2020

Print this entry

We have had this place for about 12 years and have 1000 olive trees of varying ages and of four types (Frantoio, Manzanillo, Nevadillo Blanco and Paragon).  These are predominantly Tuscan varieties and are what we call dual purpose (table or oil) fruits. We irrigate the trees but aside from organic chook manure, no chemicals are used.  Picking season, depending on variety, usually starts in Feb and goes to early May. Our  intention this year is to delay harvest until Easter, hoping for a higher oil content.  Unfortunately, there are no simple or quick and easy tests for oil content, polyphenols etc (unlike grapes or cane) so it really comes down to an educated guess. I (Steve) am the main representative for the Burnett Valley Olive Growers Association and we work closely with the Queensland president of the Australian Olives Association, Mr Dan Burnett, whom you would probably recall from the EKKA.  We have about 2 dozen members stretching from Esk out to Dalby and up to Goomeri, with the majority of the members also belonging to both the Queensland Olive Council and the Australian Olives Association.  A number of our members have market exposure through the local IGAs and one, Clovelly Wines, has a large oil concern internationally. We will provide some of the brochures about Olive Oil and look forward to dispelling some of the myths about Olives/Oil in general.
 

From Kingaroy (via Nanango) head north on the Bunya Hwy (follow the signs through Kingaroy that point towards Wondai). You go through Memerambi then Wooroolin and you come to the Tingoora Hotel on the left. Turn left at the Tinny, follow this road to the stop sign on the Hivesville/Wondai Rd, turn left. Follow this road through Hivesville (the Pub is on the right with some accommodation) continue to Proston. DO NOT turn off to Boondooma Dam. Keep going west and 15.5ks from the Ambulance Station, on the right hand side, is our place, 1556, with a green letter box. If you are using a GPS the actual address is 1556 Proston-Boondooma Rd, Coverty but it’s not the road to the dam. We don’t have a sign up but there is a tree opposite with a green arrow and the word Jim on it. Our driveway is on the right just past it.

Accommodation  We have ample room for caravans/tents etc. so you are very welcome to camp the night here. Plenty of parking with good access unless we get LOTS of rain, in which case parking may be a little more restricted (to higher ground).  We have three caravans available for accommodation, 2 under a shed, one in the open, all needing only linen.  There is one fridge in a van in the shed along with both BBQ and fireplace facilities.  We have a septic system, but showering MAY be a problem as we’re still building the shower/laundry.  There is plenty of really nice, scenic camping places as well. We run on solar power.
Proston Hotel 4168 9272 Hivesville Hotel  4168 9876  approx. 20km from Proston.  Lake Boondooma Dam  4168 9694  10 minutes to Proston. .  http://www.southburnett.qld.gov.au/tourism/Lake%20Boondooma.shtml

Sheryl: I met Steve & Jenny at the RNA last year when I was on the Custard Apple stand & the Olive stand was right next to us.
 

Print this entry

We came here in ’84 and it was just a bush block – just scrub and we never set out to become farmers or orchardists – we just bought it as a bit of a knock-around paddock and maybe as an investment and somewhere where my father could spend some time. We started out with just a few Stonefruit and one thing led to another and now I’m doing it full-time! We have 140 acres and another 35 acres with a dam in between which belongs to the neighbour. We have about 14,000 Stonefruit, 1,000 mature Persimmons and another 4,500 young Persimmons and we started doing Figs on a patch of dirt we didn’t know what to do with and although we thought it was our best bit of dirt, it took us 20 years to plant something on it. It’s turned out quite good with the figs. We send to market as well as direct dealing with retail outlets.  

Sheryl What does the central market charge as commission?   

Ross Whatever they like! There is no set price. You might hear on the news – usually coming up to the election, there’ll be a piece for the farmers that they were going to straighten out the market system and have a code of conduct for merchants. If they are an agent, they would sell your produce on a commission basis. You could go in anytime and ask to see where your produce was sold and how much it was sold for. They then changed their name to Merchants which meant they could sell your produce for whatever they liked and give you back what they claimed to be the sale so technically they bought the fruit from you. They generally charge between 12 -15% but I had a good deal recently on Persimmons size 18 – 20. They sold them for $14.00 and gave me $11.00 back so he was charging over 20%!  Producers of fruit and vegetables will be struggling for a long time until they can get on top of it and deal direct but in the long run, the retail outlets say that this is the price we’re willing to pay you. A group got together of the main grower/packers and formed the Lockyer Valley Alliance whose objectives were just to promote the Lockyer Valley. In the 50’s the onion growers in Lockyer were the only onion growers in Australia at that time and they had the whole Australian supply at that time so they stuck together and wouldn’t accept an unfair price and all was going well for them but the wholesale buyers were wanting to pay less and less so they hung out until one bloke saw a train load of onions heading down the railway line and it turns out that it was one of their members so that was the finish of it. The problem now is that imports are so easy that they just bring in enough supply especially with vegetables. If there’s a free trade agreement with China, our vegetable growers are going to get hammered and they’ll become a vanishing breed because China can produce them so much cheaper than we can and you won’t know the country of origin.

Sheryl I believe that’s what a free trade agreement means ie when you buy produce currently, it states country of origin, but once an agreement is in place, it won’t show this information.

Member  Because we have opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere, you’re still going to be able to sell. In fact you’ll be able to sell all over the world.

Ross To a degree and for a price. We can currently sell all over the world for a price and the price just isn’t sustainable especially when our dollar has gone to US70¢.

Sheryl Do you do the farmers markets at all?

Ross They’re very good but we’re too big for farmers markets. The industry is generally heading two ways: You have the really big suppliers of which we’re not one or you’ve got Mum and Dad operations as we call them where husband & wife might do all the picking and packing and you can make a living from farmers markets provided you haven’t got too much debt and a lot of the farmers markets you’ll buy the same quality for a lot less price because you haven’t got all those other add-ons.

Sheryl Where do you buy your trees from?

Ross I get most of it from Birdwood Nursery.

