2020

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We moved in about ten years ago with the intention of developing a Healing Center and an Intentional Community – a place where people could access diverse natural medicine, including a raw food diet, yoga, different types of meditation and massage, dance therapy and other healing techniques. One of our main focuses is supporting people eating a raw food diet.  That goal has brought us to develop a large orchard and we are also making improvements to the house. We have been organizing a few workshops and have woofers regularly. Hundreds of fruit trees have been planted, many during the drought, but most of them are now doing well thanks to the abundant rainfall we have received these last few years. The range of fruit trees is wide, including the most usual ones such as mangoes, citrus, bananas, guavas, avocados, macadamias, persimmons, mulberries, stone fruits but also some rarer fruit trees:jaboticaba, ceylonese olives, pomegranate, panama berries, abiu, lucuma, governor’s plum, acerola cherries, brazilian cherries, madrano, asian tamarind, pitomba, mamey sapote, green sapote, kei apples, dragon fruit, guyana chestnuts, a lot of jackfruit as well as many others. We have 50 hectares and it is mostly planted with eucalypts. There is still around 9 hectares left and plenty of room for a lot more fruit trees. This area is frost free, mostly exposed to the north and we have two dams and therefore plenty of water. The soil is rather good, being of volcanic origin, but a bit too clayish and too acidic (pH5). We have 4 bee hives and want to get more. They are very productive and have improved pollination. We are an organic farm and follow biodynamic and permaculture ideas. We have geese, ducks and a few chickens.  Some of the local attractions: Border Range National Park – about 20 min away; Mt Warning.

Hanging Rock – local waterfall swimming area – 10 min away. We offer the possibility to stay at our place overnight, from Saturday to Sunday to members who wish to spend the weekend visiting our area. We practice raw food and invite people to share our meal. There is also some basic cooking facilities available in the studio. We do have some accommodation: 2 rooms with 3 beds and 2 beds in another room. BYO bed linen/towels etc. If you want cooked food, then BYO Directions:   Allow 2½ hours from Brisbane. It’s a really beautiful area so do come and visit. Take the highway in the direction of Coolangatta, Tweed Head, Ballina. Take the first exit to Murwillumbah. Drive across Murwillumbah, pass the bridge following the main street. Turn left in Murwillumbah, on the top of the hill, to take the direction of Nimbin, Kyogle, Lismore. Follow the main road in direction of Kyogle. Pass the turn off to Nimbin and continue towards Kyogle. Going up you will see a lookout (to Mount Warning) on your right (about 5km after the turn off to Nimbin). You will now be in Kyogle Shire.  You will easily notice the first house on the right. A brick house on the hill. Our house is the second house on the right hand side, just 100 metres further. You may notice the entry of our drive way with its yellow flag, and a few Hibiscus on the right  but you may miss it because it runs at a sharp angle with the road. If you miss it you will find Williams Road on your right, and you will need to drive back, a few hundred metres. 

Sheryl:  If you stay or share in a meal, feel free to offer a donation to the Centre. Email Philippe if you would like to stay in their accommodation. Plenty of room to pitch a tent or bring your motorhome/caravan.

Philippe Dufaud – email: philippedufaud@hotmail.com    4148 Kyogle Road, Lillian Rock NSW

Bald Knob Market is on every Saturday.   Nimbin Market is held every 3^rd Sunday and is 15 mins away

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Sheryl  Bob and I were visiting Nth Qld in August last year and we called in to see David who’s very hard to find! I took with me a list of questions that various members wanted information on so below is the result of our visit.

Sheryl:  What do you think would grow well down in SE Qld as far as the tropical fruit?
David:   I don’t get feedback from my customers but Robert Pulverenti grows a lot of Artocarpus. They grow very well but I don’t think they fruit all that well.
David:   Black Sapote – There’s male, female and bisexual trees which are functionally male but the ones I’ve seen don’t produce many fruit and they aren’t very good quality. The male flower is torpedo shape so it’s narrow at the two ends and wider in the middle and the diameter of the unopened flower is about 7mm. The female flower has an embryo and is 10-12mm across and if you dissect the flower, even if you can’t visually see the embryo, when you cut it in half you’ll seethe embryo at the bottom. They both have what look like similar organs but one is male and one is female. If you have a male tree it’s easy to tell – if you had a tree that was pretty old and you thought it might have flowered while you weren’t looking, the seed is extremely viable so it’ll have seedlings underneath and that applies to almost all kinds of trees–unless you’re a fanatical mower, which people in the city might be, more so than in the country. I don’t use herbicides so  the best indication as to whether you have a female tree is seedlings underneath. If you don’t have even one seedling underneath, then it’s most likely a male and that applies to any kind of tree.

Sheryl:   How old will it be before you know whether it’s going to be female?
David:    Four or five years. You’ll see flowers appear.

Sheryl:   How true to type do you think a seedling Reineke comes?
David:   My friend Andrew planted seeds from my Reineke. I asked him but he says the results are mixed since he has other seedlings in the same orchard.

Sheryl:   What do you think of seedlings opposed to grafted types?
David:    I got my original seeds from Mexico and ended up with a very high percentage of male trees and meanwhile discovered that one of my trees (a grafted “Reineke”) was better than any of the seedlings. Some of the others were as large or fruited well but the grafted had a better flavour so, just leaving two male trees I replaced all the others with grafted Reineke. This variety was collected by a Californian, Mr Reineke in 1880 in Northern Mexico. “ Bernecker” is another cultivar with a good reputation but mixed results. Other cultivars are not recommended.

Sheryl:   Most of our members are only in a small way and what we try and do is encourage growing only the best variety and we’re trying to undertake a survey to find out who has the best variety of particular trees as it’s no use growing mediocre fruit if you only have one of each kind. What do you consider your best trees?
David:    I agree entirely. Besides the Reineke Black Sapote, I have a Canistel which I call “Gold Top” which will grow to 9 metres and equal across. It has only one seed and it gets a little less sweet as it ripens. More flesh does tend to allow the flavour to develop in a richer way. In Star Apples I like the green “Newcomb” and of course the purple “Haitiian”. The Abiu is a bit like Canistel in that if it only has one seed then you’d prefer that to a fruit having 2 seeds (or more). Since you mentioned having difficulty with grafted Abiu (below), perhaps we could make an exception to what we’re saying here. One out of four Abius is outstanding, so why not just plant four trees in one spot, and cut out the bad ones? The Ross Sapote is a type of Canistel but it’s not terribly reliable as the tree itself is not quite as good. I have a good Durian but you couldn’t grow them down there. When you plant small Durians here, if they get sunburned twice when young, that’s it!

Sheryl: One of our members tried some Antidesmas from Tony Irvine’s place at Yungaburra and liked them. David He’s a former CSIRO rainforest researcher who is brilliant. I’ve been thinking of starting a native fruit section on my website but only ones that are palatable. Athertonia diversifolia – Dave Bender is working on this and he lives close by Ph: 4065 5171 Tony Irvine and the Mamu Aboriginal Authority in conjunction with the Wet Tropics Management Authority put out a Bush Tucker poster which was in the Cairns Post last year.

Sheryl:  A lot of our members are having problems with their grafted Abiu – any ideas?

David:    In general it’s harder to grow grafted trees in the early years, so Brisbane, being a marginal area for Abiu, may experience difficulties. There are no intrinsic problems with grafting Abiu. We have two different crops, a cool season crop and a summer crop. Mine don’t produce in the cool season since my seeds came from the eastern side of the Andes. If your heritage is from the eastern side of the Andes you will also get winter crops. The winter crop has to be fully coloured but that’s not the case with the summer crop. One third to one half coloured is best when you take it off the tree. Limberlost Nursery in Cairns was selling a cultivar called ‘Winter’ because it had a good crop in winter. I pick mine around Feb to March. If you wait for full colour in summer, then the pests will attack it or it will just be brown inside. On the Internet I found an article on Abiu with a picture attached which showed a horrible brown-inside Abiu which you would never eat. Funny! If you have a tree fruiting, then you should pick the fruit as early as possible.
Sheryl:    John Hatch has the winter type I believe.

Sheryl:   Ants – how do you keep them off your trees?
David:   We have mainly green tree ants so the common ones aren’t a problem. I believe they don’t occur south of Rockhampton.
Fertiliser – I use chicken manure and rock dust from the quarry. When they wash down their machines, they end up with a pond and they want to get rid of it so they’ll give it to me for almost nothing as they want to get rid of it. They call it Pond Dust. I get it for $5.00 per cubic metre.

Sheryl:    One of our members is looking for a female Cecropia peltata
David:     This plant is a serious pest and you may not notice it until its 10 metres tall! It’s taken over whole sections of the Botanic Gardens lining the banks of the river in Bogor, Java and I have had some escapes here. Fortunately it is dioecious. Destroy all plants.

Sheryl:    Members are having trouble getting Sapodillas to grow.
David:     It’s usually an incompatibility between the scion and the rootstock and nobody has selected a good rootstock. Many trees are very slow or just don’t grow. Another problem in the Sapotaceae species. Mangoes don’t do very well up here because of the humidity. Anthracnose attacks the flowers.

David:    I don’t net my trees as I haven’t budgeted for it. My main fruits are ones I don’t have much trouble with: Langsat and Durian. Langsat take 15 years to fruit.
Jackfruit How to tell if ripe? Score the peduncle (stem) above the fruit with your fingernail and look at the latex. If it doesn’t flow very well, you can pick it. Some cultivars have a lot of latex inside the fruit. Kerry McAvoy who lives nearby has had a Borneo selection I introduced called “Rajang” grafted by Peter Gillet of Townsville. Also recommended is “Amber”. People are planting hundreds of these cultivars. I’ve moved on from Jackfruit to Chempedak which is similar but I think superior–you can even eat the seeds of the Chempedak. Presently [latest news] three Chempedak cultivars of mine are being reproduced. If you have a lot of fruit on a Jakfruit tree, I don’t think there’s any need to remove some of them but then I probably don’t have the time to do that. I do get branches breaking from heavy crops.

