2020

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Plants require many elements from the soil and largely depend on microbes to extract these nutrients and incorporate them into organic molecules. As organic matter breaks down, the nutrients dissolve into the soil water where they can be accessed by plant roots. This means that at any one time the nutrients in the soil can be in one of three places; bound to soil particles, incorporated in organic matter or dissolved in the soil water. The relative sizes of these nutrient pools vary widely for different elements and different soils.

Metal nutrients
In most soils there is a relatively large mineral pool or reserve of metal nutrients such as iron, calcium and magnesium. Microbes tend to only play a minor role in the extraction of these nutrients, and deficiencies can be corrected easily by the use of lime, gypsum or trace fertilisers, all of which are permitted in organic farming. There are large reserves of potassium in most clay soils but it only becomes available to plants when it is released into soil water, where it is readily leached away by rainfall.

Non-metal nutrients
Sulfur
Soil minerals in the form of sulfides are common but sulfur is not available to plants in this form. Thiobacillus bacteria can covert sulfides into sulfates, a form which plants can use. These bacteria occur naturally in healthy soils. Some sulfides can be slowly oxidised to sulfate by exposure to air. Sulfate can also be added to the soil in the form of gypsum.

Phosphorus
Many Australian soils are phosphorus fixing. This means that phosphorus in the soil is tightly bound to the soil particles and relatively unavailable to plants. Thus the mineral pool of phosphorus in the soil can be relatively large but little of it available to plants. Phosphorus is exported from the farm every time you send product to market. This loss has to be replaced either as fertiliser or by releasing some of the remaining soil phosphorus. Certain fungi can assist plants to extract phosphorus from the mineral pool. Penicillium radicum and Penicillium bilaiae can be inoculated to seeds of wheat, lentils or medic to help the young roots obtain phosphorus from the soil. Other plants rely on vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (VAM). VAM fungi can be encouraged by practices such as minimum tillage, short fallows, winter cover crops and crop rotations that avoid brassicas and lupins. Rock phosphorus contains about 15% phosphorus in an insoluble form. Only when it is applied to acidic soil is the rate of release likely to approach that needed by most plants. Phosphorus can be added in an organic form. Poultry manure is up to 2% phosphorus and in this form the phosphorus is not fixed by the soil. Another approach is to add rock phosphorus to a compost pile. The composting action helps release the phosphorus in an organic form. Liming will help reduce phosphorus fixation in acid soils but the amount needed may be considerable.

Heavy additions of animal or poultry manure can also reduce phosphorus fixation. In both cases the decrease in fixation is a long-term process. Practices that build soil organic matter will help to build the organic pool of phosphorus. Fertiliser additions may still be necessary but at rates low enough that rock phosphorus or manures may suffice.

Nitrogen Over three quarters of the air we breathe is nitrogen. Unfortunately plants cannot use this form of nitrogen and instead require it as nitrate or ammonia. Though a small amount of nitrogen is converted by lightning,

plants generally depend on microbes to fix nitrogen into useable forms. From the point of view of a plant, phosphorus fixation is bad news because the phosphorus becomes unavailable, but nitrogen fixation is good because it makes more nitrogen available.

Legumes such as clover and beans have root nodules of Rhizobium bacteria which fix nitrogen. Such bacteria can fix 100kg of nitrogen per hectare per year. Some free living soil microbes can also fix nitrogen but their contribution is relatively small. Examples of these microbes include Azotobacter chroococcum, Azospirillum brasilense, Agrobacter radiobacter, Gluconobacter diazotrophicus, Bacillus polymyxa, Flavobacterium and Herbaspirillum. Attempts to inoculate soil with these microbes to improve nitrogen fixation have not proven very effective. Without using nitrate or ammonium fertilisers the best way to maintain nitrogen is to encourage nitrogen fixation with legumes or legume rotations. Acid soils discourage fixation so acidity may need to be remedied by liming. Organic fertilisers contain only small amounts of nitrogen. To match nitrogen fixation from legumes these fertilisers would have to be added at rates measured in tons per hectare. As a result the transport and spreading costs are considerable. As well, spreading manure in large quantities can lead to Nitrate is readily leached from the soil by rainfall, and ammonia is lost by volatilisation back into the air. Building soil organic matter helps reduce these losses by encouraging nitrogen storage in the organic pool.

Key points • Building soil organic matter helps store soil minerals in the organic pool.

• Encourage nitrogen fixation by using legume rotations.

More information

Soil biology basics is an information series describing basic concepts in soil biology. For more detailed information we recommend the Australian book Soil biological fertility:A key to sustainable land use in agriculture (2003), edited by Lyn Abbott & Daniel Murphy.

NSWDPI has online soil biology information at:  http://www.agric.nsw.gov.au/reader/soil-biology.

The University of WA has online soil biology information at:  http://ice.agric.uwa.edu.au/soils/soilhealth.

Written by Greg Reid©2005 State of New South Wales Department of Primary Industries
The information contained in this publication is based on knowledge and understanding at the time of writing (2005). However, because of advances in knowledge, users are reminded of the need to ensure that information on which they rely is up to ate, and to check the currency of the information with the appropriate officer of NSW Department of Primary Industries or the user’s independent advisor.

Note from Sheryl:  The NSW DPI has excellent info on their website:
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/aboutus/resources/factsheets/soil-biology-basics

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I would describe myself as a rare plant collector first and foremost, a rare fruit nut second and a gardener third.  Before we purchased our current acreage 22 years ago I had the sides and back of our previous residential house at Margate strewn with pots of my treasured plants much to the distress of my wife. When I was transferred to Hervey Bay for 3 years I took them with me (the plants and my family of course) and brought them back.  My wife and daughter loved horses and other animals so the natural progression was to acquire some acreage land so I could ADD to my plant collection and they could have room to run their animals. When we moved onto our land I couldn’t wait to race out and plant things but nature taught me some pretty salutary lessons (also that plants and animals don’t mix -eg goat story) and I lost a lot of my treasured collection by planting out in the open in rows and following fruit tree spacing guides.  I talked to the DPI and they said ” Oh, D’Bay that’s wallum country – you won’t grow much there but you better start by throwing tons of super and dolomite at it”.  I couldn’t afford to do that with a new house (carpets curtains etc). Some hardier fruit trees (common) did survive eg custard apples, lychee, white sapote but they did not thrive.