In this area tree crops aren’t popular – it’s more concentrated on vegetables. They thought we were mad trying to grow trees on this goanna country and they’re right because without water you can’t grow diddlysquat so to solve our water problems we started drilling bores and they’re OK. The bores near the highway serving the vegetable growers are dropping and they have a major problem but our underground water is found in a different place. Their water is nearly all above the sandstone and we’re into sandstone after about 20 feet here and we’re on the edge of the Helidon Hills which is a sandstone area right back up to Ravensbourne – about 30 miles of it and so now they’ve protected that area through vegetation management so none of this will be able to be cleared and now we can’t clear any more on our property whether we want to or not even if we want to replace it with fruit trees, it has to stay the way it is so our water is found in the sandstone 300 feet down and on the black soil they find water at 100 feet roughly but they find far bigger volumes. We only get 2000 gallons an hour whereas they’re talking 10,000 gallons an hour but now a lot of them are down to 2,000 an hour where they were getting 10,000 previously so as they’re not use to working with such a low quantity, they’re struggling. Apart from the bores, we needed more water than the bores would supply. We pumped them into a dam so as we still needed more, 4 growers around here put a bank across the creek and put in a weir which was approved over 10 years ago and that worked well for a while until it didn’t rain and it ran out. We knew the Council was trying to do something with their sewerage water so we managed to get a farm innovation grant through the Federal Govt. to use the recycled water on tree crops. They’ve done vegetable crops north of Adelaide but never used this recycled water on tree crops. 2 of us put in a proposal, got the funding, we had to match it dollar for dollar so we brought the water out 7kms from town and we pump it into our dam.

Sheryl What size pipe did you use?

Ross  4 inch. We don’t get a lot of water at a time but we get about 100 megalitres over a year and it’s pumped in off-peak rates. Sewerage water usually has 3 stages of treatment. The first stage takes out the solids, then it goes to the secondary stage and it goes into holding dams and sunlight is one of the greatest treatments and we then get it at this second stage. The 3^rd stage is very expensive where they treat it to potable standard and I believe they do this in France. It’s only a mindset. Have you heard about the scheme for recycled water from Brisbane up to the Downs?  The quality of the recycled water we are getting is probably a lot better than what farmers in South Australia are using out of the Murray River. It’s more saltier and has more nutrient in it. Our water is held for about 20 days before we get it. The only problem we’ve found with it is if we get say 3-4 days of around 40º we find it can have an algal bloom – blue/green flush but it just takes a couple of good days then it settles right down. There’s not a lot of difference between sewage and grey water because all the grey water from town goes into the sewerage.

Ross No they don’t like salts. 

George Borewater is recycled! 

Sheryl Have you tried barley grass?

Ross No, we haven’t done it because what we’ve been led to believe is when you put it in that’s fine but the biggest hassle is that when it collects on it, it’s getting it back out of the dam that’s the major problem because the barley starts to decompose and it falls apart so you haven’t achieved anything. We just don’t pump on those days. Our pH goes through the roof when that happens. We just move to our other storage water. When the heat drops down, everything goes back to normal. Only some of the fruit is growing on the recycled water. We took virgin country and we started with recycled water so we’ll be able to monitor it to see what happens. We grow Figs and Stonefruit on the recycled water – not the Persimmons. I’m still looking for more water from the Council as they promised but it just hasn’t happened yet! We get the water free of charge from the Council. They put some water up for tender recently and the lady is paying $140 per megalitre and she has to do all the pumping.

Pruning Stonefruit  Our year starts off with pruning our Stonefruit in December/January and making sure plenty of light is getting into the tree to develop buds for the following season. We’re looking for buds to replace wood that will shoot out in the following spring and that will give us fruit for the year after. This is the time of bud initiation and because they grow vigorously they can shade everything out.

Figs   At the end of January we start picking Figs until the beginning of June and by then we usually have a frost so that knocks any quality out of the fruit. They’re a pain to pick because you virtually have to pick them every day but we’re trying to pick only every second day because of the cost of labour. Two people to pick and pack 20 trays takes just over four hours. We sell them for $24.00 per tray which is fair money.

Sheryl Have you tried trellising?

Ross  I was going to.

Persimmons  We start picking in March and go through to beginning of May. I only have non-astringent. There is a small market for astringent and Israel grows a lot – they call them Sharon fruit and I think they’ve just got approval to bring them into Australia. They’re our biggest competitor in Asia when our Persimmons start. We have to wait until they have cleared because they are selling them for $5-$6 per tray and it costs us $5.00 per tray for us to get ours there.

George I always thought the Israelis got good prices for their fruit?

Ross I haven’t seen the pricing but this is what I am told. They treat them with gas to take out the astringency and it’s quite well liked.

Sheryl Is there any way we can take out the astringency in our astringent Persimmons?

Ross There is but I can’t recall just now.  If you want to ripen any piece of fruit especially a Persimmon, put them beside Bananas or Tomatoes. We can’t send our Persimmons out in the truck with them as they would arrive very spongy. They’re very ethelene sensitive so if you ripen a couple, then it’s like ripening an Avocado – put them in a brown bag with a Banana etc. inside. Usually they’re picked green and gas ripened but as most fruits ripen, they give off more ethelene. 

George Persimmons don’t like chlorides. 

Judy How soon before you get a decent crop?

Ross  Fuyu and Ichikikei Jiro are the 2 main commercial crops. It’s a square fruit. Jiro take an extra year than Fuyu because it doesn’t grow as vigourously. It grows for a short period in spring and you’re !!! if you can keep it going. You just try to keep fertiliser and water to them. Jiro is a much bigger fruit.

Sheryl Do you deflower?