Cherry of the Rio Grande  If it doesn’t fruit, then it’s probably bad genes. A lot of the Syzygiums are very reluctant although I don’t know specifically about Cherry of the R.G. I have a tree but it hasn’t done anything – it might be too shaded. You could try cincturing but don’t cincture more than half the circumference of the tree and only use a thin hacksaw blade.

Sheryl:   Rollinia flowers profusely but no fruit.
David:    Maybe the grower hasn’t waited long enough as they take about 3 years to fruit but they flower after 18 months. They require good humidity and up here you can have 3 crops a year Sept Dec April but if the weather is very dry, it is recommended to try misting and you could also try hosing upwards from below. The actual humidity within the flower is the critical thing. This applies to all Annonas. What causes lack of pollination are the organs getting too dry.
 

Underground Chempedak   Sometimes jackfruit produces fruit on its larger roots which as they grow may bulge out of the ground, convenient for man and beast. This ability has been exploited by growers in Malaysia of the closely related Chempedak. The young tree is planted at the bottom of a hole 90cm deep and 180cm wide and as it grows the stem of the tree is wrapped in a bamboo tube so that lack of light closes the plant’s fibres to stay weak and pliable. When it grows to the top of the hole, the tube is removed and the plant is trained to curl spirally around the hole. The stem is then covered with loose mulch and once again the tip of the plant is inserted into a tube. The plant – the process is repeated until the hole is filled and the tree is permitted with training to produce a normal leafy top. As the plant grows to maturity, it regards its untrained part as its trunk and since Chempedak normally bears fruit on the trunk (cauliflory), there they appear – underground chempedak. These fruit are reported to be a great delicacy by all those who have tried them and is claimed to be a better flavour then the regular chempedak. Jackfruit could possibly be similarly trained. I also grow Taro and I’m the Secretary of Taro Growers Australia. I put out a newsletter and the best cultivar is “Bun Long” which has the purple spot in the centre of the leaf and the corms are flecked purple. Taro is also imported into Australia from the islands and we’re a bit concerned with some of the diseases like Taro Blight that could come in. I’m planting the native Noni and there’s a growers association and I’m also in the midst of culling a lot of trees from my property. I’ve formulated a newsletter for the Organic Producer’s Association of Queensland (OPAQ).

Fruit Piercing Moth is a problem in Citrus. They over-winter here if it’s warm but if there’s a cool winter they die off. They don’t attack the other fruit too much. They can’t attack the two main winter fruits which are the black sapote and canistel or star apples because of the latex so it’s more the thinner skinned fruits you might get down south. They don’t attack most of our fruits here.

Fruit Spotting Bug They are a problem on a number of tropical fruit trees but often the fruit recovers eg they’ll attack small durians and in some cases the fruit will drop off but the wound will usually just heal over but because the durians are divided into locules, it’s usually only the locule that’s been attacked. It’s one case where killing the individual insect is a good plan—just one can be causing much damage; as you approach, it will move around to the far side of the tree or branch. So reach around and get it from behind.

Sheryl:   There’s a chap in Mareeba doing research.
David:   I didn’t know that but the bug attacks bananas and vegetables like cucumbers, zucchinis. They can also cause some of the drop that occurs in Mangosteen.

David has an interesting book called Wild Fruits and Vegetables in Sarawak put out by the Dept. of Agriculture in Sarawak which was given to him by Kim Ong from Brisbane.

David Chandlee lives at 120 Shellpocket Road, El Arish, (not his mailing address) Ph: 07 4068 5263 Mail gets to him at: Tree Farm, El Arish Qld 4855. There is no postal delivery. He built his own home complete with solar power and doesn’t have a fridge!

Email: dkchandlee@yahoo.com

Website: http://borneocollection.netfirms.com  David has seeds for sale on his website as well as articles he has written.  

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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If you missed the citrus field day at Jenny Iriondo’s place you missed one of the best!  Jenny’s knowledge, commitment and enthusiasm are an inspiration to anyone who has a passion for growing trees. Jenny established the business in 1989 and for some time was the largest citrus propagating enterprise in Queensland.  However, the recent drought led to significant cut-backs in staff and tree numbers bringing it to a point today where only Jenny and three others are running the whole business. Cedar Creek Nursery on the Sunshine Coast is a major citrus supplier to Bunnings.  In addition, it sends large batches of trees to prominent citrus growers in areas like Emerald, Gayndah, and Mundubbera. Most of the major citrus lines are grown at the nursery – currently, 5 varieties of oranges, 4 varieties of lemons, 4 varieties of mandarins, 3 varieties of limes, 2 varieties of cumquats, and 3 varieties of grapefruit.

In times past Jenny has used every known spray to combat the perennial problems of insect and fungal diseases.  However, for health and environmental reasons she (like many others) has turned to safer practises and now uses basically oil and copper sprays.  The scale problem is dealt with by the introduction of predatory mites that she buys in from Bugs for Bugs at Mundubbera.

Jenny’s talk left my head spinning trying to take in so much good information!  By way of practical help we were shown how to monitor the soil health in the top and bottom of a planter bag – the tree and soil were removed from the bag and analysed.  Also, she demonstrated the process used in budding and cleft grafting.  She used the scion wood from George Allen’s “much sought after” finger lime which I might add is a most agreeable piece of fruit – no resin and a very red coloured globules.

After a great morning of learning, good fun, and friendship we headed down the hill to the nursery.  Here we spent the next hour or so looking around the thousands and thousands (and thousands!) of young citrus.  While looking we were invited to choose any variety or number of citrus we wanted to buy all at a very fair price.  I purchased a few trees of my very favourite citrus – the Meiwa or Marumi cumquat.  If you haven’t tried this fruit you should (must!).  Even the skin tastes good.

Jenny was the perfect hostess accommodating all our questions and giving interesting information on the various varieties and the running of the nursery.  I considered it a privilege to be invited to the field trip and thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.

In closing, here are a few things of interest I learned from the day: 1. I don’t know as much as I thought I did about propagating citrus! 2. The ‘Villa Franca” lemon bears in summer, Eureka bears in winter. 3. The variety of a rootstock affects: the size of the tree; the size of the fruit eg Swingle will produce larger fruit especially grapefruit. Troyer rootstock tends to overgrow the graft restricting the sapflow especially with Imperial mandarins and this is why Troyer is not chosen for Eureka lemon. Troyer is used mostly in Qld because it is resistant to Phytophthora in heavy soil and its ability to withstand dry conditions. 4. Eureka lemons are normally only grafted on to Benton rootstocks, but trials are now being done on a rootstock called “Cox” and Fraser. 5. Healthy soil is critical to the health of a plant. 6. Use Troyer rootstocks when grafting Finger Limes! 7. Fertilize citrus in the warmer months when the tree is showing signs of growth. 8. Citrus do best with a pH of 5.5-6.5.  Below 5.5 essential nutrients can’t be taken up by the plant.

9. Trees grafted on the very hardy rootstock “Trifoliata” produce smaller fruit – this rootstock tends to grow better in the southern states where it is colder.  Finally, for all those people out there in citrus land who are wondering what to graft onto their dwarfing rootstock “Flying Dragon” here is Jenny’s judicious judgement: Emperor and Ellendale mandarin; Meyer Lemon; Tahitian Lime; and Washington Navel Orange.  (I’m going with the last and planting it in a pot).

Thanks, Jenny, for a great day – it was worth it every bit.
 

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Blueberry Grove is a small blueberry orchard run by Warwick and Joan Press. The orchard was established in 1980 and although small by industry standards (having only 800 trees) it was planned this way so it could be run without employing staff, although as I get older I am finding it more difficult to adequately look after 800 trees.

To those of you not familiar with blueberries they are a native of North America and northern Europe more suited to a colder climate and grow quite small. Blueberries grown on the north coast of NSW are a subtropical variety, the rootstock of which is obtained from Georgia USA. The varieties we grow are Sharpblue, Brightblue, Tiffblue, Mysty, Powderblue, Brightwell, Backyard Blue, Georgia Gem, Centurion, Sunshine Blue, T102, and Gulf Coast.

Sharpblue has been very good in the past but sometimes the fruit tends to tear when you pluck them from the stalk. For household use this is not a problem but when sending to market in punnets the tear allows bacteria to form which gradually spreads from the affected blueberry to all the others in the punnet. Otherwise Sharpblue has a very nice taste and is one of the earliest fruits to come in. Brightblue and Tiffblue are very tall bushes – my netting is 3 metres high and they are growing a metre through the netting. They will grow 1 to 1½ m in a year which means constant pruning. They also have a tendency to sucker, which means that you start off with one stem and by year 10 you’ll have a dozen – they grow under the ground. Sharpblue does not sucker. Backyard Blues is more of a home garden variety and has the advantage of fruiting all year round. Brightwell is my favourite and is a vigourous grower, Georgia Gem have been very slow to grow but has lovely fruit. Gulf Coast has big fruit but the disadvantage of picking it commercially is that when you pluck it, it takes the stem with it so when you’re sorting it means that you have to individually pluck each stem off the fruit so as a commercial fruit, forget it. Also, being big fruit, it doesn’t taste as nice.

The varieties I have that I’ve found to be quite good are Brightwell, Mysty, Powderblue, Brightblue, Tiffblue and Sharpblue. All taste good but each of them has some disadvantage eg constant pruning, suckering, tearing but Brightwell has the least problems and I can recommend this variety. Another one that I’ve obtained from my nurseryman is Sunshine Blue. It’s more of an ornamental blueberry in that it is quick growing, has lovely flowers and is a heavy bearer – it fruits all the way up the stem and when it’s ripe you can strip it off with one hand. The tree I have here on display is 3 years old (it’s less than 1m high) and is loaded with fruit. A lot of them don’t require cross pollination eg Sunshine Blue. I’ve found that Powderblue has not required cross pollination because I’ve got them growing in between a row of Tiffblues and there are no flowers on the Tiffblues when there are flowers on the Powderblues. The experts do say you need cross pollination but I’ve found that a lot of my varieties do not flower together and yet I still get good fruit set…

Sheryl Do some have a higher sugar content than others?