I started to really look at my land and try to understand it. (There is an old saying – Plan for the future because that is where you will spend the rest of your life). I have 4 foot of sand over a hard white (red veined) clay pan which gets very dry  and water repellent in dry times (like now) and pretty wet to swampy in places in the wet ( if we ever get another wet).  While it is a flat block some parts are slightly higher than others. Being sandy the soil stays warmer in winter (which suits the plants I collect) and we don’t get much frost.  I was lucky that I got to know a tree lopper and he use to give me mulch he couldn’t sell to nurseries/landscapers (eg chopped Cocos palms).  I spread it all over the place up to 18 inches thick.  I bought a truckload of chook manure and threw it over the mulch.  I then started to read a lot and some articles inspired me (refer to article in Organic Gardener).  I have always been against chemical pesticides and fertilisers.  As kids my Dad used to make us (those days parents seemed to be able to make kids do stuff) collect the cabbage moth grubs from his extensive vege patch and feed them to the chooks.  He also put straw down between the rows so our relentless grub hunting expeditions didn’t compact his precious soil.  I started to realise that the mulch was making my plants grow without chemical fertilisers so I planted a mini rainforest on the west side primarily to block out a bad neighbour (since moved).  This has been a blessing in establishing some of my rarer tender plants.

I read a little book “Man of the Trees” by Richard St. Barbe Baker and some of his thoughts dominate the way I regard my small bit of the earth. “The glorious rich, colourful, quilted covering of trees and vegetation is not there merely to feed and please us, its presence is essential to earth as an organism.  It is the first condition of all life. It is the skin of the earth”.  I kept piling on the mulch and my rarer plants started to cope with winter cold/dry and summer heat/wet (now dry) as a lot of their roots lived in the mulch layer and the top 2 inches of soil (quote pyramid of life page 41 of Baker).  Remember, rare plants by definition are harder to grow ie they are rare because they aren’t easy to propagate/grow and are slow therefore nurseries can’t be bothered with them.  I started to find my treasured plants coped better by being close together where they afforded each other (or received) protection just like they do in a natural rainforest. Another principle I follow is mixing plants because if you make a plantation all of one species (fruit tree spacing guides) the roots compete with each other at the same level for food, moisture and support and rob and weaken each other (page 26 Baker) Nature won’t tolerate bare ground (tree cover is regarded as the skin of the earth –  page 60 Baker) and quickly covers it with weeds, pioneer trees (wattles) and then upper storey and understorey when the upper storey provides sufficient protection.  A lot of farmers still tordan the trees because they think they stop other plants from growing. (There would be no rainforests if this was true).  I try to base my approach to growing my more delicate trees on the natural forest system and by doing so I made it impossible to follow the NORMAL pesticide/fertiliser practices used by most of the sane people who expect good crops of fruit.  My resolve is to keep on working with nature rather than against it.   (Desert challenge page 84 Baker)  As soon as man invents a better mouse trap nature creates a better mouse. I suppose that’s one reason nature has cats (cat joke!)

Because my garden has evolved in this way I was really excited to get involved with Peter Sauer’s experiments with a soil conditioner/microbial based system that emulates the rainforest workings.  I was astounded with the plant health and productivity achieved over a very short time-line using this system. 

I live at Deception Bay which is pretty lean, mean, hungry, sandy type of country. The DPI call it Wallum Country and I guess it’s that break-your-heart territory. It can get really dry and water  in the very hot and dry weather and when it does rain and I don’t know whether we’ll ever see those wet periods here again, but it can get so wet that you can bog a duck so you really have to get the right balance if you want to grow some good plants.  I guess you’d say that I am more interested in the plants than the fruits but I’m also very keen to have a lot of different rare plants much to my wife’s chagrin because she has to go along and make the place presentable so she tries to make order from around the mess that I create. I’ve tried to set up a system where I don’t use any chemicals or pesticides. My Dad always trained us that you don’t spray the vegies. We’d have to go out and pick the cabbage moth grubs off and give them to the chooks and that was the way we were brought up and I guess it’s always lived with me that I’d rather do that and get whatever I can out of the fruit and vegies rather than resort to poisons. There was an interesting article in the Organic Gardener of a guy in Murwillumbah who’d been growing Avocadoes for 24 years and he started as a conventional grower and converted to organics in the late 80’s. He talks about 14 treatments with pesticides and fungicides to the Avocado and to control Fruit Spotting Bug the Avocado receives 3 coatings of Endosulphen. It’s highly toxic but experts tell us if you use it according to the label it’s harmless to humans. The Endosulphen will cleanse the orchard of beneficial insects such as native and honey bees, lacewings, spiders, paracytic wasps, assassin bugs and birds as well as affecting the soil micro-organisms and those in the nearby waterways. The part which caught my attention in this article was that he said that the same Avocados receive the blessings of monoleptia fruit fly scale and mite sprays but his real concern was the post-harvest treatment. Most Avocadoes are post-harvest dipped twice; once in Diamethate which is Rogur 40 – a nerve toxin used to kill fruit fly even though no-one has never seen a live fruit fly emerge from an Avocado strung while green and Sportpack a fungicide used to kill anthracnose which should have been handled by the Copper oxychloride. Dismethate can also be sprayed in the orchard where it has a withholding period of seven days yet used as a post-harvest dip at twice its strength, for some reason it only has a withholding period of one day. The Strawberry farmer across the road from me is constantly spraying them with Rogur because they are sending them to the Melbourne Market and I don’t understand how you can have a withholding period of 7-14 days as it would turn to mush! So I guess what has driven me is I’ve tried to get as many of the fruit trees and rare plants I grow free from having to apply all these pesticides and chemicals. If you saw my place and the way I’ve jammed trees up in under rainforest settings to protect them, you would understand that you could not get tractors or spraying implements in there – you would need to get long hoses and walk in amongst the mulch to do it. That’s what’s driven me to try and find a system that emulates how nature does it. If you walk into a natural system it seems to control itself. There’s no major outbreak of pests; there’s no major deficiencies in nature; it all seems to happen.  I don’t know how many tonnes of mulch into my place but basically I talk to tree loppers and you’ll find that a lot of them will be cutting down Cocos Palms or Radiata Pines that the nurseries and landscapers won’t take.  I just say to them if you’re looking for somewhere to dump then use my place and I give them $50.00 cartage and get 35 metres of mulch. It might have a bit of Cocos Palm or Pine tree trunk but it makes absolutely beautiful mulch. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen Palm tree trunks when they’ve been through the big chippers, they come out as fine fibrous material and when it’s packed down as mulch, if you put in a plant and after one month there will be white roots so they absolutely adore it and it’s a fantastic way to conserve water and to create a better system so all the nutrients are going back into your land.  However, I’ve found that it takes a long time to happen and what I needed was a system to enhance the microbial activity in my soil so the natural workings were multiplied to a great degree.  In talking with Peter Sauer your ex-President and seeing what he was doing at his Longan orchard he was employing a new system using microbes and the results he was getting were fantastic so he loaned me some microbes to spray on some of my some special plants; eg Amherstia nobilus – they call it the Pride of Burma and it gets a long orchid-like flower. It’s a marcotted tree and there’s very few of them in Australia and the marcot cost me $150.00 but it’s a tree I want to protect. In winter the tropicals get stressed but putting this microbe on it, it’s holding its own better than it’s ever had for the last two winters so I am encouraged by this. I’m also growing seedling Durians I got off John Marshall – you can see I venture into the more difficult and people think I’m mad. I’ve lost a lot of marcotted Durians. What I find in trying to grow the marcotted Durians and top-grafted purple Mangosteens, Matisias and Malay Apples, is that you lose the scion altogether in the cold. I’ve been experimenting with high altitude seedling Durians which are now 3 years old and they are still growing and doing well even in the cold weather we’ve had in the last couple of weeks. I’ve had zero the last couple of mornings and frost on the back lawn that I don’t normally get and with the dryness which is what they hate. A lot of these rarer trees grow in jungles which is their natural environment so if you expose them to these drying winds from the west plus the cold, you will lose them. Summer fruiting marcotted Pulasans and Dukus are doing very well – they are not big trees but they’ve been through two winters and it’s a beautiful fruit that I think will do well here if you get the summer fruiting variety. John Marshall is writing a book on grafting compatibility. They lost a lot of Durians because what happens is that after ten years there is incompatibility with the rootstock and they fall over so what Mike Fabien is doing is that after he grafts he builds the soil up to above the level of the graft union (grafts are put low on the rootstock) The rootstock actually nurses the scion under the soil until it makes its own roots. I’m planting some top-grafted Malay Apples this way with graft-union buried (I’ve always lost my grafted Malay Apples in the cold) Mike’s got a fibreless Matisia that he grafts onto ordinary rootstock. In the cold you’ll always lose the good fibreless scion but the rootstock will continue to grow. Basically what I’m doing now on Mike Fabian’s advice is that if you buy a Matissia or Malay Apple and you bury it in the ground about 100mm above the graft, the rootstock will nurse it until the scion makes its own roots and I’m finding it works a lot better than leaving it exposed.