Ross We just call it thinning. We don’t with our Persimmons. We try to prune to a level that gives us less fruit then we just go through and knock off the deformed ones. With Stonefruit, we’ll knock off 80%-90% of the flowers. The sequence of fruiting is Isu which is very susceptible to fruit fly – we use it as our monitor tree – we’re lucky to pick any fruit off them, then one week later is Jiro. We need to pick most of our fruit when there is only a touch of orange. The reason being is that on the coast until you get much further down south, we get a problem with fruit softening. You’ll pick the fruit and two days later, it will be too ripe and they can’t work out why it happens. They call them bombers as they blow up! After Jiro, you go to Pomello which is a Sth. American variety then it’s Oshu Gosho and quite characteristic of this type are splits in the fruit. It’s a smaller fruit – tastes the same as a Fuyu but crops heavier. Then Fuyu then Suruga. Suruga has some odd shapes which children really like so you might consider this for the home garden. We had a perfect Easter bunny this year but you also get perfectly formed fruit too. One way of telling Suruga is slightly square and pointy and around the base, it gets all these creases and that’s why it’s not liked in the market place. There’s a few different strains with Jiro and Fuyu.

Jo Which would be the best for the home garden?

Ross The easiest one to manage is Jiro. It crops well, you can let it hang for over a month. Apparently you can get bags now with little windows in them so you can watch development! In Japan and China they bag a lot of fruit.

Olga Have you ever dried them?

Ross The problem with this is that if you go commercial, they have to be seedless.

Sheryl So which ones are seedless?

Ross It will depend on whether you have pollinators in your orchard.

Sheryl I thought you always had to have pollinators in a commercial orchard.

Ross No, that was the original thinking but you don’t have to.

Sheryl Have you cut out all your pollinators? 

Ross Yes. We do have a couple left but it’s only because we haven’t finished grafting them over.

Fertiliser We fertigate as well as using normal fertiliser. Persimmons love Potassium and Calcium. Don’t put Nitrogen on when they are cropping as it softens the fruit and gives less shelf life. Give them a complete fertiliser when they come out of dormancy and start to shoot which is about 3 weeks before flowering. 3 handfuls per mature tree at springtime.  Then a little at Christmas and then one handful of Sulphate of Potassium and Calcium/Gypsum in February & mid March. The unusual thing with Persimmons is that their roots become active following leaf flush so if your leaves start to flush, then your roots aren’t active as yet so you get the opportunity when you see the leaves start to go to put the fertiliser on then the roots will start happening. It’s back to front with Persimmons compared with other fruit trees.

Pests  

Sheryl Do you get much Fruit Spotting Bug or Fruit Piercing Moth?

Ross We have most of our Persimmons netted. You would have a lot more pressure in Brisbane from them because they have more to eat there. Fruit Fly is the biggest problem. You get a black spot where the fruit fly sting and whether you have a product called Lebayacid on there that will kill the eggs or not, it will still get this black mark and it’s 2^nd class fruit straight away and we can’t sell if it’s got too many stings on it. It’s no big deal from a home point of view providing you don’t have the maggots developing. Lebaycid is an excellent product. You spray it on a regular basis and it keeps a small amount of chemical in the surface of the skin so when the female stings it, it kills the eggs straight away. Once you see the first black mark on the surface of the fruit, you have to spray every 7-10 days. I only spray every fortnight. We don’t blanket spray as they did in California to get rid of Mediterranean Fruit Fly. That gave the growers access to market all over the world. We can’t get access to more than half the world. Singapore is the only country where we don’t have to worry about the Qld. fruit fly.

George Have you tried bait spray?

Ross Yes, it keeps our population down but it’s not 100% effective.

George I believe bait sprays don’t work with Stonefruit at all but they should on Persimmon.

Ross  It’s the same with all the fruit. You mix a chemical with the bait, the bait attracts the fruit fly and the fly lands on it and she eats some of the yeast and falls over dead and that’s good because you don’t have to spray your fruit with the bait but any that don’t go there, you’re still going to have the fruit fly problem and if we do this, then we lose too much of a commercial quantity. They are trialing a fruit fly net on a commercial basis however it changes the atmosphere inside the net completely, a bit more humid, a bit more shade, fungal problems but it’s not bad but I’m just not rushing into it. Bob Nissen and Alan George at Nambour Research Station.

George Dick Drew was using shadecloth about 6 weeks before  fruit set and was able to see his sugar levels were higher when he netted.

Sheryl  So you just monitor with bait sprays and then use Leybaycid? 

Ross For the Persimmons but you can’t let it go too long. If we weren’t bait spraying with protein hydrolosate mixed with maldason or clorferafos or some are using diptarix, we’d have to spray every 7 days with Lebaycid and we’d still have black fruit. George Dick Drew developed it and said that chlorafos was much better than maldason but it lasted about the same time.

Ross I get mine through Bugs for Bugs at Mundubbera.

Olga  So your nets are predominently against birds? Ross Yes, with a little bit of hail protection as well. I had hail insurance for 10 years and the first year I didn’t take it, we had hail. I don’t take it out anymore because I don’t think it’s worthwhile. It costs about $30,000 for a half million crop and they have a 20% excess so if you were halfway through your crop, that’s 70% gone so it’s only if you got wiped out right at the start would it be worth it and your profit out of a half million crop wouldn’t be 10%. Hail netting costs around $30,000 per hectare. You could get away with a $20,000 net which is a simple birdnet, but a decent hail storm will demolish it. A net will last around 10 years and is UV protected – comes from New Zealand.

Olga Can you get a net that rolls away? 

Ross  Yes, someone has it up Nth Qld. but the problem is that everytime you roll it, you’ll damage it to some degree. Lorikeets just love the Persimmons. My neighbour just gave up. He had the scare gun but it was hopeless.

Sheryl  Have you got a permit to kill any birds?

Ross Yes, a guy from the department came out and said that I appeared to have a problem and said to me that he’d try really hard to see if he could get a permit for 15 but in the end he could only get me 12 for the season!!!!!!! Then I had to collect them and put them in the freezer!  And that’s for thousands of trees!!!

Figs I only have the one variety – Black Genoa. There’s a White Genoa. There’s a block in America that has 14,000 different varieties so just go on the net and you’ll find him. Commercially the 2 main ones are Black Genoa and Arctic White. Brown Turkey would be the one you would be familiar with because it’s large and it’s grown a lot down south but it doesn’t tolerate the humid conditions here. Figs are desert plants that originate in the Middle East unlike most of our fruit which came out of Asia – China especially but I just think that the Chinese kept records whereas others didn’t.