Warwick You can taste the difference between the different varieties but I couldn’t recommend one over the other because of individual taste. I like Sharpblue myself – some say it is too sharp. Brightblue has a musky taste. I find that blueberries in general don’t have a high sugar content so that’s why they are low in calories.

Sheryl Who’s doing all the R & D?

Warwick NSW Dept. of Agriculture here at Alstonville in conjunction with Blueberry Farms of Australia at Corindi. The Dept has a team lead by Gordon Stovold who is a plant pathologist. Ridley Bell from Mountain Blue Orchards does a lot of propagation for Blueberry Farms of Aust. He has some varieties that I would love to get a hold of but because there is a PVR on them, I can’t get them. They have lovely big fruit, early, vigorous tree. He’s working on doing his own varieties at the moment because he realises he is limited to what he can produce for others.

Chris Which varieties are susceptible to fruit fly?

Warwick I have found some not as susceptible than others. Sharpblue, Mysty and Backyard Blue are susceptible.

Sheryl Have you checked whether you are attracting the male or female to your homemade mix in the bottle?

Warwick I don’t get the female fly in my homemade mix because it’s a male lure. It will lure the male only. It does reduce the population but doesn’t eliminate the female. The home solution is not as good as the Dak Pots.

Diana What variety would you recommend for the Brisbane area?

Warwick Brightwell and Mysty.  Powderblue is a nice fruit, quick grower with lots of fruit but you need to keep it pruned –I have had no disease or pest problem with this one. Mysty has a bit of fruit fly and Sharpblues as well. Haven’t seen much fruitfly in Brightwell.  Sunshine Blue is a new variety being sold at the moment – it’s more of a home garden plant, lovely flower, then masses of fruit. They’re $4.50 each.

Sheryl I like Gulf Coast. Georgia Gem is quite musky and is also quite nice. T102 is excellent.

Warwick Mysty tends to get a bit of dieback and I haven’t had a great deal of success with it at all. The T102 has very large fruit: good for wine. Centurion fruits in December. Backyard Blues fruits all year round. Brightwell is a bit gritty but tastes nice.

Blueberries grow to a height of between 2m and 3m depending on variety and have a long life of over 30 years especially if pruned back from time to time. Plant them in full sun but if you plant them north-south you’re going to get some shade throughout the day. If you have too much shade, the trees are late in maturing and slower growing. The fruit does not ripen all at once and the bush may at any one time have flowers, green fruit and mature fruit. This does have an advantage in that picking does not occur all at once but over an extended period. A normal harvesting season usually starts mid August and finishes about mid Feb. For the last couple of years the season has been starting later and later. When we first started picking, our harvest began at the end of July. Some of the bushes are getting old and less productive and by choosing the right varieties you can bring the season forward. This season has been so dry that harvesting did not start until mid October. 

Our orchard produces about 3 tonnes of fruit per year in a good season. They can tolerate frost provided they are not planted out too small. The bushes are very hardy once they are about 1 year old and will grow in a variety of climates from Tasmania to Qld depending on the variety. They are a difficult bush to propagate. The usual method is from tip cuttings but they require bottom heat to encourage formation of the gall from which the new roots grow. It is possible to grow them from seeds they are slow and are not true to type. They need to have cold air on to them to get them going and mist them with water. The people growing them from seeds are experimenting with new varieties.

We have 2 plantation blocks. One block is about 18 years old with 3 old varieties totalling 400 plants. The trees are single row planted about 1.4m apart and about 2m between rows. It is proposed to replant this block with newer varieties. One row of Tiffblue has been replaced with Powder Blue planted 900mm apart. The other block is about 4 years old with 6 varieties totalling 400 trees. The trees are double row planted 1.4m on the triangle which uses half the space as the older block and half the number of irrigation lines.

Our blueberries have very little pest and disease problems which means very little spraying. The biggest pests are birds so netting is essential. We have Noisy Miners here and we are constantly sewing up the netting. They’ll walk across the netting and sit on the poles, peck a hole and dive-bomb in and they can’t get out and usually leave a little heavier than when they came in (lead can be so dangerous).The flying fox isn’t a problem up here because the berries don’t give off an aroma as peaches and mangoes do.

Fruit fly is a problem in some years. Some varieties are more susceptible than others but we bait. We hang a bait bottle under the trees to control the male fly and to give us an indication when the fly is present so that minimal spraying can be done. The bait bottle is usually a small plastic pill bottle with the lid on and suspended from a branch with wire through the lid. A flap is cut in the side of the bottle and hinged upward so that rain does not get in and allows the fly to get at the bait. The secret bait recipe is 2 ltr water, 1/2 cup sugar dissolved in hot water, 2 tbs spoons ammonia, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. The vanilla essence and sugary water disguises the smell of the ammonia. The fly comes into the bottle, has a sip of the sugary water and the ammonia kills it. I find it a lot better than using Maldison and Protein Hydrolosis. Protein Hydrolosis smells like vegemite and is black like vegemite. Although it doesn’t eliminate the fly, it does indicate to me when the fly is active and then I can judiciously spray those varieties that are suspectible. I don’t spray the whole orchard. The fruit fly spray can be either Rogor which has a 1 day withholding period but which is deadly to bees or Lepidex which is an anti-chlorestoral spray that is systemic and is passed through the fruit to the fruit fly larvae. It is sometimes called Dipterex which has a 3 day withholding period. A major disease which has recently been introduced into the area is rust which affects some varieties of blueberries such as Sharpeblue, Backyard Blue and Mysty but to date not Brightblue, Tiffblue, Centurion, Powder Blue or Brightwell.   We do have a small patch of phytophera in the orchard but it can be overcome by mounding which we have done.

I work for the Dept. of Agriculture as a graphic designer preparing posters etc. and recently completed a poster on the fungal diseases of blueberries. It sets out all the known diseases to date with the exception of rust which has just been introduced into Australia from South America. Unfortunately it’s a wind born spore. There’s fruit rots eg Anthracnose and Botrytis, stem and root diseases eg Stem Canker and Phytophthora. With Botrytis the fruit goes furry like peaches do. Anthracnose – has spots on fruit. There are minor leaf disease which don’t affect the fruit but does affect the vigour of the plant.  The Stem and Root diseases causes die-back in the plants.

Leaf Rust causes the leaves to fall off and there is no vigour in your tree and if you have fruit on when the rust appears, it discolours the fruit. Rust appears when we get hot, humid weather and a fair bit of rain. We can control the rust by spraying with Mancozeb or you can use a systemic spray called Tilt which is very expensive or you can buy a spray that knocks all the leaves off without putting a poisonous spray on – it’s a leaf removal spray. The tree will recover but you can lose all your fruit if this happens. There are some varieties that are not susceptible to rust. Most of the tall growing varieties eg Tiffblue, Brightblue, Powderblue and Brightwell are not susceptible to date.

Blueberries do not like wet feet and some varieties eg Sharpeblue suffer from root rot. Mounding the soil helps prevent this. It is imperative that you do not lime your soil. They are one of the few plants that tolerate acid soils so thrive in the red soil but I am sure they would survive in anything up to 7 pH. My soil is around 4 pH. Young trees are shallow rooted so mulching is very beneficial and older trees are less stressed in dry weather. We mulch with either shredded paper which only lasts about one season or macadamia shells and husks which last several years. Between the rows we grow a legume, Pinto’s Peanut, to help control soil erosion, weed control and mulch. It’s hard to establish – the seed is very small – I grow mine from cuttings and I can give you some if you’d like to take a cutting with you. It grows very vigorously so you have to keep it out of your tree rows and will eventually smother the bottom part of the tree. It will climb 30-45cm but you can get a dwarf variety now which doesn’t climb and is currently being trialled.

Sheryl  Would we do it in a home situation?

Warwick Depends how many trees you’ve got – I probably wouldn’t bother. Once it’s established, it certainly spreads.

Sheryl Who’s doing the research on the non-climbing variety?

Warwick The Sub Tropical Fruit Research Station here. They also have another variety there too – Sweet Smother Grass. They are mostly trialling it between Macadamias. I’m presently trialling a new weedmat which is dense enough to keep weeds out but porous enough to allow water to penetrate. It’s been in place for 3 years in the row of Powderblue that replaced the Tiffblue and I haven’t had to weed yet. It’s been a great time saver as I am always weeding other unmatted rows. The only disadvantage with the weedmat is that it is fairly soft and susceptible to mechanical damage eg sharp objects. (bandicoots will tear  it) The name of this product is Weed Gunnel and I purchased my supplies from Chris Minogue 13 Werona St Buddina 4575 email: weedgunnel@bigpond.com Most weed matting is so dense that water will just run off and you have to irrigate underneath it. With the weed gunnel I lay the irrigation on top for ease of maintenance. The soil needs to be kept damp. If you scrape away the mulch, the ground should be moist. 

Blueberries need adequate water to help fill out the fruit and irrigation is necessary during dry weather. Our average rainfall here is around 1700mm but can get up to 2500mm. Hot weather, especially hot windy weather, tends to stress the trees and fruit will dry up like raisins.

Sheryl  Your bushes are very dense – I wouldn’t have thought you would have much of a weed problem.

Warwick.  I only have a weed problem with the older orchard because they are planted further apart and the Sharpblue is not a dense bush. They still need adequate water to help fill out the fruit and we irrigate during the dry season

On the other hand, too much wet weather causes ripe fruit to split and it will explode. We don’t have a problem with animals eating the fruit but I do have a problem with bandicoots and rats eating the pinto peanut. Wallabies would be a problem if the place wasn’t netted. I got my netting from Coastguard Netting at Ballina.

We use a high analysis fertiliser such as Crop King 55 (I think it’s now called Pivot 14) .We apply about 250-500gms per tree at bud swell and beginning of fruiting depending on the size of the tree– the fertiliser I put on is high in potassium.

Our fruit is all handpicked and sorted thus ensuring first quality fruit. On larger farms machine harvesting is practised but the fruit is generally not first quality and is mostly used in the processed and frozen food industry.