Sheryl Would that be for all tropicals?

Col According to Mike it would.

Sheryl Do you know which ones it won’t work on?

Col No because I’m only trying it with the Malay Apple, Matissia and Mammea Americana but I’ve lost the Mammea. People will tell you not to bury your tree any deeper than what it is in the pot and this is what John Marshall is suggesting in his book on grafting incompatibility and he is suggesting nurse grafts, the use of seedlings or marcotting rather than top grafting. Because they are having problems and they’ve lost so many grafted Durians up north because of this incompatibility problem, it breaks their heart because you’ve set up a big orchard and it’s just getting some return, then the trees fall over. John Marshall’s orchard is all seedlings but he’s also keen on the work that Mike’s doing with this nurse graft technique. 

George You can use this technique for Avocadoes – they put a ring on them so that the rootstock strangles itself after a while.

Sheryl Have you created mini hot houses for these tropical trees during winter?

Col I use to but my wife would get upset with me because when you drove past our place it use to look like a plastic dump but I found it was a waste of time because all it did was encourage them to get more tender, diseased and leggy. Eventually they are going to have to survive

Sheryl But this would only be for three months of the year.

Col Yes but they need to be covered every night then uncovered in the morning which I couldn’t be bothered doing but they get sweaty, steamy and get infected with masses of fungus but I don’t know whether this microbial red spot product would solve those issues in the longer term but I’ve got to the stage that I don’t want to do that any more because I want to stay married! I have a very strong view about how nature works. If you could get a Purple Mangosteen to fruit here in Brisbane and you then grow that seed, those trees would be cold tolerant and would fruit in the sub-tropics. I think there are many situations where a plant has conditioned itself to climates outside its range. There are so many plants in cultivation now that have come out of their climatic range and have adapted. I know people say that if you are going to be a good gardener you should only grow what does well in your area but I find that a bit too boring and I have a Rhododendron that flowers every year. If you bring temperate plants here, you have to shade it from the real heat of summer so I have hollow logs and because they like acid conditions, I put in acid soil mix in, cover with fine river gravel as a mulch in the log, it’s roots are always cool because it’s foraging down and it’s under the shade of a tree and every year it’s just beautiful and flowers every year. I also have Daphne odorata growing the same way, Leculia – I just think you can do anything if you get the right micro climate and environment for your plants.

Sheryl We saw a Leculia up at Mt. Tamborine on our recent field trip and it was magnificent.

Col  I can’t help myself – if there’s a rare plant I have to have it. I ring people up all over Australia. One plant I couldn’t get was the Madagascan Honey Flower, Meliantus major – you can suck the honey out of the flower. Arnold Teece from Yamina Rare Plants drives up from Melbourne every year with his wife to spend 3 months in Maroochydore. He’s 84 and spent a day with me telling me the potential of all that they can grow down there and what we can grow up here. Keep a list of what you are looking for because they’ll bob up one day. I think if there’s not enough of us doing it in the collecting line there’ll be a whole mass of things lost because most blocks are 16 perches, they’re not interested in anything that gets bigger than an Azalea. I think it’s a tragedy because we are wiping out so many plants at such a great rate of extinction that it does concern me personally that there’s a whole gene pool of things that we will lose so I like to have as many as those things saved in my patch as I can so I look forward to the day when I can get them to the stage of flowering and fruiting. Don Gray has a lot of rare fruit up in Mossman. They sponsored some people who were taking a lot of fruit seed to the Congo establishing orchards over there for the native people and they brought back Ndea.