Sheryl Why did you choose Black Genoa?

Ross It can handle the humidity a bit better and it grows to a reasonable size. Size seems to be everything when you’re trying to sell fruit from our point of view but we have to get a balance between tonnage per hectare and size of fruit. If we go and thin everything out and have all big fruit, we mightn’t get the tonnage and you haven’t got the fruit left to get the weight up so it’s a balancing act for us. Also, with Black Genoa, the little hole at the end of the fruit isn’t as big as others and insects like to live in that hole so it doesn’t happen as much with Black Genoa. It’s worked out well for us. We water them every day for about an hour. We start watering when they are very small but they’ll crop more if you feed and water them more and if you’re not in a frost prone area, you can crop them into July. I get a bit of frost here. 

Pruning We got Peter Young to come and show us how to prune them in winter as he wanted the cuttings. He came in with a chainsaw. Let the trunk grow to knee height then crop them and let 3 or 4 leaders shoot sideways or whatever comes, it’s a vase shape – open in the centre. The second year you cut these to about a foot long when they’re dormant in winter and break all the others off bar two and the third year we’ll trim all those and just leave them with one. You also take off all the side shoots. They can get a bit of leaf rust so we put a bit of Mancozeb on them every three weeks when the leaves are coming through at the start and use it as a foliar spray on all the new leaves as they come through then keep using it until the withholding period when we start to pick.

George It acts as a trace element with Zinc & Manganese.

Ross Don’t worry about the length of the branch as you just bend them down to pick the fruit. You only get figs on new wood. Figs are grown just from cuttings. I think they strip the bark off the first 3 or 4 inches, roll it in rooting hormone and put it into heated beds with sterilized soil.

Sheryl At the cement works at Darra there’s apparently a really large Fig tree – they must like lime.

Ross We use Gypsum on them in winter

Member I think they’ve demolished it.

George Maybe it’s not lime they like as Calcium. If you put Gypsum on which doesn’t change the pH then they’re going to be healthy.

Irrigation  We use anti ant Nan Dan sprinklers – Nan bought Dan out! True!

George Why didn’t you use drippers?

Ross Because of our sandy soil. There are two issues with it. You have maximum crop with maximum demand and you have a hot north-westerly come through with 42º, the tree hasn’t got enough root area to draw the moisture in.

Sheryl I notice you don’t bury your irrigation pipe and you use 19ml.

Ross I buried my first lot and after that I became a quick learner! Only made that mistake once! The irrigation was designed by Hardies.

Sheryl I notice you have your irrigation heads quite close to the trunk – about 60cms out. The water doesn’t damage the trunk?

Ross It doesn’t seem to damage it nor on any of the other crops. Every time we switch the irrigation on, we come round and check. If we don’t, we’ll get blockages and it doesn’t matter how good your filtration is. There’ll either be a bit of algae or ants or something else. We use mig welding wire to unblock it. They’re also pressure compensated and what that means is that when they’re going up or down a hill, they’ll balance themselves out to a certain degree and all that  pressure compensating is that little black rubber disk at the base of the sprinkler. We have a main going down the middle with tributaries going off. Just put it in a pressure gauge to test out your pipe. Cobwebs tend to be a problem.

Sheryl What time of the day do you put your water on?

Ross When Merv wakes up!

Sheryl So you don’t do it at night?

Ross No, but where the Kiwifruit and Avocadoes will be going we’ll do it there. Spacing is 4.5 by 3 mtrs. Most of the trees I’ll put in now will be at 4.5 mtr spacings. I bought a new slasher that when we weed spray our strips my slasher will just fit across that. We leave the grass clippings under the trees.

Pests At the start of the year Fruit Fly are a bit of a hassle around January but these are easy to manage as we bait spray but it’s not a big problem here. The birds haven’t been a major problem either. Currawongs and Crows are the main problem but with Avocadoes we’ve found that they’ll knock a few green ones off and it’ll take them a week to ripen, then they’ll go along every day and knock off enough for the next week’s feed and they’ll keep doing this. This year we’ve had the least pressure from fruit fly that we’ve had in 10 years and we also don’t have a big problem either with the Fruit Piercing Moth either.

Fruit Development  All the fruit crops basically have a large need for water in the 2-3 weeks leading up to harvest. That’s when the fruit are filling out. If you simplify the theory the way I’m lead to understand, in the first few weeks of the fruit forming they produce the number of cells you’re pretty well going to have in your fruit for the rest of the period of the fruit’s life so if you can get the maximum number of cells develop at the start through having your nutrient balance right and enough moisture there and have everything in balance, that will give you a chance of getting the biggest and most quantity of fruit. Then you go through a stage when the fruit just slowly develops by the cells getting larger then the last couple of weeks you usually find in most crops that those number of cells can fill up with water, starches and other nutrients and the cells expand.

Sheryl Do you put the same of water on at flowering as in the last two weeks before harvest and what quantity?

Ross  Similar. I’d water the Persimmons twice a week for about two hours because we’re on sandy soil and the water moves through quickly if it’s moist but longer if it’s dry. We use 50 litre an hour sprinklers per tree so we’re putting on 100 litres a week and that happens for about 3-4 weeks at flowering then about the same prior to harvest. In the middle, you’d half that to about once a week for 2 hours as a rule of thumb. I have water monitoring equipment that measures the water every 30 minutes and it sends out an impulse and measures the water in the soil and we download that into a computer so we have an idea of how it’s going. So if it’s hot weather and they really have a need for water, we can pick it up quickly.