Sheryl The machine looks exactly like a grape harvester.

Warwick Yes it’s similar to one used for coffee as well. It has vibrating fingers that travel along each side of the bush and vibrate all the berries off the bush. It will take all the green berries as well. It’s very cost effective on large farms. I was in New Zealand 2 years ago and one farm had 300 acres and he had two machines and six employees to do the lot. The farm was south of Hamilton. His biggest problem was water logging as he sometimes had trouble getting the machinery into the orchard. They don’t net them. The birds damage the bushes but because they have 300 acres they don’t worry about it. He was in the export frozen food industry. He had another machine in his factory shed that sorted out the berries by colour – he had an infrared colour machine. A light detected whether each berry was blue or another colour and if it wasn’t blue, a little blast of air would push the berry off the table. It was so fast he only had one operator.

Sheryl Will these other berries ripen eventually?

Warwick Berries don’t ripen off the bush. Once a berry has ripened, they will hang on and stay there for up to two weeks. The berries are easily plucked from the bush, which has no prickles or thorns.

We dispose of our fruit in a number of ways. We send 150gm punnets to the Brisbane markets and local fruit shops. In the past we use to supply Coles and Bi-Lo, but because they take 6-8 weeks to pay us, we don’t do this any more. We have two freezers which will hold around 800 kgs so we have frozen fruit available all year round and this is sold mostly to cake shops and wholesalers of frozen food. From Nov to Feb we have pick-your-own as well as tourist buses. We also sell ice-cream, blueberry jam, blueberry wine and bushes.

Blueberries are a very convenient fruit. They will last for about 2 weeks in the fridge and can be frozen for over 12 months. They can be eaten with fruit salads and make a nice addition to vegetable salads. Use them on breakfast cereals, in pies, cakes, muffins, topping on ice-cream, pavlovas and cheesecakes, and a banana smoothie milkshake with blueberries is great. You end up with a purple drink as the colour is in the skin and not in the flesh.  Blueberries dipped in chocolate are yummy.

Nutritionally they are low in calories, high in Vitamin C, provide dietary fibre and have small quantities of other vitamins and minerals. In recent studies blueberries have been found to be the most potent antioxidant available. They have 20 times the antioxidant power of Vitamin C and 50 times that of Vitamin E. The antioxidant is found in the blue pigments. Don’t know how true it is but recent studies from the US have shown that blueberries improve memory, balance and co-ordination. Wine made from blue fruit actually makes a red wine which contains a substance called oligomeric proanthocyanidin or OPC. Some interesting properties of OPC include: stabilises connective tissue and reduces the visible signs of aging such as wrinkles and as I’m only 110 I can attest to this fact!!! It also lowers cholesterol, reduces blood clotting, reduces risk of stroke and heart attack, it’s a natural anti-histamine, anti ulcer and anti-inflammatory and has similar action to bilberries re night blindness and many others. This is one of the reasons why the French have one of the lowest incidents of heart disease because they consume a lot of red wine. Years ago I sent off a kilogram of dried blueberries to a pharmaceutical company in Japan to investigate the qualities of its skin. This would have been the equivalent of 7 kgs on fresh berries.

• For those who were unable to get to the field trip, perhaps you might like to call in sometime and pick-your-own or buy some frozen ones – remember to take your esky. 
• I travelled down the Mt Lindsay Highway via Beaudesert and turned off onto the Lions Rd (the sign says Innisplain). It is gorgeous country – a really pretty country drive.  Lots of old wooden bridges to cross.    Leave early!!
• Ring Warwick or Joan at Blueberry Grove 53 McLeans Ridges Rd Wollongbar 2477  Ph/Fax  02 6628 1330  (the road is opposite the NSW Department of Agriculture) 

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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Most of the farm is Macadamias – it currently has 1200. When we first bought it, it had Custard Apples and a menagerie of different fruit trees but you couldn’t drive a tractor through so it was inoperable so we’ve changed it right around to macadamias and the nursery was to keep the cash flow going while the macadamias grew up but now I haven’t got time to do both so the retail side of it is going to be shut down within the next six months. The tropical fruit trees used to be scattered throughout the farm but about 3 years ago, we started to bring them down to the front of the farm so all our exotics are down here. We’ve had frost here for the last 2 years.

I’ve been doing nursery work for around 25 years now and started in Bangalow NSW at Wright’s Nursery and he was a Citrus person and he brought the first tropical stone fruit to Australia. I went into farm management and managed 200 acres of avocado lychee custard apples and macadamias in Northern NSW then got married and we came up here and this is where I got into the exotics – there were a few here but we expanded on that. I’ve tried to show that you can have an ornamental as well as an edible garden. A lot of the plants can be pruned and hedged.

With your fruiting trees, when they say you need more than one for pollination, the pollen on a pawpaw travels 11 kms so if you have one pawpaw in your yard, then the neighbour’s tree is going to pollinate so when you’re buying trees, have a look as to what is in your district. Avocados for instance, because we’re in an avocado area, there’s enough pollen in the area. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a tree 2 metres away, it can be a tree 3 or 4 kms away. Sheryl  Are there any trees that need to be planted close together? Andrew  Stonefruit – Plums, Apricots and maybe Hazelnuts and Chestnuts.

Irrigation  – I don’t believe in irrigation because the plants then are relying on that source of water and you don’t get any deep rooted plants. I found that trees that are irrigated in NSW in macadamia orchards when we had a big storm just blew over and those that weren’t irrigated, they stood up to the storms.

John Hatch What graft do you put onto a Mango eg Florigon, is that poly-embryonic or mono?

Andrew   We generally use the Mono. If you call the top of the fruit the stem end, that’s where your strongest shoot comes from and that is not the original so don’t use this stem end one but the rest will be true to form.  Out of a Mango seed there is generally around 12 seedlings. All the rest will be true seedlings to the parent tree. We take all our seed for propagation from the Kensington Pride (Bowen) and the graft we use is either a whip or a side veneer graft and this is done in peak summer between November to late February.

Acerola or Barbados Cherry   It does not have a viable seed inside. The reason I started pruning these was that I didn’t think they were very big shrubs. I went up to Nambour to someone who wanted his trees identified and he had an Acerola that was 6 metres high x 5 metres wide. They are cutting grown.

Blackberry Jam Bush  Randia formosa    It has a lovely white flower with 5 spiked petals on a long trumpet and it goes to a brown pod eventually and there’s a black juice inside. It looks disgusting but it’s one of the sweetest, nicest flavours I have had from a fruit. Thornless.

Brazillian Cherry Its on the sour side and in the next couple of years it will be on the noxious weed list between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. It’s taking over areas where it shouldn’t be. Sheryl It’s already on the environmental weed list of the Pine Shire.

Burdekin Plum  Comes from the Atherton Tableton and this is the first time it’s fruited.  Stan  They used to catch feral pigs and after penning them for a few weeks, they’d go to the abattoir and be condemned because the skin and flesh would be purple. Andrew  It’s supposed to be a very good cabinet timber.

Brown or Plum Pine   Podocarpus elatus   Australian Native. On the top of the pine cone there’s a little fruit; it’s very sweet – another good timber tree. 

Gretchen  Mine is 20 years and has never done any good. Dennis There is male and female. Sheryl   It’s good as a bonsai  

Canistel  Pouteria campechiana  Sometimes referred to as the Yellow Sapote – It’s like the yolk of a boiled egg  George  We bought a tray from the market for the club once and they came in softer than persimmons and we thought they would be no good but they were really beautiful so I think the secret is to let them go really soft.  I think the taste improves out of site when they get really ripe. Sheryl  A lot of people say the Ross variety is the best.

Cedar Bay Cherry Eugenia reinwardiana   Sometimes known as Beach Cherry. Native to Australia between mid northern NSW up through the Sunshine Coast here. Part of the Eugenia family and sister to the Grumichama. They fruit in summer so you get fruit from late Dec-Mar. This bush has had a 2^nd flowering because we’ve had an extended warm season. It’s a very sweet fruit with a small seed inside and because it’s a slow grower, it can be easily trimmed and is a great hedging plant.

Ceylon Hill Gooseberry Rhodomyrtus tomentose  Lovely small shrub with lavender flowers  Margaret  It likes plenty of water.

Cherry Guava  This red one is 7 years old and just to show you that you don’t have to let them get to 9 metres, keep them hedged and pruned. Pruning it I get 3 crops a year. I get a summer crop which has the fruit flies, and two crops in winter. Great for jam – just boil them up – you don’t need extra pectin.

Chestnut  I’d really think twice about putting a chestnut in your garden as the pod is worse than an echidna as it’s covered in thorns. This is a grafted variety and it has fruited a couple of times but the nut inside is immature. Teddy  What variety is it?  Andrew  Morenii.

Citrus  My fertiliser programme: Winter Spring and Autumn I put on Dynamic Lifter or a locally made product called Supergrowth which has 10 different other elements added to it – blood & bone, fish meal, rock minerals, and in the summer I give it a complete citrus fertiliser which has your boron, potash etc. because in summer you want to give it to the fruit so you get the sweetness in the fruit. I don’t foliar fertilise – I don’t believe they need it because they’re a surface feeder. Sheryl Which rootstock do you use? Andrew We grow all our citrus from seed on Swingle rootstock. 20 years ago they used the bush lemon because it was the most prolific but it also took on all the diseases, it wasn’t rootrot resistant and Gayndah DPI has done a lot of work on them. They released Trifoliata which is a dwarf rootstock – it was frost resistant – it’s a very good rootstock except in the nursery it’s very slow to grow so that’s why you don’t see too much of it around and it also has a resistance to certain varieties of trees. You can’t put Lemons on Trifoliata because they just don’t take – you’ll actually get vertical growth not horizontal so I’ve come to use Swingle which is a semi-dwarf rootstock which is drought resistant and frost resistant and 75% resistant to rootrot and highly adaptable in a nursery situation for all varieties. With our citrus trees on the farm, we don’t irrigate but we did deep rip and we put in chook manure when we planted.  Mulching and keeping weeds away is your key to success. The only bugs I worry about is scale – the Californian red scale particularly because that will kill your citrus – spray with Supricide and for other soft scale you use your white oil. Teddy  How do you stop leaf miner?  Andrew  You can use white oil sprays as it comes in late spring through to summer and its just aesthetic value – those leaves still photo-synthetise for you but it just makes the tree look ugly. It doesn’t actually affect the fruit on the tree.