This Mandarin here is also one of Don Grey’s seedlings that they brought back and call the King of Siam Mandarin and it’s one of the original species of Mandarin and that’s how they use to look before they developed them and when you cut it open the skin is about the thickness of a Pummelo. It’s a nice flavoured fruit and again it’s one of the things I like to keep. I have a species of Citrus because I’m interested in saving some of the old gene pool stuff because that’s what I do so when you come out to visit you won’t find big rows of anything. I’m not a monoculture person and my wife Margaret loves gardens where you have all the same plant type and I don’t like that at all! I mix things up. I’ve got Talauma under Jacarandas. Talauma is one of the rarest trees you can get in Australia – it gets huge magnolia like flowers on it, the perfume drives you crazy and has big corrugated leaves. When you plant it here, you have to provide it with some sort of shade until they get a fair bit of maturity on them. I’ll tell you the experience Peter and I have had with this new microbial system. A big problem with chemical pesticides is that pests build resistance to them. “As soon as man invents a better mousetrap, nature invents a better mouse”. I have this Italian Sweet Lemon and it’s one of Mike Fabians (Sheryl:  Michael is at Limberlost Nursery in Cairns) and he propagated a couple from cuttings for me and at this time of the year it got red scale on it, leaf miner plus everything else and at the base of the tree where it looked as though it was going to cark on me, I spoke to Peter and he gave me a bottle of this new microbial product so after mixing it up and spraying it on, within 2 weeks and it shot out with new growth out of all the bad areas and this new growth was so perfect and unmarked that I got busy. Margaret was growing broccoli and they had helios moths and cabbage moth grub in them and I was using Dipel but I couldn’t keep up because it’s been so dry and I sprayed the Red Spot on the broccoli about five weeks and we’ve just been kept going with all this broccoli like you wouldn’t believe! We’re in the Nambour Plant Club and Margaret’s won with huge heads of broccoli and everybody goes ga-ga over it and it’s such a beautiful colour but it was me who did the Red Spot spraying!! The interesting thing in my experience is what I found and this is without the soil conditioner – since I’ve put the soil conditioner and the soil microbes in a couple of places, my young Hawaiian Solo Paw-Paw trees and you plant them between March and May, they stay small and squat. The proper Hawaiian Solo never goes a real orange colour on the outside skin. About a third of the fruit is orange and the rest gets a green skin and has a beautiful red flesh and is breakfast style fruit which are so sweet and they serve them in the hotels in Honolulu and they’re gorgeous. A chap in Nambour imports the seed every year and he sells them for $2.50 as nice young plants. We have a huge amount of blossom on our Mangoes and we all suffer with Anthracnose and I know from Peter’s experience that spraying with Red Spot – I’ve never worried with Mancozeb as I don’t spray so I get reduced yields of Mangoes and I’ve many different types of beautiful Mangoes. I sprayed all the flowers with the Red Spot microbe so we’re waiting to see the results. I sprayed it on some Mealy Bugs on my Palms and I guarantee they will be gone in three-six months. I have a lot of plague pests at the moment due to drought stress so I put the Chelated Mineral and Red Spot microbes together and I also added 6ml/L Molasses and a bit of Kelp just to feed the process along. My view is that when the pests disappear, the ants will go elsewhere. If I spray now, I’ll hit it again in four days and again in seven days until I get on top of it and then do the trees once a month. I think it’s evolutionary and we are still experimenting with it.

George So you put the molasses in to feed the microbes.

Gretchen Is it anaerobic or aerobic? Col  Aerobic 

Sheryl Won’t it evaporate if you have a hole in the top?

George You can always top it up rainwater and feed it with sugar.

Peter  I don’t think it will evaporate.

Peter Sauer  I came along to one of the organic meetings here and I’ve tried to use organics all my life and try not to use pesticides, insecticides or weedicides. My trees in the last couple of years have not been up to scratch and the crop started to deteriorate so I was looking for something else and at the meeting the guest speaker gave us a paper on soil conditioner and it had a soil test kit on it. I had always paid around $140.00 for previous tests and this was only $55.00. The Chemist who did the test lives at Beerwah and the results were up and down and the soil was out of balance which I could see from the trees. The test result said I had to put on 5kgs of soil conditioner for each mature tree so I purchased 1 ½ tonne so being sceptical of new products and having a bit left over, I thought the quickest way to test it out was to put in on vegetables as your trees take a fair while so I applied 1 kilo per lineal metre and put in peas carrots tomatoes broccoli and I put the same crop in next to it and I used Organic Extra and for the first couple of weeks, the bed with the Organic Extra were doing better than the bed with the soil conditioner so I rang the Chemist who told me that I needed the microbes as well as the chelated mineral! At that time the leaves of my Longans were being eaten by caterpillars so I was going to spray them with a Pyrethrum but the Chemist said to spray it with Red Spot so I sprayed the Longans with the Red Spot at about 4pm as the microbes don’t like too much sunlight and when I checked the following day the caterpillars were all dead on the ground.  I put it on the vegetables and within a month the microbial plot had surpassed the other plot with the Organic Extra and there were grubs on this plot but not on the microbial plot. The leaves were a really dark minerally colour. I put on two applications per month on a rising moon which I find is the best time. I just use the Green Spot microbes on the soil around the trees and I spray the Red Spot on the trees at the same time. The microbes attack all bad bacteria in the soil, clean the soil, farm the soil; they put a strong root system on so every hour they keep multiplying. Microbes also induce flowering – I’m 58 years old and I’ve been growing vegetables since I was six and I have never ever seen results such as this. With organics we never had the tools until now. You’ll get higher sugar levels in your vegetables. I’ve done a Brix test and they are double the recommended sugar levels. My peas were 18 on the scale when they should be around 8. Mandarins – the top scale I’ve seen in the books is 8 and these went 15. Most soils are out of condition and are not balanced but this product has everything that a plant requires so all you have to do is to add microbes to it to activate the conditioner which will stimulate your soil and they’ll turn it into humus. The microbes attach themselves to the roots of the plants. You don’t even need to put nitrogen onto your crops. Don’t use this product if you intend to use chemicals. Don’t worry about doing a pH with this system. 

Peter The microbes basically do the work for you. They clean the trees and make the leaves healthier so the leaves photosyntheticize more efficiently. The microbially gardening system is in kit form and selling for $40.00. You get your Soil Microbes (Green Spot), the Chelated Minerals, and the foliar microbes (Red Spot) that goes on the leaves and protects them. One bottle of Green Spot is enough to do half an acre of land. With fruit trees you put the Green Spot on twice a year; February and Winter. A bag of soil conditioner is $15.00. The 25kg bag plus the 3 containers is $40.00.

Sheryl A lot of us don’t have the water that we’d like to put on our trees. Peter You’ll use half the amount.

The mix has Pig Manure, Cow Manure, Chicken Manure, Zeolite and Rock Phosphate. Zeolite is a volcanic rock mined in central Qld crushed down and it absorbs water and nutrient and microbes and is a holding particle and organic fertilisers don’t leach but are utilised by the plant whereas with chemical fertilisers you only get about a tenth into your plant; the rest are in salts and irons and you won’t get a worm population and you’ll kill all your mycorrhiza

Sheryl Now for people like me who don’t water except on the odd occasion, it’s going to kill off the microbes if the soil dries out.

Peter Mulch heavily then put it on every month.

Marilena I want to know whether you can steep the microbial mixture with green matter as you do with other types of composting to make a compost tea?

Col  You could, but why bother when you could just spray the cultured microbes onto your plants and soil.

Bob Being on Wallum, isn’t there a problem with Molybdenum deficiency?

Col The first lot of cauliflower I grew were a bit sick and I know I’ve got some disease problems which relate to balance in my soil and poor condition but I believe that this system is balanced out and I can’t say that it’s happened already but it should by March and that’s what the Biodynamic people tell you that once you put the preparation on, they just let nature and the mycorrhiza do the work for them.

