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Sheryl:  Errol and Regina organise the Wide Bay Branch of the Rare Fruit Council which is centred on Maryborough. Our group has had an open invitation to visit at any time and particularly their annual break-up in December so this year, as Bob and I had purchased a roof-top camper for the old Prairie, we went up and spent the night there and enjoyed our visit very much. There was a short meeting, a good meal and also a plant auction and the break-up started with an orchard walk at 4pm. They have over 260 varieties of fruit trees on their house block along with Dexter Cattle, Goats and oil bearing native trees from which they distil oil (Melaleuca alternifolia, Backhousia citriodora, Leptospernum bractiata, L. petersonii, L. liversidii, L.darwinia & L. citriodora). They have grown a number of seedling citrus trees most of which ended up a thorny mess except for the Mandarins – Scarlett and Imperial. Their Imperial seedling is far superior to their grafted tree.  They are experimenting with the Lemon Scented Tea Tree (Leptospernum petersonii)  to keep bugs away from the fruit but think they were planted too far away from the trees they were meant to protect. Their next door neighbour has planted the trees in the same hole with great success.

Abiu  They have trouble keeping it going in winter. It gets loaded with flowers but doesn’t set fruit. Their 4^th tree has been planted north of the chook houses to protect it from the prevailing winter wind.

Allspice Pimento        Worth putting in – if only for the smell of the leaves.

Herbert River Cherry Antidesma   They have 3 trees by this name and all are different – fruit is very sour

Avocadoes   They grow them on large mounds around 2 metres which were originally old burn sites.  The tree with Comfrey planted around its base has not done as well as the other two even though they were told that Comfrey would provide Nitrogen.

Bixia  red and yellow and planted in the same hole – used as a food colouring – also used in dyes and lipstick

Carambola  The seedlings do much better than the grafted trees.

Capsicum  This is a tiny variety which doesn’t get stung

Cherry of the Rio Grande   It flowered once 3 years ago but won’t fruit

Citron very nice tree – good for marmalade and has a lovely fragrance

Citrus     Because of the dry weather a lot of the Citrus have thrown their fruit.

Curry Leaf Tree  Used in cooking – berries are OK too. Ron Kummerfeld said if you’re getting root nodules growing above ground it’s caused by too much surface watering so just water once a week and not on a regular basis so the roots will go down deep.

Custard Apple Annonas Soursop love zinc – 2 gms per litre of water for a foliar spray. Sheryl You can also mix it with a bit of urea

Elderberry     Wash them, then dip them in batter then deep fry. You can also make champagne from the flowers and chooks seem to lay better on the berries.

Eugenia zeyneli          Lovely tree. Suppose to be the nicest of all the bush food

Governors Plum        Thornless type. Doesn’t need a pollinator and fruits regularly throughout the year.

Granadilla hasn’t done very well but the Sweet Lilicoi has. Gordon It’s one of the most beautiful fruit but you need two totally unrelated plants for pollination. They don’t pollinate on each other like Granadilla does. Even another plant at the other end wouldn’t be successful unless it came from another area.

Chempadek & Jackfruit   They have 2 different Chempadeks – one with completely edible fruit and the other with orange seed capsules. They are planted with the Jackfruit 2½ metres apart to serve as a windbreak and in dry weather they get 30 litres of water per week.  

Grapes   Birds don’t touch the grapes that are grown 3 metres away from a row of Grevilleas but the vine grown on the orchard fence gets attacked.

Jaboticaba      Yellow variety is well worth growing.

Malabar  Chestnut & Saba   Lovely nut but the parrots get to them first.

Mulberry        They have black/white and white Shahtoot and have just planted cuttings from a local tree which fruits from spring through to autumn.

Native Mulberry   very pretty tree with minute subtly flavoured fruit loved by some birds

Java Plum      Excellent fruit but the birds get most of them

Herbert River Cherry  Very upright grower – needs a pollinator

Tropical Plum   Golf Gold does very well and doesn’t need a pollinator

Lychee            Kwai Muck has to be nursed when young as it’s cold here in winter.