Coffee  Go to Gloria Jeans!!! The time and effort it takes is not worth it! The beans themselves are edible – just suck the pulp from around seed.  Lovely attractive shrub. 

Ginger  Zinzibar   The Red Behive Ginger When I planted it, the flower stems were worth $3.00 each but when it flowered, they were worth about 50¢!  Very attractive flower – you can dig it out in winter and move it around your place.

Jaboticaba   Fruits on the trunk and the yellow variety is more of an oblong fruit with a furry outer skin. The skin I find is very strong so I just burst the fruit open in my mouth – like a lychee. The fruit has a small bean seed inside. All the jaboticabas are very suitable for box hedging. George  My yellow has more seed than flesh.

Sheryl             Which of your trees are cutting grown?

Andrew           Panana Berry, Bunchosia, Blackberry Jam Bush

Elderberry  Probably classified as a weed in England. It’s very sour but it’s good if you want to bulk up jams – can be trimmed as a hedge. Judy  We tried to shift ours but every little bit of root reshot then we tried to shift those and they reshot!!  Sheryl   Sounds like it’s a weed!

Feijoas  Good for hedging – lovely blue foliage. Spectacular house plant. The petals on the flowers are edible. It’s a bit like a lilly pilly – very sweet – so I really go for the flowers not the fruit. Varieties: Large Oval and Mammoth. The only one that has fruited was Mammoth. Large Oval hasn’t done anything. In NZ they pick them off the ground but over here you’ll find that they’ve already been stung. Throw a mosquito net over it and tie it down at the base once the fruit has set and you’ll save that fruit. The NZ climate produces much sweeter nuttier flavoured fruit but here we just don’t seem to have that. If you’re in a colder area where you get heavy frosts, then you can grow your Feijoas. Sheryl  I have a PBR variety called Duffy which fruited heavily after many years but you must net with a fruit fly net but I saw them in a local fruit shop in perfect condition. Andrew They were probably sprayed with Lebayacid or Rogur. There’s a guy up at Bundaberg making Feijoa wine. If we want to send them to the markets in Victoria, we have to dip them in Rogur which is systemic so the fruit absorb it. Sheryl  I think they’re taking Rogur, Carbyrl and Malathion out of the market. Andrew  It’s still used for dipping fruit in. When I was in NSW all our Avocados and Custard Apples were dipped in it before sending to southern markets.

Giant Lau Lau   Sygygium aquarius

Grumichama  Eugenia dombiii

Fruit around the 4^th year. Bright glossy green leaves. Good hedge plant. White flower in Spring followed by a cherry and they are identical to a cherry shape and feature. Sheryl Which is the best aspect to grow them in? Andrew They burn in full sun of 40º days but I find that I get two crops in the shade whereas in full sun they produce one crop. Grows to 4 mtrs.

Guava The Indian is a white fleshed guava. The Hawaiian Guava is pear shaped and these are used in the juicing factories and you wouldn’t drink the juice when you see what goes in but it’s all sterilized so don’t worry!!  Sheryl  When I use to do stopovers in Melbourne, I’d always head off to Myers to have one of their pink Guava juices. Andrew  If you’re worried about fruit fly, then eat it in a dark room!! The yellow Cherry Guava is more of a Pineapple flavour whereas the red is a more distinct Guava flavour. Sheryl  Excellent taste  Andrew  I’ve hedged a 5 year old Cherry Guava Stan  It’s like a Densicon Guava I got off Kaspar.

Hazelnut  Hasn’t fruited as yet.  Gretchen   Mine’s had nuts but when you open them up there’s nothing inside. Andrew  I don’t think we’re in the right area  Sheryl  You don’t think it’s a pollination problem?  Andrew  With the high humidity we do get funguses that can attack inside the nuts.

Ice Cream Bean  Inga edulis   Fastest growing fruit tree that I know of. Good shade tree – possums like the fruit. Seeds are polyembryonic. I’ve been planting them at schools for the kids to enjoy. It’s actually a legume so it adds nitrogen to your soil. Sheryl  – be careful where you plant the ice cream bean as some people classify them as a weed – they’re a little hard to get rid of but it is excellent for shade. There’s another variety called mortoniana

Jaboticaba  Myrciaria Cauliflora   A good hedge plant. Grown from seed.  Out of 3000 seeds, this is the only variegated one I’ve come across. A good tub specimen. Grown from hardwood cuttings

Kei Apple   Dovyalis caffra    Lovely plant but spikey – I have trimmed these back mainly to keep them bushy as I’ve found that plants that are over your head are a waste of time. Sheryl  It’s excellent – tastes like an apricot but I’d suggest you grow it as a hedge to keep out…..! George Apparently there’s male and female. There’s one in the Botanical Gardens that produces excellent fruit. You’ll find birds nests 200mm in.

Kerriberry  Is a cross between the Raspberry and Blackberry. A nursery on the mid north coast of NSW pollinated them and came up with Kerriberry so with this variety you pay a royalty. I run the mower over it every year. Sheryl  What time of the year do you run the mover over it? Andrew Anytime it’s out of  control!  Eat when they are a dark purple colour. Sheryl  They’re weedy so you’ve been warned!

Loquats  These 2 varieties I have actually fruit in winter. In NSW where I came from they were the fruit fly host because they fruited in early spring so that was the first fruit for the fruit fly to attack but up here they fruit in winter and you don’t get the fruit fly so it’s a really good plant for the backyard.

Sheryl  Which varieties fruit in winter?  Andrew  Champion and a local one I’ve named Golden Belle

Macadamias  Careful where you walk – we get 3.2¢ each for these but this one would be worth 4¢ because it’s got a thinner shell!!  Sheryl  Is that the shelled or unshelled price?  Andrew  Shelled   John Has the industry recovered from the slump from a few years ago? Andrew  Yes because the marketing is a lot better now and the shonks are out of the industry but are still being chased by the legal people. The Macadamia is Australia’s only native exported food crop and grew from Bauple to Coffs Harbour. In NSW there’s Tetraphylla which is native to there. It has a pink flower, spikey leaf, red new growth, wrinkly shell and is not really wanted by the processors. Qld we have Integrifolia which has the round leaf. Sheryl  Which one do you think is suitable for the backyard? Andrew  Own’s Choice was developed down in northern NSW and it will have nuts on it all year round. I have one similar here called Greiber’s Special. This will have nuts on it most of the year – has a rounder leaf. Christina Do you get die-back in Macadamias? Andrew  Yes.  The reason the nut trees grow so well is that once we reach this stage (30 years old) we have no weed control to do, no sun, they are semi-deciduous but are classified as evergreen and we mulch all that leaf up with our front deck mulcher mower and it chops everything up and the soil here now is 4-5 inches of mulch which is old sticks, leaves, husks, and you can still see the roots coming back up through it. We get around 10kgs per tree. We have a machine that has an attachment which works on the golfball harvester principle. A small one is around $350 from Macmaster in Lismore. Stan  Do they ever shake the trees? Andrew  They used to bring in the Pecan shakers in NSW but quickly realised that it shook the trees out of the ground and it killed the tree so its better for the nut to drop on the ground because that’s when it has its highest oil content. We try and harvest every 2 weeks to get the green nut because if you leave it any longer than that, the nut quality starts to go off. The factory doesn’t want any nuts under 19mm. Sheryl  Andrew has a large length of very holey rubber on the floor to stand on which he got from the Caboolture Market very cheaply.

Midyim Berry  Austromytrus dulcis   I’ve hedged it – likes well drained soil. It’s a native and it grows along the beach areas. The Council is using it around shopping centres but because it doesn’t get looked after, it doesn’t look as healthy as these bushes. Grown from seed – has a small white speckled fruit pH of around 4 – 6.

You’ll notice that we have swales and because we have a gentle slope, we get a lot of rain but because it has been so dry, it has been shedding the water so when you have swales, the rain pools in the swales so you get a deep watering effect so the trees get maximum effect from the rain. Some I plant on the high spot of the swale.

Nashi – Shinseki is self pollinating and fruits very well.  However my other Nashi – Hoshi and Koshi have not. We had 2 very slight frosts last year which may have caused this. Sheryl  Do you think they would fruit in a non-frost area? Andrew  There’s a guy in Mooloola who is surrounded by gum trees in a frost free area and he brought in fruit and showed me.

Noni  The new wonder plant – better than Viagra and can cure every disease known to man!!!!

The fruit will go white – they’re full of seed and they crush them down to make the juice.  Merv  The Aborigines used the roots for dye and they call it the dye plant. John  The leaf is used as a vegetable.

Panana Berry  From New Guinea. This tree fruits for nine months of the year – overpowering sweet berry with tiny little seeds, cutting grown. Do your cuttings at the beginning of summer. They need a heat bed and a misting area to grow and you should get 90% success rate – use a semi-hardwood cutting. If the fruit doesn’t set, then it’s probably still a young tree. Once the birds find it, just forget it!

Peanut Tree Bunchosia  argentinia

Eat when orange – very crunchy and crisp. If you let them go red, they taste totally different from the crunchy ones and I prefer the crunchy style. The red are a bit too strong for me.  The seed is supposed to be edible too.  It will fruit constantly – this is about it’s 4^th crop. Lenzie  Mine flowers but it won’t fruit. 

Pepino  Pepino dulce   I wanted to build a retaining wall so I got a whole heap of tyres from the rubbish dump then decided to take them back to the dump but they wanted to charge me $25.00 so I filled them up with soil and planted Pepinos because they hang down and if they touch the ground they go rotten very quickly and we’ve had some great crops off them. You can also use this method with Sweet Potato, Pawpaw, Potatoes and Pumpkin and when you want to pick your Potatoes you just take out tyre by tyre.