Note from Sheryl   I put up this query on removing astringency for the home user on the internet as all of my books only had notes for the commercial grower which weren’t suitable and this was the reply. Perhaps one of you could test it out to confirm:

You can remove the astringency in astringent persimmons by waiting until they have completely changed colour. Pick them and check for any soft spots then place the firm ones in a pot or bucket and cover with water. They will try to float so you will have to place something on top of them to keep them submerged. Soak for 5 days changing the water each day. After 5 days remove from the water, dry, then peel and eat or refrigerate and eat later. You can also pick them after they have completely changed colour and are still firm, peel, slice crosswise 1/4” to 3/8” thick and dehydrate. When they are dry the astringency is removed.

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse
                                                                                 

Print this entry

Scion: The part of a plant used for grafting upon the rootstock.
Rootstock: The root-bearing plant on which the Scion will be grafted.
Parafilm M: A stretchable, wax like tape.  The product has been widely used for routine laboratory work for many years.

Why Graft? • Some varieties of plants do not come true from seeds. • Difficult or impossible to reproduce from cuttings or other propagation techniques. • Using a rootstock better adapted to the prevailing soil and climate than scion produced naturally. • Dwarfing rootstock can be used to greatly reduce the size of the tree. • To increase the supply of new varieties rapidly. • Change a tree from an old to a new variety. • Grafted fruit trees have earlier fruit productions. • Multiple grafts to produce a tree with several varieties or flowering plant with several different colors of flowers

• Rootstock can be selected for characteristics that the scion may not have, such as resistance to root rot or is tolerance to parasitic organisms; such as nematodes, insect larvae or other subterranean pests.

What is Grafting?
Grafting is the process of joining two or more different plants and enabling them to grow as one.  The upper part of the graft (the scion) becomes the top of the plant; the lower portion (the rootstock) becomes the root system or part of the trunk.  Although grafting usually refers to joining only two plants, it may be a combination of several.

What are the limitations?
Not all plants can be grafted.  Plants of the same botanical genus and species can usually be grafted even though they are not the same variety.  Plants with the same genus but of a different species may often be grafted.

For the most successful grafting only chose closely related plants to form a compatible union.  Generally, this means apple-to-apple, rose-to-rose.

Incompatible grafts may not form a union, or the union may be weak.  A poor union results in plants that grow poorly, break off or eventually die.  Trial is the only way to determine plants’ compatibility.  Some rootstock and scion materials are difficult to get and some plants are not as easily grafted.  This can often result in a quite high percentage of loss.  This explains why some grafted trees are more expensive.

How to Collect and Store Scions?
Scion wood can collected when available.  It should have a diameter of 1/4 to 3/8 inch. Length of scion can be from a few inches to more than 2 feet.  Defoliate the scion and wrap the entire scion   cuts, buds, and stem   in stretched Parafilm M.  Wrapping scion with Parafilm M beneficially conserves the internal moisture of the plant tissue.  Parafilm M stretches; therefore, a little goes a long way.  Cut the Parafilm M into two one inches strips.

If the scion cannot be grafted when obtained, store the scion in a plastic bag in the refrigerator with moist paper towels until performing the graft.  If wrapped in Parafilm M the scion can be stored for many weeks.  Do not store in a freezer.

When to Graft?

It is best to graft in the spring, from the time the buds of rootstock trees are beginning to open, until blossom time but this should not limit you from grafting at anytime of the year. Graft when scions become available.

What Tools and Materials are Needed? • Knife. A good quality knife, able to hold a sharp edge, is the key to good grafting. Special grafting and budding knives are desirable. Keep material to sharpen  the knife handy. • Pruning Shears. • Grafting tape. • Parafilm M. • Fungicide – Spray bottle of Alcohol.  Label spray bottle. • Clothes pins.

• Label for identifying the rootstock and scion  (Name, variety, and date of the graft).

Grafting Techniques Defoliate the scion and wrap the entire scion cuts, buds, and stem in Parafilm M; (remember to stretch the Parafilm M) the buds will grow through the Parafilm M without damage or restriction.  (Note: Parafilm M is heat  and photosensitive and decomposes when exposed to direct sunlight for longer than a few minutes.)  Store in a cool location.

There are many different types of grafting techniques.  The cleft graft is one of the most commonly used and the simplest type of graft to perform. 

1. Fungicide tools and hands – spray hands, grafting knife and pruning shears with alcohol. 2. Match the scion and rootstock diameters precisely; this maximizes the chance of matching the cambiums. 3. The defoliated scion from a healthy plant should contain at least one completely dormant node on second-year wood which has had all soft, active growth removed. 4. The stock should be an actively growing seedling (do the grafting during the warmer months – in Florida grafting can be done year round). 5. (See diagram below) Cut the scion (A) and fashion its base into a thin, narrow wedge.  A large contact surface area will increase the rate of healing. (Hardness part of a cleft graft)  Do not touch the cut surfaces, or allow them to dry out. 6. Cut the rootstock at right angles to the stem in mature wood preferably close to a node.  Make (B) a single vertical cut down the middle of the stem.  The cut should be the same length as the wedge of the scion. Make sure that all cuts are straight and precise; use a very sharp grafting knife (Rock the knife back and forth – use care not to cut yourself).  Do not touch the cut surfaces, or allow them to dry out. 6. Force (C) the wedge into the slit which was made in the rootstock; no gaps should be apparent.  Always match the cambium layers on one side during the tying process; don’t worry if both sides are not matching 7. Wrap the graft with stretched Parafilm M.  Ensure that all points are covered with Parafilm M. Air and water must be excluded from the graft-point if a successful union is to occur.

8. Wrap the (D) graft firmly with Grafting tape, tying from just below the graft and working up.  Care should be taken not to force the scion from the stock when traversing the join.  Clothespins can help hold the graft together while wrapping with grafting tape.

9. Label graft with name, variety, rootstock and date of the graft. 10. Place the plant in a stress-free environment such as a shaded (50-90%) area. 11. Examine regularly.  The dormant nodes should burst in about 3 to 4 weeks. Remove any buds that develop below the graft point.

12. Remove the grafting tape at a later date.

Some reasons for Graft Failure

• Rootstock and scion were not compatible.
• The cambiums were not meeting properly.