Madrona        Very slow growing tree compared to the yellow Mangosteen. The tree has been in for 5 years and is only ½ mtr high.

Mango            They grow 24 varieties. Their favourite trees are the Haden/Nam doc My/Ono (late profilic) and a dwarf Banana Mango – origin unknown which bears wonderfully tasty fruit in great numbers. Lenzie said he knew a chap who pruned one side of his Mango trees one year and the other side the following year. Fertilizer – twice a year with organic fertiliser eg Dynamic Lifter but because they are on wallum sand, they have found they get more success with Nitrophoska Special. Ono variety always bears but quality is not there.  Errol and Lenzie score their trees vertically fairly deep with a penknife. This is done to the grafted trees and it makes the trunks bigger which gives a studier base for the top growth.  Use a penknife and go in as far as you can. Gordon Tait doesn’t do it The scoring tip came from a professional mango grower. Ron said to leave the lower leaves on as it thickens up the trunk. Java Blue very healthy.  Some of the mangoes were splitting due to the dry weather.  The seedling R2E2 gets loaded every year with fruit but the grafted one produces less fruit. Lenzie said he knew a chap who pruned one side of his trees one year and the other side the following year. 

Marula   needs a separate male and female tree for successful fruiting but they have no idea which sex their tree is.

Chinese Gooseberry   Phyllanthus acidus   Errol has been told the fruit is too sour to eat but he finds them quite palatable. There’s a bloke in Childers making jam and he will take all you’ve got.

Sea Grape    Gordon says that if it has a red growing tip it’s a female and if it’s a green growing tip, it’s a male. Regina has read that you can make wine with it.

Sygysium oleosum     Lovely looking tree – looks beautiful in flower

White Sapote    Seedling type doesn’t get very big fruit – member suggested fertilising it generously with Dynamic Lifter. Ron Kummerfeld says they don’t like being pruned.

Grasshoppers    Mix up some molasses and water and spray your tree.

Sheryl  How do you get the Brush Turkeys to stop taking your mulch away?

Errol    Tell them Christmas is coming!!

Update from Sheryl:   This article was written in 2005 and Errol and Regina now feel that they would like to relocate closer to town so their property is for sale. Ph: 07 4129 6364
 

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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Kwai Muk (Artocarpus lingnanensis or A. hypargyrea) is closely related to Jackfruit. It is native to Southern China, where it grows above 150 metres altitude. It is a slow-growing, erect tree to 10 metres, with attractive long slender leaves. Its dark green foliage makes it an attractive landscaping tree.

Kwai Muk produces small round fruits which have a velvety, yellow-brown skin, and orange to red flesh. The fruit may range from seedless to about 7 small seeds. These fruits are about 2.5 – 5 cm across (golf ball sized) and are acid to subacid and said to be refreshing and of excellent flavor. They can be eaten fresh when fully ripe, or can be dried, or preserved. The trees can be propagated from seed.

In Queensland, the fruit ripens from February to April. Tiny yellow male and female flowers are produced on the same tree, the females in globular clusters about 1cm long. Two trees may be needed for good fruit production. It is similar to mango and jak fruit in cold hardiness, with mature trees being able to survive about -4°C. It is relatively wind hardy.

Authored by: 

Jenny Awbery and Daleys website

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WWOOF. …no, it’s not the sound of someone trying to imitate a dog. It stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms, or to be correct… .World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.

Vic and I decided to become wwoofers in Spain, Portugal and France because we wanted to experience the lifestyles of families in these countries rather than just being a tourist. Anyone can become a wwoofer. Just log on to www.wwoof.org and you will be able to access the site of the organisation which gives you details on how to become a wwoofer. Organic farming is very labour intensive, so wwoofing is an exchange of accommodation and food for your work. Every host has different experiences to offer. On our four month journey we only had three things that we wanted to do in Europe, ie, visit the Alhambra in Granada, go dancing at La Paloma and visit the Gaudi architecture in Barcelona and then the rose gardens at Jardins de Bagatelle and Roseraie de l’Hay in Paris. Anything else was a bonus. After printing out the hosts’ names, addresses and email details from the computer, Vic and I gave each host a rating -(1) not very interesting to (5) sounds terrific. We then looked at the areas in which they lived. If it was in an area that we wanted to see, we wrote to them explaining who we were and indicated our desire to come to their farm and this is what we could offer them. Within 8 hours I received my first reply. Please come!!!!