Quince & Almonds   Judy – Do they grow here? Andrew – Yes, with the quince I’ve had one fruit each year! No almonds as yet but I’ve been pruning to take wood so I’ve probably been taking the flowering wood off. Judy  I thought they liked wet winters and dry summers. Andrew They probably do but we’re very experimental here and we can such a varying climate that we can get such a lot of things fruiting where a lot of people can’t.

Pitomba  This is it’s third shift! I had it out in a dry area and it didn’t like it; I had it in a shaded area and it didn’t like it there either and this is a wet area which gets irrigated twice a day and it seems to be growing quite well.

Pomegranate   The one I have has very large fruit – variety Wonderful.

Raspberry Rubus ellipticus    This sweet yellow raspberry fruits in summer and is native to the Bellthorpe Forest which is up behind Maleny on the way to Kilcoy. I chop this back in summer to ground level so it’s very rapid growing but very prickly.

Star Apple This is a grafted variety called Tahiti and doesn’t have the bronze leaf on the back. This is one of the best fruit quality.  Sheryl   What is the difference between this one and the bronze leafed one?  Andrew   This one hasn’t fruited yet.

Wampi  There are grafted types as well as seedling – the only one that has fruited is Guysam, the other is called Teempay but it hasn’t fruited as yet. The Guysam has given me 2 crops. It’s related to the Citrus and it has a lemon-lime flavour.  Merv  I’ve read that if you want good Wampi, you should only grow one because if you grow 2 or more, you’ll get seed. Sheryl  Who has a seedless Wampi?  Dennis  I got one from Kaspar  Sheryl  We’ll be up visiting you in 2 years to check it out!!  Andrew  It might be a pollination problem  Lenzie  Someone said it needed a dry spell. Andrew  This year we’ve had the wettest year since 1974 and this has been in constant fruit.

Wax Jambu An Asian fruit – crisp and if you take a bite off a foam esky, you’ve got the flavour! Sheryl  I love Wax Jambu – excellent for juicing but susceptible to fruit fly. Very attractive on the tree and there’s around five colour variations.

Tropical Fruit  Being in a fruit growing club, we all like growing things we can’t grow! I lived in New Guinea for seven years and I’ve loved Rambutan. They tell me it won’t grow but I want to prove them wrong! You’ll notice I have a frost protection guard around it – you fill up the cells with water and it becomes self standing. During the day the sun heats the cells up and during the night the water is warmer than the outside air so the heat permeates up around the plant so it keeps the frost out. If you have a smaller plant, you can close it in around the plant and it’ll protect it. They’re reusable – at the end of winter, tip the water out and keep a bit of baby powder in it. $8.00 each or 3 for $20.00. Sheryl  What other trees do you use it with?  Andrew  I’ve had a lot of trouble with Green Sapote so I use it with them and maybe Abius – when they get high, just wrap paper around. The time of the day when frost kills is just before the sun rises and if you have any dew or moisture on this type of grass, it’s going to freeze and it freezes the trunk so it freezes the actual sap around the trunk. We used to have huge problems with Macadamias in NSW – we used to have to paper every one of them right down to the ground. If you left a small gap between the paper and the ground, then that tree would die because it would freeze the cambium layer so therefore it was just like ringbarking your trees. Sheryl  We have had other members who’ve tried Rambutans but they say they get to 2 years and die but I don’t know whether they used any insulating material. George  Langsat and Duku ??  Teddy  Santol? George Yes Santol will grow here.

Dwarf Black Mulberry – only grows half the size of a normal mulberry tree Sheryl Grafted?  Andrew  No, it’s cutting grown  and has a very nice black fruit.

Longans  fruit in February – not as sweet as the Lychee – translucent flesh. Means Dragons Eye in Asia.

White Sapote  Reinnake and Pike – keep them chopped back as they get too long and leggy.

Sheryl  Any problems? Andrew  Fruit fly because the skin is edible but they’re great for flavouring milk shakes Sheryl  Mel Siddall used to have one that he would freeze and it was fantastic

Don There’s a problem with scale also – spray with oil.We also have Green Sapote & Mammy Sapote.

Black Sapote I have a grafted variety that’s 7 years old and I’m still waiting to see fruit on it. The rest are seedlings and they’re fruiting at 3 years old. I’ve heard of a grafted one taking 9 years to fruit! To pick the fruit wait until it starts to yellow on the tree before you take it off and let it go to sogginess and then blend it with cream and you have the best chocolate mousse and it’s healthy for you if you use a lot fat cream!!!! Merv   There’s male and female plants 

Sapodilla  They’re growing really well up the road but not here – perhaps my pH is not right.

Teddy  Some are smooth and some are gritty – which ones are which?  Andrew  You’d have to get the grafting wood off the right fruiting tree to make sure.  Sheryl  Anybody growing Sapodillas?  Judy I’ve had one for 12 years but it hasn’t done much and I think it’s gritty. Sheryl  Do you think this one should have a close pollinator?  Andrew   It did have one but it died. 

Sea Grape  This is suppose to be a small tree but I’m very dubious as to what this means as there’s one in the Botanical Gardens that’s 30 metres high! You need two to pollinate. They’re great by the beach and get new red foliage on them. This one was knocked by the frost for 2 years but this year it’s grown really well. The only person I’ve heard that’s had fruit is a guy out west and apparently they are constantly fruiting. There’s male and female. Sheryl Peter Young has one.

Pests  The case or bag  moth is a bad guy – just squash it!  Sheryl What do you do about rats? Andrew We have 3 dogs and or we get a guy in who has a licence to shoot but we use also use rat blocks – Tom Cat, Bromikil and Racumin but the best rat trap to use is a piece of 3” PVC pipe about 1 ft or 30cm long – drill a hole in the centre, put the rat block in the centre of the pipe and thread a piece of wire through the whole and rat block (the block comes with a hole through the centre) then jam the wire into the ground or sit it in the fork of a tree so no dogs or other animals can get it but the rats can get in and they can’t take it off the metal spike and every week we check each station. We buy them through a produce store. Ted  Would owls be affected if they ate the rats that had taken the bait? Andrew  Animals don’t tend to eat the entrails when they’re pulling an animal apart.  Rats live amongst the pineapples  Sheryl  We use Peanut Butter very successfully in our traps to catch mice and Bob says that the black plastic Safe & Sure brand seems to catch more than the other types.

Boron  Woodiness in fruit is a boron deficiency so putting on boron before flowering will probably help. You get it in citrus, avocado.  Sheryl So how much should you put on the various plants? Andrew We use to apply it to the Macadamias because they said it helped for nut set and we’d put on 4kgs in a 1000 litres and we’d do 5 applications a year.  Sheryl At what stage of development?  Andrew At flower bud development. 3 before flowering and you’d be starting once your nut harvest had finished so you haven’t got much time but once the nuts have set you’d be still applying trying to get some in for next year.  Sheryl  Foliar?  Andrew Yes, people do use borax which was around before the foliar spray but now it comes in liquid form which is so much easier to use especially on a large scale because there are problems with the dust flying around so that’s why we use the liquid. I’d be applying borax on the ground in your case because you’re only using it on a small scale  Merv 4gms per litre is very high concentration  Andrew With borax the only leaves that take it up are the new growth. The harder leaves in the macadamia won’t take it up and absorb it. On the ground it has to do with the pH so if your pH is right for that plant, most of the nutrients are available in the soil. If you have an imbalance in your pH, it can lock up your copper, sulphurs, borax etc. and it can’t get it so although you might be applying fertiliser to the tree, if your pH is wrong, all the fertiliser is doing is sitting there.

John Ambrose:  The Java Blue Bananas can grow as high as the Lady Finger in that they do not have a very big bunch but mine haven’t been very successful as they’re growing against the house in the flower garden with shrubs around them. They have this beautiful blue tinge to the skin while they’re still green and then they turn yellow like a standard banana. More like a Lady Finger in taste and texture than a Cavendish. They’re very susceptible to Panama disease. The DPI recommend that you remove the tree that’s affected, inject it with either glyphosate or 2-4-D and then inject every plant adjacent to it then when they die, just cut them down but unfortunately that’s the end of that patch.

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• Root prune for as large a rootball as you can carry.
• Treat the root ball with Mycorrhizal inoculate when doing the root pruning.
• Reduce the top growth at moving time.
• Spray the remaining foliage with anti-transpirant.
• Have the new hole already dug and watered in with more Mycorrhiza before bringing the tree home.
• Support the tree with a trio of braces for the first year or two and mulch.

Will it work? Will the tree survive? I would think that it would have a good chance. Remember not to plant deeper than it was growing, it would be better to plant 2-3 inches higher if there is a chance of settling.

Sourced from: 

Sub-Tropical Fruit Club of Qld. Inc Newsletter August – September 2007

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Tomato Juice can keep blood clots away. After drinking 250ml every day for 3 weeks, a group of people with diabetes experienced a much reduced level of blood clotting activity, University of Newcastle Nutrition and Dietetics PhD student Sherri Lazarus found. Platelet activity decreased following supplementation with the juice compared with a placebo group. Cooked or raw tomato produce could have the same effect.

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Bio-dynamics is about bringing vitality back to the soil – the humus, the microbes and the life.

Sheryl   I recently attended a meeting of the Suncoast Organic Growers Group (no longer active) to hear Terry give a talk on how he farms bio-dynamically.  Les Nicholls is the President of this group and meetings are held at his place on the 1^st Thursday evening of every month at 5.30pm. There are also field trips every second month usually on a Sunday starting at noon in Feb.  Address:  Sandy Creek Organic Farm, 2471 Old Gympie Road, Beerwah Ph: 5496 9501. Les buys his seed from Fairbanks Seed Co. 542 Footscray Rd West Melbourne & Greenpatch Seed Co. The Club visited Terry in May 1994 when he lived at Mt. Mee and took us on a tour of his Custard Apple farm.