Sheryl  I think we’ll finish this side of the talk now. Col, can we talk about what other trees you are growing in the fruit line.

Col  I have a Black Gold Jack fruit. I don’t know about you, but I eat half a plate and I’m sick of it so I asked around up north and now I have about ten different types. One is called Berry. I also have a firm fleshed pink one that Mike Fabian got out of Darwin. I was pretty good friends with Ric Deering before he died and I got a lot of plants off him including Cheena which is very good. Different Jacks have different leaves.  Another one I got off Ric was Kwai Muk. My other interest is in the Annonaceae the Custard Apple type family. There is a plant in the Annonace called Porcelia. It gets Custard Apples on it like bunches of bananas that weigh up to 45kgs and there’s Porcelia magnifructa gets the biggest fruit and steinbachii which is named after the explorer but I find that anything from that Sao Paulo/Brazil area is remarkably cold hardy in the sub-tropics as it has a similar climate to here. I have  some rare Rheedias including laterfolia which is a very good Rheedia but they are all called Garcinias now. Most of them are small shrubs but laterfolia is a big tree. One of the difficulties you have got with Garcinias is they are dioecious ie you need male and female so of course you have to put in 3-5 trees close together and chop out one of the males so you should get 1 in 3-5 but of course Ric use to get the old wedding ring out and do the little trick. My wife is a member of the Pheasant and Waterfowl Society and breeds all these weird and wonderful things like Pheasant, Waterfowl, Black Swans, Canada Geese and Golden Pheasants. They say they don’t sit so you have to take the eggs away from a Golden Pheasant to hatch but our pheasant didn’t know this and hatched all the young ones out and a chap wanted some males and females so I tested them all with Ric’s ring method and he came back and said grrr.. he didn’t get one male out of the whole lot so it didn’t work with Pheasants!!! So I was pretty embarrassed about this because I thought this was the real trick! Ric had a huge amount of rare trees and some of them were weeds. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of the Chocolate Nougat Tree but I got this off Ric and my place is about 100 metres wide and 600 metres long and this thing sends its roots out and the roots were about 60 metres away from the tree! It suckers all over the place.

Sheryl What other trees don’t we plant?

Col One I particularly hate because I’m interested in the Annonaceae was a seedling Poshte and it grew like you wouldn’t believe and out-competed a beautiful Spanish Cherimoya and Cherry of the Rio Grande. It started to bear large fruit with a really thin skin and what I found out later was that it was one of the wild Soursops. It had yellow flesh and was mushy and you just couldn’t eat it so my son and I got out the chainsaws and dragged it down to where Margaret has Anglo Nubian goats, Alpacas and birds and one goat must have eaten more than the others because it cost me $170 in vet fees because he got diarrhoea (this next part edited out! Pity!)  People sell rubbish to fruit tree nurseries so be very careful before purchasing your fruit trees. Spiney Kitembillas are another nuisance tree.  I grow Coconuts which fruit but it’s a fallacy that they like salt. I’m interested in Bushfood and have flowered Eleocarpus bancrofti which they call the Johnson River Almond and it’s a lovely tree. Ric had a good variety of Ficus coronata. I’m also interested in Raspberries and Passionfruit. I have a Raspberry from Brazil which is an inch and a half in diameter Rubus braziliensis.  It takes 12 months to come up from seed. Does anyone grow the Mysore Raspberry which has white canes?

Sheryl Saw it up at Mt. Tamborine recently.

Col This one is worse than the Mysore.  

Sheryl Do you have any Raspberries that don’t have prickles?

Col  No, wished I did. I’m looking for a good variety of Capulin Cherry but they’re small and pithy. I had 3 trees but I’ve dug two of them out. There are seven improved varieties in California and one of them is an excellent sweet cherry about 1½” dia. so I’m after some wood of that and I’ll just top work my mature tree if I can get it through quarantine. I’m also after a good black Brazillian Cherry and if you get it ripe it’s quite a nice fruit but I know in California they have luscious big fruits.

George How do you propagate them?

Col Ric grafted but I’ve never tried cuttings. Asher I think Ric only got 10% to take (grafted)

Sheryl Do you graft/marcot? Col  I marcot. I have Monkey Pod Nuts which haven’t fruited as yet but you’ll get an invite if they do. 

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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One of the most common problems in the jackfruit trade is post-harvest fruit rot. Although the condition rarely occurs before maturity, it often develops at the onset of ripening and can cause significant losses at the wholesaler and retailer level.

The Problem
The problem can first be detected when a slightly discoloured soft area appears. Typically these soft spots are somewhat circular or elliptical in shape, and a few inches in diameter. In some cases depressions are visible in the skin. Sometime later, fungal mycelia become visible, and from there the disease progresses outward until the entire jackfruit is destroyed. At the early stages of the infection, the affected portion can be cut out allowing salvage of part of the fruit. Normally, jackfruit is shipped as a mature but unripe fruit, and the final ripening occurs either in transit or at the destination. Although low temperatures during transit and storage do help to reduce fruit rot, they also tend to induce dormancy in the ripening process of the jackfruit, which in many cases, is difficult or impossible to break. Chilling can also lead to water condensation inside the fruit cavity, which in some cases makes the fruit arils wet and less appealing. The inability to use low temperatures to manage fruit rot is one of the important limitations in the development of jackfruit exports. The portion of fruit affected by rot increases naturally with the storage time. If managed well, only a small percentage of the fruit are affected during the first two weeks after harvest; however, progressively more are affected in the third and fourth weeks, and this occurs principally while the fruit are at the warehouses of the destination wholesaler or retailer.

The Cause
To aid in ripening, jackfruit are often either wrapped or placed into a box in order to contain and concentrate the ethylene gas released by the fruit. The ripening process results in a considerable elevation of the sugar levels in the fruit tissues, and considerable amounts of heat and water vapour are given off. The combination of the warmth and the high humidity, combined with the creation of nutrient-rich tissues results in an excellent environment for the development of saprophytic fungi. The reported causal agents of fruit rot in jackfruit are Rhizopus artocarpi, Colletotrichum lagenarium, and Sclerotinia rolfsii. We have also encountered periodic problems with premature post-harvest fermentation apparently caused by opportunistic yeast infections. In all cases, the problem is made more severe if there are abrasions on the skin of the fruit. The practice of some producers to use ripening aids such as calcium carbide or ethephon seems to worsen the fruit-rot problem.

Possible Solutions
Ideally, management of jackfruit rot needs to start in the orchard. Most jackfruit are bagged in order to reduce attack from insects, but ideally these bags should be porous and should not allow moisture to build up next to the fruit as such conditions encourage the development of the fungal inoculums. Paper, cloth, or plastic- woven bags seem preferable over impermeable plain-plastic materials.