Our experiences were varied. At our first farm in southern Spain we pruned fruit trees and olive trees. At the second farm, also in the south of Spain, I made jam while Vic did some building work and chain-sawing, cleaning out diseased trees. We then had a little side trip to Morocco to experience a comp1etely different culture, this time as a tourist but travelling with the locals on their transport. In the south of Portugal we helped our Portuguese hosts to clean the gardens and planted trees, then we travelled to northern Portugal where we fixed a lot of fences (everywhere we went we had to repair fences) and also helped 75 year old Alicia to plant potatoes. Then on to Barcelona to become a tourist again for a few days.

Our next host for 3 weeks in the French Pyrenees were middle aged hippies who migrated from Germany 24 years ago with a young family. This is where I looked after baby goats and learnt to milk goats while Vic did some welding and general maintenance. They had many visitors to this farm and the family was very involved in the life of the nearby village so we were also included in these activities. Their main income was derived from selling goats cheese at the markets twice a week, so Vic and I would take turns to help Didi sell cheese to the French, with our limited language skills. We laughed a lot!!!

Then on to an excellent organic farm near Nimes in southern France where our work was weeding, tying up tomatoes, thinning raspberries and general farm work including ploughing a paddock. The hosts were very professional in their attitude to organic farming; they also sold their produce at the local village markets. Our last stay was with a lady and her two children on a sheep farm near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of southwest France. She made her living from renting out tents in the summer holidays for people who wanted to camp on a farm. On this farm Vic had to cut trees from the forest which were then made into posts ready for us to build a chook house and once again repair the fences. After estimating the materials needed, we went shopping at the local hardware shops for all the necessary items, chicken wire, hinges, screws, etc. Vic also had to do some farrier work on two donkeys whose feet were in very bad condition. Although he is experienced with horses, he found that donkey’s feet are so much smaller; he calls them ballerina feet. At each place we stayed about two weeks, except in the Pyrenees where we stayed for three weeks. Many different types of accommodation were offered, from a room in the house to a very comfortable caravan. Meals were always with the family. On our days off we would do the tourist thing, ride bikes (after Vic fixed those as well) and visit the sights. All of our travel was by bus or train; we knew the address and would organise with each host for them to collect us from either the nearest bus station or train station. Our golden rule was to keep in contact with the hosts as often as possible to tell them of our movements and let them know what time of what day to pick us up. We kept in contact at internet cafes when we could and when we got closer to each destination we would ring them at home to arrange a pick up. The main requirement to be a wwoofer is willingness to work in exchange for food and accommodation and to be fit and healthy. Age does not matter. One thing I would suggest: take your own secateurs, hammer or tools that are comfortable in your own hands. We also took our own rubber boots just in case there was wet weather. We wore them at every farm. I arranged our insurance with World Nomads, only available on the internet. All of our hosts could speak English, most were very well educated, some speaking 3 or 4 languages. Vic and I would always try to converse in the language of the country we were visiting, even if it was very rudimentary whilst thumbing through a translation book. The locals appreciate the attempt at their language. Like all natives, Spanish, Portuguese, Moroccans and French people love tourists to take the time to enjoy their countries, their food, their culture and their people. I would recommend this type of travel for those wanting something different because rushing from one sightseeing glimpse to another doesn’t imprint anything in one’s heart or mind. Buy a postcard instead, or better still watch it on television!

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

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Australian subtropical fruit industries Avocado and Lychee and the more tropical Mango are currently venturing into high density orchards with little experience and knowledge of canopy management methods required to manipulate trees to limit tree size whilst maintaining high production.

 This paper attempts to provide a basic understanding and starting point for growers considering high density orchards with some application to existing wide spaced orchards.  A glossary of canopy management terms is included, as this is an essential part in understanding and applying recommendations in the Avocado, Lychee and Mango canopy management calendars. Discussion and recommendations are based on observations of current subtropical canopy management methods being used in Mexico, Florida, Israel, South Africa, Thailand and Australia.