Terry  I went to Gatton Agricultural College in the late 60’s on a DPI scholarship to study poultry but because I was the only one doing this, I was put in with the Agriculture, Horticulture, the Food Manufacture. I reckon I should have come out of there with four certificates as I attended all these lectures as well as the poultry ones but what I did learn from Gatton Ag College was that it wasn’t affected by the American multinational chemical companies so they were actually teaching you knowledge that wasn’t biased and they actually warned us back then about the antibiotic resistance that was developing in America through these intensive farming practices feeding antibiotics to livestock and the lecturers were warning us then that this would follow through to humans so I got a good grounding in the do’s and dont’s of animal husbandry but I have always questioned the so-called intensive philosophy of drugs and when I left there, the DPI offered me a job as an Extension Officer at Murgon to go into pigs. I had spent two years doing poultry but I didn’t take up their job offer for various reasons and ended up working for a large chicken company but soon discovered that these new multinationals didn’t want anyone with any brains because it was the start of the quality product as they called it and they just wanted people to follow the manual and it was virtually the demise of the thinking farmer and the thinking Extensive Officer eg. today you did this and tomorrow you did that so I felt I was wasting my time and all your college graduates are virtually taught by the same principle. I just didn’t believe in using chemicals for no reason at all. eg with an American company in an American university, your way of thinking would be influenced by what chemical company was supporting that agricultural college because whatever research they were doing, the outcome is more or less pre-determined – it’s a bit like holding an enquiry into politics – you know the outcome at the start! They were feeding them antibiotics all the time and while they were doing this, the American companies were behind all this push on Australia’s poultry industry and wanted to treat the farm as a business and how they use to operate was they would have a batch of chickens, clean out the shed completely, lime it, take all the equipment outside and solarize it probably put kerosene around the building then start another batch of chickens.

Sheryl How long would the solarising process take?

Terry About a week – it was about 2½ week turnaround to clean up and they worked out that it was costing them approximately 2 batches of chickens per year so they decided to just put sawdust straight on top of the old sawdust. Well, everything went alright for the first batch then they started getting disease outbreaks so they started feeding them antibiotics and that worked OK for a little while then they noticed that their feed to weight ratio on their conversion charts – the chooks were eating all this food but not putting on weight and they realised that the antibiotics were upsetting the microflora in the guts of the chickens so to counteract the effects of the antibiotics, they started giving them growth hormones and this is how the cycle started by intensive industry so basically it’s a hygiene problem that they’ve got. I have an intensive chicken farm across the road from me and I believe they’ve now gone the full circle and back to doing one batch. They’ve gone away from antibiotics as there was resistance. It got that bad in America that the residue levels of hormones of people who ate chicken 4-5 times a week, the men were developing breasts.

That was my interest in organics and what led me into bio-dynamics was I bought a farm at Mt. Mee with custard apples and I did alright for the first 12 months then one night we had 20” of rain and of the 200 trees I put in, there were 198 dead and after questioning why, it was a combination of poor rootstock selection from the nursery but the best the DPI could say was they were dying of phytophera and to use Ridomil. I questioned the chemical fix then looked at organics then got into bio-dynamics because back then there were only 3 organisations NASA (National Association of Sustainable Agriculture), BFA (Bio-dynamic Federation of Australia) and BDAA (Bio-dynamic Agricultural Association of Australia) that Alec Podilinski runs. I went to them all and asked what the conditions were. What struck me about BDAA was that they didn’t have any licensing fees for your product and they set no mandatory guidelines on when you obtained A grade accreditation for the farm – you’d only get that rating when Alex Podilinski decided that your soil was up to that sustainable level so that’s what convinced me to join BDAA. If you approach him, he will appoint a mentor in your area and then he’ll insist that you go away and read his books and there are four videos as well and these are on farming practices, cultivation, one on stirring machines and another on other farms. His books are quite involved and I found that I could only read a couple of pages then had to put it down as they were taken off lectures so his whole books are transcripts of lectures he has given so it takes a bit of following so I read all his books and a bit about the man and was quite impressed. I was warned he didn’t tolerate fools easily; he went through all the rigmarole and if you were prepared to make the commitment to bio-dynamics, he would help you. I went to visit my mentor who was growing bananas but he was growing them totally different to what I was planning to do on my orchard  Paul Sykes and my mentor guided me through the best part of my introduction to bio-dynamics. When I first went back to them, they asked how I was going with the books. “Pretty good” I said “I’m just about up to the part of the virgin sacrifice!” Paul didn’t have a sense of humour and that’s how heavy it gets! They were starting to lose me on the zodiac influence but I certainly related to the effects of the moon, but Alex came round and had a look at the farm and told me how to go about it and most problems I had were caused by compaction of the soil. It was an old dairy farm and over the years the cattle had compacted the ground so there’s no soil structure and that’s the most important thing in bio-dynamics because without that you’ve got nothing and that leads to all your problems. I’ve been to some organic farms and they have no soil structure at all – they may be farming organically but there’s definitely no soil structure. The first thing he said that I had to do was to deep-rip the ground every 6 metres which was a bit of a hassle as I already had trees in so you get a bit p!!!ed off when you think that the tree root you are pulling out is a bit of irrigation pipe you’ve buried and forgotten about! Then I ripped every 9 metres across to break the soil. He’s very particular on your sillaging practice that you do it at the right time when the ground is dry so that you actually break the ground apart.

Sheryl How far down do you go?

Terry As deep as you can go. I was probably going down 2½ feet – as much as the tractor would pull. If it’s dry, you’ll actually fracture and put cracks in the soil and you have to be very good on the angle of the ripper that you use. Nearly every farm you walk on in Australia would have a hardpan because of inappropriate tillaging practices.

Member Did you do this at your new property at Beerburrum?

Terry No, I have different soil there – I’m on sand. At Mt. Mee I had red volcanic soil and started in 1982 and by the time I left in 2001, it was black soil. If you went to the boundary line you were back into the red soil. It stopped where I had been spraying the 500 preparation. Alex will tell you just so much. He likes you to be a thinking farmer; he believes that you don’t get it out of the book; he wants you to use your eyes/brains and work it out for yourself. He’ll rarely tell you the answer that you want to hear. He’ll make you go away and think. He just wants you to observe and work with nature. I started to do all that ripping at Mt. Mee and in those days I wasn’t registered – you could put out lime and dolomite and you were allowed to mix it with superphosphate so that the lime counteracted the acidifying effect of the superphosphate. We then planted it under pasture because with bio-dynamics the 500 that you spray out, it needs the plant roots to work so when you spray the 500 to get it in the ground, the microbes actually travel down into the ground via the plant roots and it’s your plant roots that give you the soil structure; gives you the organic matter – the lot. With horticulture, I consider it’s not a mono-culture because if you have trees above the ground, you’re actually growing a pasture and you’re growing humus and organic matter under the ground by the plant roots and what happens is you’ll let the grass grow up 6-9 inches til it’s a lush green then you’ll mow it off and the better mower you have, the better! On my new place, I bought a Kubota front cut mover which throws all the beautiful clippings under the trees and gives a good mulch but what happens is that as your plant grows up, it also grows down as well so that when you mow it off, the roots shorten up and die off so that they become your organic matter for the next lot of roots that come down to feed on.

Sheryl What do you grow?

Terry Legumes are the best. Red & White Clover are the best two.

Sheryl Summer or Winter crop?

Terry Whatever – your White Clover will come up in spring and Pinto Peanut is good if you’re in the high country. Woolly Pod Vetch is very good at establishing quickly – it will grow up but it dies down naturally but you want to mow it before it seeds!

Member It will climb – went right up my bananas!

Terry Storage is very important for the 500 preparation. It has to be kept in glazed ceramic jars surrounded by 3” of peat moss and they’re very particular on their method of stirring. The only argument I’ve won with Alex is with heating up the water. If you go anywhere inland, they’ve all got facilities for heating water but I maintain that when I was putting out the 500, I’d normally put it out when there was a couple of days of showery weather, I’d mow the grass then mix it out in the open and I asked Alex why I had to heat the water because most times when I’m putting it out it’s around 30º and stirring it out in the open for an hour or so, it would go back to an ambient air temperature so he didn’t make me get a heating device for the water.

Member Can you use dam water?

Member Pure water is better.

Sheryl I’ve read that you have to stir it by hand one way for an hour then the other way for the following hour!

Member The farmers have now developed a stirring machine – it’s an electric motor on pulleys and as it spins around it makes a vortex and it has a float system that comes up and as it reaches a certain water height, it trips the machine and a switch reverses the motor and it goes back the other way. We paid about $900 for the machine. It does about 60 litres at a time. It beats stirring it by hand for an hour! It takes about 14-18 seconds to make the vortex and what they call chaos is the period between creating a vortex in the opposite direction. What you are doing is activating the 500 by oxygenating it and increasing the bacterial count of the 500 by 76,000 times in an hour so the microbes can multiply so that when you spray it out say of an evening when you have moisture, so that from one bacteria, in 24 hours your bacteria can go up 2 million to 1 so that’s how it works.

Sheryl How often do you put it out?

Member Twice a year – during the first lot of rain in November then again coming into Autumn. The only thing Alex insists on is that you don’t do it in a node day which is when the moon comes between the earth and the sun but it only happens twice a month when you get an ascending and a descending node.  In summer Alex sends up a mixture called Prepared 500 but it’s also got all the other preparations in except 501.  The 501 preparation is cow manure from lactating cows which they put in a cow horn and they bury it around Easter then dig it up around November.

Sheryl So none of you do this – you just buy the preparation off Alex in Victoria?

Terry Why would you bother when you can just get it off him. I get enough for 40 acres at a time and it costs me about $25-$30.00 but what you have to remember with the 500 is that you are putting out a living organism and it needs the air and it needs moisture. You put it out within an hour of it being stirred.

Member  I was reading something about the water molecule H²0 being a bipolar molecule; positive at the hydrogen ends and negative at the oxygen end. Solution 500 is the equivalent of an ionic crystal and when placed in water becomes fully hydrated and so its active ionic components can migrate in the water to where they will be taken up by the plant cells and used in plant growth. (*see note at end).

Terry I just think of it as a living organism which you were putting in the water! Alex is very particular in that if you are going to heat the water that it’s heated by wood/gas/solar – doesn’t like electricity/plastic hoses.