• Scions were upside down (Some plants can be successful grafted upside down). • Grafting was done at the wrong time of the year (Most plants can be grafted year around). • Rootstock or scion were not healthy • Scions were dried out or injured by cold. • The scion was displaced by storm, birds, or other means. • Insects or disease attacked the graft.

• The graft union was girdled because tape was not cut or released in time.

But the main reason for failure is not trying!

Print this entry

Two methods of propagating Figs.

First Method: Take dormant cuttings approx 200mm long and wrap in very slightly damp paper towel or newspaper, covering the entire cutting except the bottom half-inch. This allows the bottom end to “callus” which helps to prevent rot when rooting. If you are doing several cuttings, roll the first one in the damp paper, then add one and roll then add and roll until you have five or six cuttings in a bundle. Place the bundle/s in a plastic bag – a zip-loc or other zipper-type will work well. Place the bag in a warm place but not in direct sun with a temperature of 70-80F. Check frequently for signs of mould and if necessary air out the cuttings for a few hours. Remoisten the paper if necessary though this is not usually needed if the bag is tightly sealed. Under the conditions of warmth and humidity, roots will develop starting as small white bumps called initials and gradually elongating into recognizable roots. When there is good development of roots and/or initials, unwrap the cuttings carefully and pot them up as follows: Use clear plastic picnic glasses of about 45 once capacity. Temporarily stack 3 or 4 cups together for firmness and drill 4-5 holes in their bottoms. Take one cup and place course, well wetted vermiculite in bottom half, prepare a hole in your medium and carefully insert the cutting into it, then finish filling the cup with more of the same vermiculate. Place in a container (I use a plastic storage box) with a wire rack or other suitable arrangement that allows water to drain through the cup while keeping it from standing in water. Return the cuttings to your warm place. To maintain humidity, you may want to partly cover the container to simulate a greenhouse environment. Allow for some air circulation to avoid mould. Water only as necessary. The most important element is providing overall humidity without keeping the root zone overly wet. The courseness of the vermiculite allows air in the root zone while holding moi9sture there. If the vermiculite is too fine or packed down too much, it excludes air and retains too much moisture in the root zone. Generally, if you have placed your container in a warm environment and you see condensation on the inside of the cup, there is sufficient moisture. If not, it is too dry. The clear cup is important because it enables you to monitor root development. Leaf development is not an indicator of root development. Being able to see the roots is the best way to know what is happening.

Second Method: Dormant hardwood cuttings are easiest but it is possible to strike softwood and semi-hardwood cuttings in the growing season. The dormant cutting should have good food reserves to power leaf and root growth. I prefer thick wood; the spindly twigs tend to fail more often for me. Avoid peeling bark (disease) and weak growth on cutting wood. Some texts recommend two year old or more up to broomstick or even wrist thickness; I prefer strong one year old wood. Fig wood is soft with a large pith centre and will rot fairly easily so use a well draining medium such as sharp sand or perlite or a mixture of both with 10% coir. Keep the medium just damp in windfree light shade and buy the majority of the twig. An alternative is to put the twig in water with the majority submerged although you must change the water often. It may be the chlorine in tap water which stops fungus attacking the twig. The advantage is that you will see any rotting twigs (for removal) and developing roots. Pot on when roots are small. Commercial growers use bottom heat, rooting hormone and misting sprays but a fair percentage of fig cuttings will root without these. Direct sun or drying winds dry out the top of the twigs and make survival more difficult. Some growers still have success with outdoor and exposed sand beds however. If you are lucky with the rainfall (light and persistent) and soil (light) you can put cuttings straight into the ground. When leaves appear, do not assume roots have grown. Keep the leaves protected and dampened using a frequent fine spray. The pre rooting leaves are normally small but useful for a little input of food by photosynthesis. Dryness will cause them to fall off. When larger leaves and an elongating stem appear, this is a good sign that roots have developed so check the base of the container to see. Be persistent. I have known cuttings to take six months to root. The problem now is to transfer the cuttings to potting mix or into the ground without root damage. I decant and preliminary repot under water for gentle conditions or wait until winter dormancy. Get young figs growing fast with water and a full range of fertilisers. When they are big enough to fruit, cut back on water and nitrogen but keep the phosphorous and especially potassium levels up.

Authored by: 

Tony Stevens – Rarefruit Society of South Australia

Sourced from: 

STFC newsletter Aug Sept 2008

Date sourced: 

Print this entry

Harry Fay  –   Centre for Tropical Agriculture Mareeba – Nth Qld.
 

I’ve been researching Fruit Piercing Moth for almost 20 years. We’ve recently developed baits for the moth which while not providing total control do relieve a lot of the damage they cause.

Sheryl : Have you done any studies planting carambola nearby to see if they prefer to go there?
Harry:  No, but we have studied carambolas in orchards and there are some varietal preferences by moths, but fruit ripeness is the most critical factor. The moths seem to prefer the sweeter types like the Fwang Tung. In crops like papaws ripe fruit are much preferred.

Sheryl:   Is it the sugar they go for ie if you put out sugar water, would they go for that?
Harry:  They are after the sugar but fruit odours are critical to the attraction. Our baits contain  synthetic fruit odours which act to decoy the moths from the fruit. However, they tend to work better when the crop isn’t quite ripe as they don’t have to compete with lots of natural fruit odour.

Sheryl:   So after they take the bait, do they die?
Harry:   They’re suppose to, as there is insecticide in the baits!

Sheryl:   So what’s the success rate?
Harry:    That’s been really hard to determine because it’s not simply a matter of counting dead moths or comparing treated with untreated trees. In a couple of cases, in citrus and mangoes, we believe that we have  reduced the damage rate down from 20% to 4 or 5.

Sheryl:   Are you doing field trials in a commercial situation? 
Harry:     We’ve finished them now but we did 3 years of trials in commercial crops.

