chicken thighs and place skin-side down in the hot pan and quickly brown them, turning only once. Remove to a plate and keep warm. Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, a further tablespoon of olive oil, a cup of chicken stock and a generous pinch of saffron to the pan. Bring to a boil, stirring to loosen any browned bits. Add 500g peeled Jerusalem artichokes and 10 peeled garlic cloves. Return the chicken to the pan, along with any accumulated juices. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes, until the chicken and artichokes are tender. Stir in 1/4 cup of cream and a tablespoon of chopped thyme leaves. Taste and check seasoning. Return to a simmer and cook an additional 10 minutes. Serve over steamed rice and sprinkle with pine nuts to garnish. Serves four. Spinach and walnut salad with roasted beetroot and artichokes

Preheat an oven to 200C. Cut 250g each of beetroots and artichokes (sized evenly) and toss in a roasting pan with olive oil, seasoning and mixed dried herbs. Cook for 20 minutes. Turn the vegetables and leave them to cook for a about 30 minutes so they are tender and crisp. Remove the pan from the oven and keep warm. Make a salad with baby spinach leaves and chopped walnuts, add the warm roasted vegetables and lightly toss together. Just before serving, toss the salad with a vinaigrette made with two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and a little freshly ground black pepper. Serves four.       Jeremy Vincent

Sheryl:  What was interesting about this article was the fact they left out a certain little delicacy – the known fact that it causes flatulence! I don’t have room here but read Stephen F. Nottingham’s blogspot on the web. He co-authored “The Biology and Chemistry of Jerusalem Artichoke”, a wonderful read!!!  The above article appeared in the Weekly Times – a great country Victorian newspaper – can highly recommend a subscription. https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/