Introduction

 Historically Australian subtropical fruit industries have planted orchards at permanent wide spacing and more recently in the past 10- 15 years, planted at double spacing and practiced tree removal as trees compete for space and sunlight.  Apart from skirting bottoms of trees, trees have been allowed to grow at will.The result is very large trees that are difficult to harvest, spray and protect from wind, hail or native birds.  Also tree removal often is delayed and sometimes not done at all to the detriment of fruit production and profit.

 There is currently a worldwide trend in countries such as Florida, Israel and South Africa to plant subtropical fruit trees on permanent high density spacing and to manipulate tree growth using canopy management and pruning techniques to control tree growth patterns and tree shape and ultimately limit tree size, while still maintaining high fruit production of desired fruit size and quality.

 This paper deals collectively with ideas and grower practices currently being used and trialed in Mexico, Florida, Israel, South Africa, Thailand and Australia.  It is designed to be a starting point for growers wanting to plant high density and control tree size. Not all canopy management questions can be answered at this point in time and recommendations may not be fully understood until first-hand experience is gained by putting methods into practice.  Please refer to the glossary of terms for a better understanding of the actual pruning operations recommended.

Glossary of Canopy Management / Pruning Terms

Indiscriminate Pruning

Random growth removal by hand or mechanical hedging machines that mostly results in strong regrowth.

Selective Pruning

An accurate form of hand pruning usually back to a desired lateral or bud.  Tip pruning, heading back, skirting and flower pruning are all examples of selective pruning.

Determinate Shoots

Refers to an emerging flower that does not regrow a vegetative shoot from the end of the flower as mostly happens in Mangoes and Lychee.  Sporadic, strong, vertical determinate shoots in Avocados that carry exposed fruit prone to sunburn should be removed during the early spring prune.

Indeterminate Shoots

Avocados usually have indeterminate shoots on strong, upright flowering terminals that produce a vegetative shoot out of the end of the flower.  This indeterminate growth is the first vegetative shoot to appear in spring during or immediately after flowering.  Very strong indeterminate growth usually needs to be tip pruned in late spring.

Headback (heading)

Selective pruning and removal or partial removal of generally stronger upright growth back to old laterals or basal buds.  Excessive regular ‘heading’ can cause strong re-growth and water-shoots that will need tip pruning or controlled leader pruning during summer.

Tip Prune

Light selective growing point removal or pruning back of generally strong/medium upright growth back to newly developing laterals on the same branch.  Mostly done in older trees that already have developed proper tree shape.

Controlled Leader Pruning

Selective growing point removal or pruning back of generally strong terminal (top) growth in young trees 1-5 years old back to 1-3 vertical buds above newly developing laterals on the same branch.  This slows down the upwards growth and develops more lateral growth but still allows vertical buds to produce an upright leader.

Watershoots (suckers)

Refers to strong vigorous growth anywhere within the trees’ framework above the graft, usually coming from dormant buds on mature branches.  Do not remove this growth completely as it has enormous fruiting potential, rather tip prune or headback to 5-8 strong laterals mid to late summer.

Topping (mechanical hedge rowing)

Refers to indiscriminate, non-selective, mostly external branch removal either by hand or usually by mechanical hedging machinery to maintained desired tree shape.  Hedging results in some strong vigorous regrowth that grows out past the uniform hedged canopy that must be carefully removed by re-hedging or selective hand tip pruning.  Mechanical  hedge rowing is labour saving but repeated over use can cause multi-branched dense regrowth that must be selectively hand thinned.

Skirting

Pruning of lower branches or ‘skirt’ of the tree to aid in weed control, surface mulch applications, mini sprinkler irrigation distribution and to discourage fruit of lower branches touching the ground.  Best time to do this is during early flowering during cool weather when trees are not in a strong vegetative growth phase.

A maximum height of 0.5m is recommended.  Repeated skirting by selective hand pruning can eventually result in strong, robust branches able to support fruit without touching the ground.