At harvest time, the fruit must not be allowed to make contact with the soil. After cutting they should be placed on a clean bag or tarp, or put directly into the truck for transport to the packing house. The fruit should be subsequently washed in order to remove any adhering fungal spores, and then carefully dried before packing. Some workers have recommended post-harvest dipping in fungicide solutions such as benomyl, and others have suggested simply washing in plain or chlorinated water.

Shipping boxes should also be designed to absorb and minimize the moisture and heat build-up. We normally use cardboard boxes with a lot of paper to absorb the moisture given off by the fruit. I have also seen shippers use a plastic-mesh basket in order to maximize airflow around the fruit, and I have heard of other people who remove the outer rind entirely in order to minimize the inoculum.

In airfreight shipments, it seems impractical to ship jackfruit that are in the peak of ripening as the temperature and humidity in the shipping container would become very high, and fruit rot would develop rapidly. In the summer, we ship jackfruit while they are still very hard with no detectable smell, and in the winter we send them at the stage where they have a slight smell but are still fairly hard. In both cases additional ripening may need to be done at the destination, especially in winter.

We find that even with good management and careful selection of ripening stages before shipping, post-harvest rot losses from farm to consumer affect between 5 to 10% of our jackfruit. Clearly, additional research would be worthwhile. In particular, better recommendations for post-harvest handling are needed, including better ways use dips and hot water washes, as is often done with mangoes.

Ref:  forum of http://www.itfnet.org 2007

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Kiwifruit & Banana Chutney   by Judy Allen  Put all the ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil. 900gms kiwifruit, peeled and sliced (you could substitute feijoas!), 2 bananas peeled & chopped, grated zest of 1 lemon, 3 red onions, finely chopped, juice of 3 lemons, 1 cup raisins, 1 cup packed brown sugar, 1 tsp ground ginger, ½ tsp cayenne pepper, ½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg, 1 tsp allspice, ¼ tsp ground cardamom, 1 tbsp salt and 1 cup white vinegar. Lower the heat and simmer uncovered for around an hour until thickened. Pour into dry, sterilised jars. Eat with cold meats and on cheese sandwiches – YUM!

Pickled Cucumbers   by Paul Roudenko
As the cucumbers pickle and ferment, the mix may tend to run over, hence the tray. Use a sterilised glass or porcelain container for storing, acids and salt in the mix will react with metals in container, capping or seal. Good with a cold beer and a bit of wurst. Pack cucumbers into jar (less than 100 mm or less in length is best, to fill container) together with half garlic (half head (roughly 5/6 cloves), peeled and 6 chillies, add  one-third  cup of vinegar (apple cider or other). Allow 30mm space at top. Boil 1 litre of water and pour into one litre container with 1 heaped tsp of sugar, 3 heaped tsps salt, pinch of dill, pinch of caraway, pinch of coriander, pinch of fennel, pinch of pepper, pinch of mustard, 1 bay leaf or you can use 1 tsp of pre-mixed pickling spice (however it may be a different mix of spice).  Allow to steep and cool until warm. Pour mix onto cucumbers, top up with small amount of cooled boiled water if necessary, and cover. Cucumbers must be fully submerged, they will tend to float, and may have to be weighed down to ensure they stay submerged in the brine. Stand jar on tray (they will ferment and bubble) for 2 days in cool spot. Refrigerate for 2-3 weeks, then adjust water, salt, sugar or vinegar if necessary, however always use boiled water, and seal.  Will keep for 12 months (if they last that long).

Spiced Cherry Tomato Chutney    contributed by Diane Moschella
1 onion finely chopped, pinch coriander, 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic, pinch cloves, 2-4 small red chillies-chopped, ½ tspn nutmeg, olive oil, small pinch cumin, 4 anchovy fillets-mashed, ½ cup cherry tomatoes, ½ cup brown sugar, S + P, about 8 fingers of good red wine vinegar. Using a large frypan, slowly fry onion, garlic and spices in a little olive oil til soft. Add anchovies and tomatoes.  Toss and add sugar, vinegar, S+P,   Bring to boil, stir and simmer gently about 30 minutes.  Bottle.  Chutney improves in flavour over time.  Keeps in frig 1-2 months.  Makes about 1 cup.  I add a small amount of sultanas. We have been using this all season and it goes great hot or cold with any meats or vegetables.  We have used it as a pizza topping as well.

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I had a request from Cedric in Maryborough for a Ceylon Olive so I rang Shirley Philpott who said that they use to eat them straight off the tree when she lived there as a young girl. It’s an ornamental medium-sized tree, indigenous to Ceylon, producing smooth, ovoid, green fruits of the size of olives which they resemble. The fleshy portion surrounding the seed is sub-acid. In its unripe state they are also used in pickling. It is propagated by seed and thrives in moist low-country up to 2000ft.

Authored by: 

Sourced from: 

STFC newsletter Aug Sept 2008

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Pecan Pie or Macadamia Pie     Preheat the oven to 200C and butter a medium pie tin. If using fan-forced convection, reduce the temperature by 20C. In a food processor, grind 10 pecans Add 1½ cups plain flour, ½ tbs cold butter, pinch of salt and blend until combined. Slowly add 3 tbsp water while the machine is running until the mixture comes together in a ball. Remove from the food processor, cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes Reduce the oven temperature to 180C Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface and line the tin. Prick the pastry to stop it puffing up and bake for 15 minutes. In a bowl Whisk 3 eggs, ½ cup caster sugar, 3 tbsp melted butter, 1 cup dark corn syrup Stir in 2 cups roasted pecans & 1 cup cornflour

Pour into the pie crust and bake for about 1 hour. Leave to cool before serving with a scoop of ice cream.

Mixed Seed on buttered bread  Take off the crusts from fresh light grain bread. Butter the bread. Mix together your choice from the following seeds – roasted or toasted: Pinenuts, Pumpkin, Sesame, Sunflower, then add one or more of the following bushfood: Small chunks of Macadamia, Bunya, powdered or finely crushed Lemon Myrtle. Put the nuts into a wide shallow bowl then press the buttered bread into the mix.

Cut into 4. Great to have with late afternoon drinks!

Sesame Seed Dressing for Beans or other Greens Heat 2½ tbs of white sesame seeds in a skillet – shaking constantly until seeds are light brown and they pop. Reserve 1tsp of seeds.

Grind remaining seeds and combine with ½ tsp sugar, 1½ tbs soy and 2 tbs of dashi.

Spiced Mixed Nuts    Heat the oven to 150°C. Combine ¾ cup sugar, ¾ tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp ground cloves, ¼ tsp ground allspice, ¼ tsp ground nutmeg then stir in 1 slightly beaten egg white and 2½ tbsp water. Add 3 cups of nuts – about half a cup at a time (macadamia/walnut/pecan/brazil etc.) Stir with a fork until the nuts are totally covered with syrup. Drain off excess and place singularly on a greased cookie sheet.