Sheryl:   What type of orchards? 
Harry:     Mainly citrus, because this industry funded most of the research. A few trials were also conducted in lychees, mangoes and carambolas. The baits appeared least effective in lychees and carambolas, because when they’re ripe they’re producing huge amounts of odour. If you can get the bait into carambolas before they’re fully ripe, you would expect a better job. In citrus, the baits seem to work reasonably well and it’s only when you get large influxes of moths at the end of the crop that the baits find it difficult to compete with the fruit. Citrus and mangoes are rarely protected by netting, so if the fruit is left on the tree to get fully coloured and ripe it’s particularly vulnerable to attack. Combining the baits with getting the fruit off at the right stage will reduce the damage considerably.

Sheryl:  Using the brix test, what percentage do they take the mango off at?
Harry:    I don’t know what it is with mango, but it’s usually around 8 in citrus.  Up here you don’t hear of Kensingtons being attacked by the moth – mainly R2E2, Keitt, Palmer and Brooks. The early mango types in Nth Qld tend to avoid the peak moth populations which occur from early January to early April.

Sheryl:  How many different varieties are there in the moth? 
Harry:    There are dozens of different species that can cause damage to soft fruits  but only 4 or 5 species from the genus Eudocima are considered economically important and capable of piercing harder fruits like lychees.

Sheryl:  Do they all have the orange spot? 
Harry:    No, the main species all have orange hindwings but the patterns vary.

Sheryl:  Do you have any coloured photos I could take back? 
Harry:    No, not of all the species.

Sheryl:   Do you have a CD perhaps?
Harry:     No, but I’ve got one colour page with photos of the 3 most important species. One of our trial sites in south-east Queensland where these 3 species occur was on the Burnett River. This site was adjacent to the Goodnight Scrub where there is believed to be a lot of moth breeding, and the orchard has significant problems each year.

Sheryl:  Do you have a list of what they breed on so we can address this issue?
Harry:   We do have some papers on the host plants but I’m not sure if they list all species (there are 24 or more in Australia). The Eudocima only breed on the Menispermaceae, which is a family of vines, but only a few of the species are really significant. The species mix varies somewhat as you move from north to south, but they do go right down as far as East Gippsland in Victoria and they’re right across northern Australia and into very dry country north of Alice Springs. So the moths can breed over vast areas and are supposed to migrate from these breeding areas into orchards hundreds of kilometres away.  One of the main menisperm species, Tinospora smilacina, is called Snake Vine as it tends to curl up trees – it’s well known in Aboriginal medicinal culture for uses such as snake bite.

Sheryl:  Who makes up the baits?
Harry:    We’ve done it ourselves here through the project. There is now someone interested in the commercial production.

Sheryl:  Who funded your project? 
Harry:    Horticulture Australia, the national citrus levy, GrowCom (formerly QFVG) and Bundaberg and Gin Gin grower groups.

Fruit Spotting Bug

Sheryl:  You’ve now finished the Fruit Piercing Moth project so you’re now on Fruit Spotting Bug? Harry: We do have a new RIRDC project looking at the potential of pyrethrum in organic situations for control of fruit spotting bug, so we’re looking at formulations/rates on various crops but using it very discretely. Because it’s broad spectrum you can’t spray it willy nilly as it knocks out all the beneficial species as well so we’ll also try some of the other potential organic treatments, like kaolin clays. There has been some work with these in Mareeba on mangoes, mainly looking at their sunscreen utility. In these trials kaolin did increase the mango scale populations but I believe the manufacturer has been tackling this problem.

Sheryl:  Any successful outcome from your studies? 
Harry:    We’ve only just started the pyrethrum trials which will run over 3 years. However, we’ve just finished a study of spotting bugs in papaws which indicated that small plants in the ground between  January and May are very prone to damage.

Sheryl:  What part do they attack?
Harry:    The growing tip is where they do the main damage in papaws but they also feed on the petioles. The growing tip gets very distorted due to the damage and a plant can actually die if it’s still small.

Sheryl:  Have you ever done any work with Guinea Fowl as they really get into leeches etc.
Harry:    I don’t think they would impact on spotting bugs. I worked in Africa for 4 years and where there are large concentrations of insects such as in rhino middens guinea fowl feed prolifically. Bugs tend to be distasteful because of defensive secretions, so birds don’t tend to go for them as much as some other insects. I suspect for spotting bugs it would have to be an arboreal type of bird in any case.

Print this entry

Welcome to Dragon Eye Farm – the dragon eye is brown like the shape of a Longan, so I get a lot of customers come here and just ask for Dragon Eyes! I started toying with the idea of growing Longans about 15 years ago and had a few seedling trees. At the time there wasn’t any grafting material in Australia and I grew them with Custard Apples, Lychees – I only had about 10 trees but they produced good crops so I went on a few safari trips up north to see what was available in Australia.

I brought back about 4 or 5 varieties of Longan that I didn’t have and planted them here in 1991 and grew them for around 4 years. I then ascertained what the best varieties were, and at the time the markets were accepting seedling type fruit but then they phased this out as better varieties came in.1994 was a very hot year and I had a severe fire through here and lost every tree, tractor sheds, irrigation, pumps – the whole lot – but what I found was that where the Longans were burnt out at ground level they shot out again and some of those trees are still here. Peaches etc. didn’t reshoot.

Longans are from the Sapindaceae family together with the Rambutan, Lychee & Akee. The trees don’t require heavy amounts of fertiliser – if you fertilise heavily, all you’ll get is growth without fruit. Longans seem to do well here – they like a sandy soil and don’t perform nearly as well on heavier soils. They have a few flushes through the year – some varieties have an orange flush and some have a red flush – there is another variety which has a yellow flush.

I have 8 varieties and start picking in February and go through to April. The early varieties are: KSweeney, which is a seedling of Kohala and came from the Hawaiian Islands – it’s a little bigger than Kohala fruit. Kohala has a softer sweeter flesh with a medium/large seed and doesn’t have a long shelf life compared to the Thai varieties and the window for picking them is only 3 weeks before the sugar levels start to drop off. Some years I can go in and take clusters of them or I have to individually pick because you don’t get them flowering all at once.