Stumping

Cutting back trees above graft to bare stumps usually 1-1.5m above ground.  Comfortable chain saw height is best.  Carried out to retrain old crowded feral orchards older than 12 years or to topwork to another variety.

                      Best times in subtropics.          Mango –           late September/October

                                                                             Avocado –        June/July/August

                                                                             Lychee –          May/June

If these times are not possible due to presence of fruit or frosts, then leave a horizontal nurse branch unpruned to equate about 20% of the tree’s volume.  Immediately paint any exposed branches and stump with a good quality flat white plastic paint to stop sunburn.

Stump Regrowth Pruning

All vegetative shoots are allowed to regrow from the remaining stump.  When any strong vigorous shoots reach a height of 1-1.5m from stump, head back to laterals.  Do not allow any strong terminal growth to develop above 2-2.5m until a heavy crop is set 12 months after stumping.  Then carry out normal controlled leader pruning and tip pruning during the second summer growth period.

Access Pruning

Should not be necessary in a well canopy managed orchard.  If access alleys into trees to aid in harvesting or servicing irrigation is required, do during skirting operation at commencement of flowering when not in a vegetative growth phase.

Flower Pruning

Early flowers are selectively cut off or pinched out in cold areas to encourage reflowering and later fruit set when weather is warmer.  Timing of this operation is critical and dependant on variety and climate.

Snapping/Pinching

A form of -selective pruning using hands on young flowers or soft new growth often used on Mangoes to encourage lateral branching and tree complexity on 1-2 year old trees.

Primary Crotch and Branches

Main or first crotch of tree above ground level with main branches coming from at or near this crotch.

Secondary Crotch and Branches

Smaller branches coming from crotches above primary crotch and primary branches.

Cincturing (girdling or ringbarking)

Complete bark removal down to, but not into, hard wood.  Used in early maturing Lychee cultivars to prevent a second late summer or autumn growth flush.  The cincture is normally done in late summer/early autumn when the first growth flush after post harvest pruning has hardened and if a second growth flush is imminent.  Width of cincture is between 2-4 mm and must heal over by ideal flowering time.  Cincturing Avocado and Mango is not a standard practice anywhere to date.

New laterals

Lower developing lateral growth or side branches that are part of but below a strong and actively growing upright watershoot or main shoot or leader.

Old Laterals

Mature hardened lateral growth or side branches at the base of a previously pruned leader or any non-vigorous lateral growth within the tree framework.

Bud

In the context of canopy management in this paper refers to a bud, usually on a vertical branch, that has the potential for vegetative growth during summer.

Terminal Bud/Growth (dominant apical growing point)

The dominant end bud at the very end of a vertical branch that has the potential to produce the strongest growth.  The strong vertical growth of this bud often suppresses secondary regrowth of laterals and reduces tree complexity and fruiting potential.

Major Limb Renewal (window pruning)

This selective major limb removal operation occurs in mature bearing orchards from year 5-6 onwards in trees trained with 4-5 multi leaders from planting.  A maximum of only 15-20% of total tree volume should be removed at any one time.  Select the most dominant single upright limb or alternatively remove two smaller higher upright secondary limbs evenly spaced within tree canopy.  This should be done during early flowering during cool weather when the tree is in a non-vegetative phase.

Tying Up

Refers to tying up heavily fruiting branches mostly in Mangoes using single continuous pole mounted horizontal wire along row above trees or by wiring smaller branches back onto strong upright limbs.

Propping

Timber supports to hold up heavily fruiting lower branches to prevent fruit touching ground.  Less preferred than tying up as it restricts use of boom sprays for weed control.

Dormancy

Period during which a subtropical evergreen tree stops growing and either develops flower buds or remains idle during winter, until a trigger or stimulus occurs causing bud break and flower development and/or emergence.

Rejuvenation Pruning

Refers usually to mechanical hedging or topping or cutting back to the desired tree shape and sir of either younger 10- 12 year old feral orchards that have never been pruned or mature high density orchards that have failed to set a crop  and are in an off year.