Bake 45 minutes until nuts are golden and crispy.  Store in an airtight container.

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At our most enjoyable field trip, I heard our most kind host say that his roses were no good to talk about, as they were not edible so I thought I should mention that indeed they were. Two parts of the rose are edible: the hips and the petals. The hip (fruiting body or berry) is in Northern Europe a well known gift of autumn, picked from briar roses. During the war years, school classes were let loose over the ‘commons’ and forest lands on school outings, though no doubt many hips were picked too green, for you need a lot of them to make cooking worthwhile. They were greatly valued for their vitamin C content, though how much of the vitamin survived the cooking process is questionable. Anyway, the jam tasted nice.

I remember having the time consuming task under my grandmother’s supervision of cutting the fresh hips open and scooping out the seeds and the hairy fluff surrounding them, leaving the exocarp and fleshy layer 2-3mm thick. Later I acquired a wonderful attachment for my hand mincing machine which squeezed the pulp of the boiled fruit through a cone of sieve holes and pushed out the pips and hair at the front end. This does not yield quite as much pulp, but it makes the job a lot easier.

The lovely hybrid tea roses of our Australian gardens are not normally suitable for producing hips. They stay green, the edible layer is too thin, and the hips are produced over most of the year, so there are never enough at any one time to make harvesting worth-while. Besides, most roses are pruned or have their fruit removed to conserve their strength for producing more flowers. Old-fashioned shrubs flowering once a year are more suitable, as buds open all at once.

Some roses, mainly Rosa Rugosa, a deciduous shrub species, have been grown in the Netherlands  and northern Germany along roadsides expressly for their hips. They have single white to dark red flowers in early summer, mostly large, with a delicious perfume and a particularly high vitamin C content in their large hips. In times when citrus fruit was scarce or unavailable , they were highly prized. Rose-hip syrup is still sold in health shops to give to infants, but is rather expensive.

Now to the glorious edible petals. Most rose varieties are selected for long flowering seasons and for keeping well in vases, but what is worth saving is the fragrance. Without a really good old-fashioned damask fragrance, rose petals are of no use, for when boiled they are rather tough to chew. To make a good jam with them, you need to use enough apples to give it body.

I have used petals to make rose syrup as a cordial, using this recipe: fill a very large bowl with petals of fragrant, preferably red roses, and pour hot water over them, just covering them. Cover the bowl with a cloth, let it stand for a day to extract the fragrance and colour, and then pour the liquid into a big pot, squeezing out the petals and discarding them. Add an equal weight of sugar and, if you like, a little citric acid powder to taste. Boil up the mixture and pour into bottles with airtight screw tops to overflowing, screwing the tops down tightly. If you don’t care for the slightly bitter flavour, twist the petals all together off the stem end of the flower and cut off the white section at the base of the petals with scissors before soaking them. I have also found that rose petals with a little citric acid and plenty of sugar and gelatine make a nice dessert jelly. It’s best to add the rose petals freshly chopped, after the gelatine has cooked slightly.

Roses prefer a cold winter, preferably heavy soils, and/or constant attention. “Papa Meilland” seems to do quite well in Brisbane clay soils. In sandy soil where I live, nearly all rose cultivars deteriorate after one or two years. Only the particularly strong-growing “American Home” (bred by Boerner in the USA in the late 50s and 60s) survives long without spraying. Unfortunately it does not seem to be on the market anymore. Half a dozen plants of this cultivar would supply all the petals needed for a few bottles of syrup or wine in several flushes of perfect flowers a year.

Rose Petal Jam   500g strongly scented rose petals, (red or pink are best), 2 cups pure apple juice, 1.5kilo sugar, juice of 1 lemon. Cut off white heels off rose petals because these become bitter in cooking. Combine rose petals and apple juice, bring to boil, strain liquid and reserve petals. Return liquid to pan, add sugar, stir until dissolved, add lemon juice, and rose petals, continue cooking over heat until mixture gels. Pour into sterilised jars, seal with paraffin wax

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• Tapenade  by Marilena Stanton In a food processor blend: 1 cup pitted kalamata olives, 2 tbsps drained capers, 1 tablespoon seed mustard 4 cloves of crushed garlic, 6 anchovy fillets in oil, 2 tbsps of chopped fresh herbs, black pepper, juice of half a lemon and 4 tbsps olive oil. Delicious served on toasted Turkish bread.  Great for an end of day snack…will last a week in the fridge.
• Olives   I was dining at GOMA recently and our friends ordered the marinated olives which were served warmed. We loved them – far superior warmed than straight out of the fridge chilled!!  Ref: Sheryl
   
• Guacamole  Layer 1 ripe Avocado, ½ cup light cream cheese, ½ tsp taco seasoning, 1 tsp lemon juice, 2 tsp sweet chilli sauce
   
• Use Cooking Spray on your Avocado  Guacamole with tortilla chips is one of the easiest and tastiest snacks to whip up for a party. However, the avocado dip inevitably turns into a mushy brown mess in just a couple of hours meaning it’s not the most appetising of leftovers. Luckily, a nifty little hack has been discovered to prevent your guacamole turning brown and keep it looking green and delicious for at least 24 hours. Guacamole and nachos are a great party snack to serve your guests and there is now a way to keep it greener and fresher for longer. All you need is one ingredient and you probably already have it in your kitchen cupboard: Cooking spray! According to the foodie genuises, simply ‘spray the top of the dip with nonstick vegetable oil, olive oil or coconut oil spray’. Then, they add: ‘Cover the dip with plastic wrap and store it in the fridge.’ Cooking spray, which can be found in most kitchens also keeps halved avocados green. The spray creates an oxygen barrier around the mashed avocado and stops any oxidation from occurring – which is what makes it turn brown. Your guacamole should then stay fresh and green for around 24 hours. It even works on halved avocados too.  Ref:  www.dailymail.co.uk
   