Member  There’s the chemical, the biological and the energy.

Sheryl  How many members here are bio-dynamic?

Answer A few although some don’t classify themselves as bio-dynamic but just use the preparation.

Terry What the 500 does is that it travels down the plant’s roots so you get air space which allows the plant to breathe but with compacted soil, there’s no air space so it can’t breathe so a bio-dynamic farmer will do better in a drought. You can change your soil in quite a short period of time. They reckon it takes thousands of years but with the microbes if you dig down deep enough, you can see where the microbes have travelled down the plant root into the sub-soil and the soil will actually change around the plant roots. On my present property at Beerburrum, I got it up to A grade accreditation in 18 months but I think it would have been quicker than that because Alex only visits every 12 months. If you have sandy soil, I reckon within 12 months with sandy soil because I’ve got the overhead water, the grass and this was a neglected farm.

SherylIf you don’t have water and have to rely on rain, is it going to work?

Terry It will work but it will just take longer because the microbes need moisture to survive so the more moisture the better.

Sheryl Do you share the Stirring Machine amongst yourselves?

Terry No, it’s very finely tuned. I grow Chokos, Custard Apples, Vegetables without any other inputs. 

Sheryl So you don’t use any extra fertiliser?

Terry No. I think that soil & leaf analysis is very subjective. You could have it done by one company and another one done by a different company and they will give you different results.

Member The results will depend on what they want to sell!!!

Terry Most of the soil testing are done by the chemical companies so if you went to your handbook on say custard apples, you’ll see that it will match the recommended dose! What convinced me with this preparation 500 is that I started off with compacted soil at Mt. Mee and on the red soil and you get into that sub-soil which is almost yellow, when you actually see the plant roots get into that and you can see the browning and the microbes working and changing it from clay to soil, then you’re convinced. 

Sheryl If you currently have mulch down, would you put your preparation down on top of your mulch or take it away?

Terry I put mine on the grass. Most of the plant roots which feed your tree are out on the edge.

Member Can you put it down on bare ground?

Les What we’re developing now is a system of stripping so we have one metre of grass, one metre of vegies and so on and the grass will keep the root system in place to keep the soil structure – hopefully. We put out our 500 with a knapsack spray.

Terry I have a tractor and a little boom – it’s run off battery operated wiper blades off a 1964 Holden and it’s an old oscillating type.

Les What sort of pump does Alex recommend?

Terry  8 psi is the max. allowed. It’s a diaphragm pump and it has a flicking action because of the windscreen wiper attachments.

Sheryl  Les, when you want to change over your strip rows, how do you achieve this?

Les With great difficulty – it’s one of the challenges.

Sheryl So how do you?

Les We use a rotary hoe on it but we don’t grow Vegetables on the area that was used for grass.

Terry  A lot of people want to put on heaps of fertiliser because they’ve taken so much out but a lot of that is rubbish because most of the weight you are taking out in fruit is probably 90% water. You’re taking very little nutrient out of the soil and by using the 500 and constantly mowing, you’re putting more back in than is needed.

Les  A measurement is that a plant actually exudes up to 70% of the nutrition that it creates through photo synthesis to feed the microbes around the root so that they are giving out as well as taking in.

Member Do you ever use cowpat pit?

Terry No, what’s that?

Member It’s better than cow horns. You get cow manure, egg shells and basalt and mix it for an hour by hand then put it in a pit in the ground and add your preps in there and leave it for two months and when you bring it out, it’s all gluggy.

Sheryl What combination do you use?

Member A barrow load of cow manure to 800 gms of egg shell and 2 kilos of basalt powder. 

Member When you farm bio-dynamically, you don’t need all these other inputs that people are trying to sell. If you need any inputs, the minimum would be crusher dust and if you want to put any manures out, then do a sheet compost on the ground. Sheet compost is when you throw the manure straight on the ground and letting it break down. 

Terry There’s a whole bureaucracy built around organic fertiliser and lots of hangers on wanting to sell their product that you don’t really need and a lot of them are in a form that the plant can’t pick up anyway. It’s the microbes that create most of your plant food. If you read some of your books, it’s the microbes that change some of the elements and create.

Sheryl What books do you suggest that our members read?

Terry Any of Alex Podolinsky’s books. “Bio-dynamic Agriculture Introductory Lectures Vol. I & Vol. II. His videos are also very good. Alex says that if you can grow good weeds and good grass, why do you need a soil test? It’s only if nothing will grow there or the grass is sick, then it’s probably just a lack of nitrogen. I’ve found it very hard establishing legumes. You have to find out which legume suits your area. Avoid climbing types. I think the choko in itself is a legume because when you dig them out, you get a big tuber. Don’t use a slasher; use a proper mower.

Member It’s a myth that legumes fix nitrogen – it’s the microbes. Many other plants can also encourage those microbes – not just legumes eg corn is a very good soil builder.

Terry I’ve done a lot of work for the Sunfresh Growers Group on the Sunshine Coast where I’ve been visiting conventional farmers and they wonder why they have problems with their fruit trees. They’re trying to grow fruit trees on ground that’s as hard as Les’s driveway and they’re expecting to get fruit! They’re attuned to the chemical fix but chemicals don’t fix your soil structure.

*Note from Bob

The water molecule is an open V shape with the oxygen atom at the base of the V and one hydrogen atom at the end of each V arm. The atoms are held by covalent bonds formed by sharing two electrons. The oxygen atom takes a slightly greater share of the electrons so the water molecule is described as bipolar with the oxygen atom slightly negative and each hydrogen atom slightly positive. When ionic crystals are placed in water, the negative oxygen ends of the water molecules are attracted to the positive ions of the ionic crystal while the negative ions attract the hydrogen ends of the water molecules. This process leads to the ions of the ionic crystal becoming completely surrounded by water molecules and then each ion is described as being hydrated and can migrate in the water solution independent of the original molecular bonding in the crystal.

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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Satya: Why don’t we start off by telling the members what your initial approach was to me, Sheryl?
 

Sheryl: I wanted to educate our members that instead of going to the nursery and buying your fruit trees, that they should get their soil in perfect condition first and only then go out and buy trees. But most of us, including my good self, go on excursions and buy our trees instead of getting the soil in peak condition to get optimum growth from it; so I went looking for a Soil Scientist.
 

Satya: And came out with a Pragmatic Permaculturalist!  I’ll start the talk by dividing it into getting a good root system, preparing your soil and getting it right because if you have these 2 things right, you have the basic mechanics of having a good fruit tree. Of course there are other things such as watering, mulching etc. I’m an Arborist and Horticulturalist, I’m in private practice – I do a lot of post mortems on trees – regularly – and the first question usually is “Why hasn’t my tree grown” and “Why has my tree died” “Why hasn’t it borne fruit, flowers – why is it the wrong colour  – isn’t it healthy, can you work a miracle and do it now” So I’ve bought this one along. It came from one of my client’s properties, from commercial nursery stock – in fact it came out of a plastic bag I believe. 3 trees died out of 50 in a hedge – planted as a seed in a tube – who gets paid the least in a nursery – the guy on the potting bench – he’s paid to put 400-500 trees in every day – the aim is speed –it’s got nothing to do with quality.  There’s a big responsibility on nurserymen that isn’t being taken care of.  So if you have a plant like this, how do you prepare it before you plant it?  
Club: 1. Tease it 2. Cut off the bottom half with a saw if the roots are really bad (root bound) 3. Cut the roots all the way around with your secateurs.
 

Satya: If you buy a tree that dies and you can see that the roots are all root bound, then take it back and ask for another one.  Always check a plant’s root system before it leaves the nursery.  Think of the love and energy you put into your tree – you don’t want to waste your time.  If a tree is not doing well and you dig it up to check its root system and see that the roots are twisted around, cut off the offending roots, replant and spray with an anti-transpirant and it might make it. 
 

Sheryl: Perhaps you could show them the correct way of planting a seed. 
 

Satya: Always start your seed in a minimum 6” pot.  If you want a good tree, don’t pot it on.  Once its root have taken, plant it straight out and this is when I think nurserymen make mistakes – they keep potting it on because it’s not sold – perhaps they only had enough space for 4” pots.  So take your seed and plant it in whatever size pot you are planning to keep it in until you plant it in the field.  Don’t plant a small pot up if you can avoid it.  
 

George:  You can also follow the roots down the tree and cut off any roots.
 

Satya:  Yes you can do that – get out your sharp shovel, and just make a few cuts in the ground.  Watch for girdling of roots – so check them before planting out.
 

Sheryl:  Getting back to the soil!  How can we tell if the problem is just root structure, a slow growing tree or not given  enough water/fertilizer – we’re talking optimum growth. 
 

Satya:  Consult your Arborist! Seriously, one of the benefits of field trips of being a member of a group like this is that you get to look at each other’s trees so you know how fast a certain tree should grow.  
 

George:   My trees are fast growing, close-packed, humid conditions, like a rainforest
 

Satya: …like a microclimate – I know a man who grew Microcitrus australasica – they have a reputation as very slow growers – his made 2 metres in 2 years because he had a good microclimate with plenty of mulch and a good microclimate.  If you have an advanced tree which shows signs that the roots are girdling at the top, you can try just cutting them off  without pulling the whole tree out. Now to soils: In new estates, where they run over the soil with heavy machinery, the soil gets compacted. You can hire an Agroplow or you can get a Wallis Soil Reconditioner which does the same function – they go through the soil – they aerate it down low but don’t break the surface and they do not invert and theoretically you do a close run every 12 inches if you’re doing it once only or every year otherwise.  Then each year either go across or move over 6 inches or so. Talk to your local machinery shop or the local produce place and ask who has one. Having large animals on the property will also compact the soil – if you can’t get one of these, then use a chisel plough.   Soil should be quite dry when you carry this out – crumbly and dry. Another option for a small allotment  is a fork.  On a large allotment, always work along the contour whether you’re ripping or mowing. Put at least 1 metre of mulch around each tree.  Label your trees with name & date – only use aluminium ones.