Sheryl: Longans are not supposed to ripen once they’re picked. Do you have a Brix Meter to test the sugar content in your fruit before you send them to market?

Peter: Yes, it’s called the mouth!! They are a good tool to have, though. If you squeeze the fruit and they’re very hard, the sugar levels will still be in the fruit but the water content in the fruit won’t be there so what happens then is they start to swell up and need a lot of calcium which is a major element. You need high calcium levels in your soil to grow good Longans because you need calcium for expansion of the fruit as they start to swell up. I have very high calcium levels: nobody has seen Calcium levels higher. You can tell the difference between the varieties with the colour of new growth, leaf structure and time of cropping. If you start picking from new moon to full moon, that’s the best time. Crisp varieties: Biew Kiew, Chompoo, Hauw Soft varieties: KSweeney, Kohala, Dang, Daw

Member: The higher the Potash the firmer the flesh.

Peter: The Thai varieties you can pick anytime and the sugar levels will still stay in them but they’ll get more flesh ratio as the moon comes on.

David: Mine tasted better when they were smaller so I think you’d be better to eat them early when they’re sweet and fragrant than when they’re bigger and tasteless.

Fertilisers: I use a lot of gluconates – you don’t need too much of it – use it as a foliar spray. You can’t get it in small quantities. I use calcium/magnesium fertilisers. I get my soil tested at the end of March after the heavy rains and the reason. I do it then is all the minerals have leached out of the ground. I use SAFE at Burleigh on Gold Coast and they test for soil, leaf and water analysis so as soon as you see the flowers start to open, you take a few leaves below the flower pinnacle from different trees over the whole orchard and collect 80 leaves and send it off. If you use hard chemical fertiliser you can do a lot of damage by burning the roots off and also to the worm population and fungi in your soil. These chemicals are salt laden and can build up your chlorine levels in your soil and you lose a lot of your microbe activity – the rhizomes on your roots will be attacked from the salts as well as your worm population, and there’s a lot of pathogenic fungi in your soil. If you can grow good weeds, then you can grow good trees!

Barb: How do you apply your calcium?

Peter: Once your soil test comes back, you refer to the chart put out by the Lychee Association because there’s nothing for Longans – you refer to the Lychee schedule and you want a pH of 5.8. With all fruit trees, you never go over pH6 whether it’s citrus, stone fruit or whatever. The reason for that is most of your microbial activity in the soil thrives under those conditions so when you get the test back and if you need calcium, then don’t look at dolomite. I’d go for gypsum as it contains sulphur which is important to the soil and it also contains calcium. You won’t raise your pH so if your pH is 6 then use 100g/m² of gypsum. That’ll give you a fair bit of sulphur and calcium and put it on after fruiting finishes. I also spray with gluconate microbe nutrients.

I put Magnesium Oxide on the ground. There’s no magnesium in gypsum: dolomite’s got the magnesium. With magnesium oxide it’s a slow release and it lasts a long time but magnesium sulphate is quite good to use if you want a quick release of magnesium (Epsom Salts). When you’re applying foliar fertilisers, the water you mix them in must be acid so you want it about 5.5, do a litmus test.

Surbuff is a combination of a wetting agent and an organic acidifier and is an acid neutralising liquid which is added to your spray tank first (if required) and you can then add your minerals to it. What happens then is when its acid based, once it’s sprayed onto that tree, every bit of that fertiliser is into that tree with 20 minutes. Before you get the leaf analysis done you have to wash the leaves and you can’t spray anything on for about a month before. The first lot I sent off were old leaves and they showed high readings of all minerals and I was a bit sceptical so in the meantime the trees have flushed and I then sent off the new leaves and they showed higher readings than the old leaves because they were picking up more energy into the leaf for new growth and production so I had very good minerals in all the trees. The fertilising regime I use is all organic and high tech from Europe.

You can use Charlie Carp and seaweed fertilisers either through the irrigation or as a foliar spray. We do have Fruit Spotting Bug but they only seem to go for the split fruit as the fruit is hard to penetrate. I’ve never seen fruit fly. Fruit Spotting Bug like dense, dark places so it’s most essential to open up your trees to let air and light in. If you lie on the ground and you don’t see 30% light, the tree is too thick and needs to be pruned. Every year you should take out two major limbs out of your tree. Don’t muck around by just pruning a little bit here and there.

The sugar levels start to increase toward the end of the full moon. With foliar fertilising the best time is at the start of the new moon. A lot of people don’t believe this theory but it does work. If you want to test this theory, then try the sugar levels in your fruit on a moon that’s waning and you’ll find the sugar levels very low, but if you pick the fruit on a rising moon you’ll notice the difference.

Joe: If you use a refractometer and you pick the leaves on a tree about a week after a full moon and again a fortnight later after the new moon and you take another reading, your levels will be way up.

Peter I’m a great believer in carbon fertilisers and some of the better products are folic acids and humic acids and a good layer of organic material under the trees for mulch eg. forest mulch. We get carbon out of mulches and the one I have has a lot of humus in it, mineral fertilisers and the colour is very rich. I use it in my potting mix as well. Carbon is a detoxifying agent for the soil. I try everything on vegetables first.

Member: You put carbon with Biovern – Mac Industries in Victoria put it out in 20kg bags and use 200kg of Calcium to 1000kg of Biovern – I put mine through the Viacon fertiliser spreader.

Peter: Use 100g/m². I use another product called carbonic acid and it releases carbon in the form of carbonate radicle into the soil for the microbes to feed on and with the folic acid and the humic acid what you’re creating is a feeder for all the hair roots – you eliminate phytophthora out of the soil.

Member: Biovern are talking about setting up a blending plant so you’ll be able to get different blends.

 Peter: I’ve been using my current system for the past 2 years – the only trouble I’ve had is this year I lost about 80% of my crop – reason being is Longans require high humidity and we had low humidity just before Christmas when the fruit were about ¼ size. Humidity was down to 10 – 15% and fruit just dropped off.

 Member: Would overhead sprinklers have helped?

 Peter: Definitely that would have worked.