• Mixed Seed on buttered bread   by Sheryl Backhouse Take off the crusts from light grain bread. Butter the bread. Mix together your choice from the following seeds – roasted or toasted: Pinenuts, Pumpkin, Sesame, Sunflower, then add one or more of the following bushfood: Small chunks of Macadamia, Bunya, powdered or finely crushed Lemon Myrtle. Put the nuts into a wide shallow bowl then press the buttered bread into the mix. Cut into 4. Great to have with late afternoon drinks!
• Bush BBQ Lemon Pepper       from Jude Mayall   www.outbackchef.com.au There’s a lot of ways to use this combination, made with Lemon Myrtle from the rainforest and Pepperberries from the alpine regions. You can mix it with cream cheese and spread into celery sticks or on biscuits. Mix it with sour cream or yoghurt and put a dollop onto a baked potato or with an avocado. Mix with your favourite oil and put through a green salad. Sprinkle over roast vegetables or mix with cheese and put through your favourite pasta dish.  It also works well with fish or chicken Makes a great bushfood dukkha (recipes are inside my packs).
• Beetroot Dip   by Marilena Stanton Preheat oven to 200°C. Bake 4 whole beetroot and garlic on a baking tray. Spray with olive oil and roast for 45 minutes, then cool. Peel the skin from the beetroot and squeeze out the flesh of the garlic. Place beetroot, 1 whole garlic, 2 tbsps lemon juice,½ tsp ground cumin and ½ tsp paprika into a food processor and whiz. Optional: ¼ tsp chilli powder. Stir in 250ml yoghurt and 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander into mixture and serve.
• Asian Pesto    by Marilena Stanton Vietnamese mint, Thai basil, Coriander (leaves, stem and root), Ginger grated,Garlic crushed, Lemon grass stem – centre only, finely chopped, Lime juice, Roasted unsalted cashews, Peanut oil to bind Put all ingredients in a food processor and whiz till fine.  Add more peanut oil to form a pesto consistency. This recipe varies each time I make it.  Really is to taste and what you have more of in terms of the herbs on the day. Serve with crackers/ toasted Turkish bread or as an accompaniment to Asian chicken dishes.
• Coriander (or mint) Chutney  Put all ingredients in a blender and whizz together until well blended. If it does not blend well, put in some more water rather than more oil. As an alternative, instead of coriander you can use fresh mint – and add sesame seeds and little grated ginger.1 small spring onion, 1 to 2 gloves of garlic, 1 large bunch of coriander, 30ml (2tbsp) ground almonds, 45 ml (3 tbsp) lime or lemon juice, 45 ml (3tbsp) vegetable oil, 10 ml (2tsp) sugar or honey, salt & black pepper to taste, 1 tsp desiccated coconut
• Mango and Avocado Salsa In a large bowl combine 1 tbsp of olive oil, juice of one lime, 1 tbsp brown sugar and season lightly. Add 1 each of diced mango and avocado, 1 finely chopped red onion, ½ bunch of roughly chopped mint, ½ bunch of chopped coriander, 1 thinly diced red capsicum and 1 small red chilli thinly sliced. Toss briefly to combine and serve with fresh prawns.

  Variation on above – add Walnut Salad Dressing

  This recipe is for 2 Avocado and 2 Mango. Dice some bacon and cook until crisp. In a jar combine ¼ cup of olive oil, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tsp French mustard and1 tbsp thickened cream. Shake well to combine. Just before serving pour the dressing mixture over the platter contents. Sprinkle the crushed walnut pieces and the bacon pieces onto the avocado and mango.

• Parsley Pesto   by Frances Gonano I always seem to either not have enough parsley or a glut of it! Until recently my gluts usually went to waste, but this recipe is really tasty. The parsley is mixed with parmesan and nuts, spiced up with lemon and garlic. It can be served with pasta or on a baked potato, but we usually use it in sandwiches. Macadamias can be replaced by almonds, or even try a combination of both. Process 3 cups parsley leaves, half cup macadamia nuts and 3 cloves of garlic together until finely chopped. Add one third cup virgin olive oil and 1½ tbsps lemon juice slowly to the food processor as it runs. Stir in 3 tbsps parmesan cheese. Taste, then add more lemon or parmesan if preferred. Once you’ve tasted this you may like to vary it by adding other herbs.
• Spiced Mixed Nuts  Heat oven to 150°C. Combine ¾ cup sugar, ¾ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, ¼ teaspoon allspice, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg. Stir in 1 egg white slightly beaten with 2½ tbsps water Add 3 cups nuts  – macadamia/walnut/pecan/brazil – about half at a time. Stir with a fork until the nuts are totally covered with syrup. Drain off excess and place singularly on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 45 minutes until nuts are golden and crispy.

  Allow to cool and then store in an airtight container.

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Ice Cream Plum Pudding      by Sheryl Backhouse Dissolve 1 tbsp cocoa in 2tbsp hot water Mix:  375gm small size currants, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg, 2 tsp mixed spice, 3tbs brandy, Add cocoa mix and stand overnight

Beat: 6 egg whites until stiff and add 1/3 cup castor sugar

Beat: 600ml thickened cream with 1/3 cup castor sugar Blend all ingredients together by hand Place in a bowl lined with foil. Freeze until solid. To turn out, run water over the base of the bowl. The original recipe called for mixed dried fruit but I chose to use currants. If you decide to substitute, don’t use any largest pieces of fruit as they remain in their frozen state. The recipe said you could use rum or sherry as an option. It can be made weeks in advance. I note that some manufacturers are putting out cream in 500ml containers – I think this would be fine. I also used a stainless steel platter which I kept in the freezer to keep it cold when serving. I used a 230mm round silicone ware container – doesn’t rust, easy to clean and exceptionally easy to turn out as food doesn’t adhere.

Grate a little chocolate over the top.

Fruit Icecream   This recipe is from Maleny Dairies website. No ice cream machine needed. Instead of using ice cream sticks, layer it in small individual containers. Pour 600 ml Maleny Dairies Cream into a large bowl. Add 2 tablespoons honey (or to taste), 1 teaspoons vanilla paste/essence and 2 teaspoons coconut sugar (or other sugar) Carefully whip the cream. Taste. Drizzle carefully with extra honey if desired. Blend 2 ripe mangoes until smooth and runny. Arrange some ice cream moulds or plastic cups Fill with a layer of the cream then some macadamias then mango, then cream, more macadamias then mango until filled with the final layer being cream. (about ½ cup raw macadamias in this recipe) Insert the ice cream stick or lid with stick and freeze for at least 4 hours. Optionally swirl the layers lightly together a little or leave as layers. Run the outside under lukewarm water until ice creams can be easily removed.

Thank you Bec from author Rebecca Mugridge  Enjoy everyone!

Egg yoke recipe – Irish Coffee Ice Cream
In a double boiler beat 6 egg yokes, ¾ cup castor sugar and 1½ tbs instant coffee powder over hot water until thick and creamy. Remove from heat and when cold, fold in 3tbs Irish Whiskey (or substitute) and 450ml of cream. Pour into very small moulds or just give folk a small scoop due to calorie content!!

Pineapple & Lemon Cordial Sorbet       by Jackie French Puree 2 cups of fresh pineapple which has been peeled and chopped Add ½ cup of lemon cordial and blend in with pineapple Place mixture in a freezer proof container with the lid on until set.

Remove from freezer, scrape out and serve.