 It is essential to carry out selective controlled leader pruning and tip pruning on strong vegetative regrowth throughout spring/summer growing period.  The best time for rejuvenation pruning is as for stumping.  If a crop must be harvested or cyclones remove fruit in mid-summer and pruning must be done during the summer growing season, consider pruning only half of each tree along the row at one time with the other half done when regrowth has hardened or do the following year at the correct time.

Tree Shape

Tree shape refers to the natural growth habit unique to every specific cultivar or variety.  It is advised to work with the natural growth habit of the tree rather than against it.  Generally the following two basic shapes can be identified in fruit varieties and a recommended guide is as follows

                                                     

                Narrow Pyramid                                                                        Tent

                 Avocado:                                                                                  Avocado:

                 Hass                                                                                          Fuerte

                 Pinkerton                                                                                  Shepard

                 Zutano                                                                                      Sharwil

                 Gwen                                                                                        HX48

                 Edranol                                                                                     86

                 Reed                                                                                         Green Gold

                 Wurtz

                 Lamb Hass

                 Mango:                                                                                      Mango:

                 Kent                                                                                          Keitt

                 Sensation                                                                                 R2E2

                 Tommy Atkins                                                                          Nam Dok Mai

                 Haden                                                                                      Heidi

                 Florigan                                                                                   Kensington

                 Zillate                                                                                      Palmer

                 Brooks                                                                                     Isas

                 Valencia Pride                                                                        Glenn

                 Lychee:                                                                                  Lychee:

                 Kwai May Pink (B3)                                                               Tai So

                 Chacapat (Emperor)                                                              Brewster (Floridian)

                 Fay Zee Siu                                                                          Kwai May Red (B 10)

                                                                                                              Wai Chee

                                                                                                              Kaimana

                                                                                                              Salathiel

                                                                                                             Souey Tung

                                                                                                              Bengal

 

 

 

Permanent High Density Tree Spacing

                                                                                                    Narrow Pyramid                        Tent

Low Vigor Cultivar                                                                    6×3                                               7×3

Medium Vigour Cultivar                                                           7×3                                               8×3

High Vigour Cultivar                                                                 7×4                                               8×4

Row Direction

North South orientation along row preferred for high density orchards, ideally up and down the slope if mounding to aid in water run off or across steep slopes to give min. 4-5% to max 8- 1 0% slope along rows.

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I started off in Nambour in the DPI for seven years and then spent another 30 odd years around Caboolture. I was the banana inspector for the northern suburbs of Brisbane an  I roamed around Arana Hills, Everton Hills and Grovely because that was the last lot of the bunchy top that was around Brisbane.

I have always had my farm and grown mainly avocados and custard apples, and then messed around with a few other things. You go along to someone who has a crop and you think: wow, this is the way to go. So the next thing is, a dozen plants go in and then after 5 years they get ripped out because of  climatic or a number of other different reasons.

Marketing
I tried grapefruit and ended up with Tangelos. Tangelos you can sell. Grapefruit: you can go to a big fruit barn and they will take a box a week. So if you have 20 or 30 boxes at a time, you are going to have to find 20-30 fruit shops. I tried the Brisbane markets.

One day I went up to Nambour DPI and someone said “Your Avos in Sydney are $22-25 a carton”; I was getting $10 in Brisbane and I never even knew they were being sent to Sydney, so that is the marketing situation.

Deciding what to grow, I now would always be fairly sceptical about newspaper articles, journals and the like. These are very often created by people who have a different motive at the time and they are also in a different environment. I tried Loquats grafted onto Quince A because in Israel they have Loquats grafted onto Quince A and get 60 tonne to the acre or hectare. I got these Quince A plants and grafted them on, they grew so slowly and after several years I chopped them out. Seeing someone growing the crop is probably one of the main things that you can work on with the oddball crops anyway.

Climacteric and non-climacteric fruit. Climateric fruit are fruit like Papaw and Rockmelon. They need to be on the plant for a certain length of time before they are actually able to be eaten.

Non-climateric fruit like Carambola or Banana can be harvested over a greater range of time. They don’t have to be completely filled out to mature themselves once they have been picked. When you get onto this phenology stuff it applies to animals as well as plants, and it is an interaction of plants and animals with the environment, the climatic conditions, the day length variation throughout the year etc.

It has been found that  when you talk about branched plants like tomatoes or trees, density or row placing is not that critical. You have to have access to harvest. You have to have irrigation systems laid out so that they distribute the water evenly, and maybe there would be some cases where you could have a crop that was hard to spray because there were too many trees there. But generally the whole system, with density in branched plants, is fairly forgiving.

Fertiliser on the other hand is a different thing. The wrong timing, particularly of nitrogen, can cause a lot of things to go vegetative, shed flowers, drop fruit. The rate that you use of the chemical is fairly important. When you get over to the single stemmed types like Papaw, Corn, Bananas, Pineapples, fertilising is not so critical. I saw a banana grower once who by mistake put 15 bags of urea on 2 acres of bananas over a 4 month period and the bananas were just about as green as the rest of the bananas on the property. The fruit was the same quality as the rest of the bananas so it is not that critical, but the row spacing in the single stemmed plants is more critical. You can end up with a concentrated harvest of smaller fruit under high density, where you might desire lower density to have bigger fruit that you can pick over a longer period of time. In the case of the Pineapple they jam them in, they get a certain sized pineapple which suits a certain sized can and it suits the pineapple industry quite well. So that is your phenology.

With bananas, you must get plants from a recognized source with a permit from the DPI [now DAFF]. There is not much bunchy top in the area here, but the DPI while responding to possible reports on disease occurrence have dropped out on the amount of surveillance they are doing on the stuff because it is already here in the country. So they are mainly worried about what turns up from time to time, and resources get pushed into these things. 
I started in 1969, and as far as incursions and interstate movement everything up until 1990 was a dream. You would ring up an old bloke in Head Office twice a year, now there are people in every area. To send stuff to WA there is a great heap of protocols, inspections that have to go on because of melon thrips, silver leaf white fly and things like the absence of soil in potting mix. So there is very little bunchy top in the area, but if people pick up their plants and cart them a few kilometres away, as well as being illegal, it would place more work for the authorities in the future and a burden for the industry, as bunchy top travels from backyards to commercial farms. Diseased plants form a nucleus start up in the area, so one day an inspector goes down a road, that house has got it, that house has got it, that house has got it, and eventually it peters out after you have been around the block a million times, been into places. Being the government (representative) you couldn’t just go in there with 2-4-D and just spray all over the place, you had to make contact with the owner. When you went to a place like Buderim, the owner was invariably in Sydney or Melbourne. The people next door never even knew who they were, so you would have to go through a whole lot of messing around with real estate agents ,and then someone would say “go in there and hose the place down with 2-4-D if you need to”, right so in you would go.

The ring spot in Papaws is spread out in a fair part of Brisbane. It spreads more or less the same way as bunchy top does in bananas except it is a lot faster. You will find a 10 acre patch of Papaws, if it gets a few ring spot there is probably another 100. If you had half a dozen ring spot in 3000 Papaw plants there is probably another 100 that have it that are not showing symptoms, and then in late spring you get a bit of rain, a bit of warm weather, and it just flushes away and you get a variegated sort of foliage on top. The shape of the Papaw leaf is the same as it is when it is green, but you have light and dark areas of yellow and green through it, and it makes it look a bit variegated. It is a pretty looking plant until you realise it has ring spot. Also there are dark streaks in the petioles and eventually irregular ring-like spots on the fruit. Ring Spot is spread all through Brisbane in bits and pieces. We never had any regulatory powers to tell people to wipe them out or give them an order, except that you can’t take Papaw plants out of the Brisbane area, whether healthy or diseased, but when you told people about it or left a note in their letterbox and you went back, they usually chopped them all out. There are usually 1 or 2 little ones there, but the poor little things they might have a chance, so they leave them there because they might grow out of it, but of course they won’t. That is just human nature, as well as the general lack of knowledge of disease movement by the general public.

Since I have retired, which is nearly 2 years ago, I have always wanted to do something with ‘run to waste hydroponics’, using tyres up 1mtr high, with 14 litre pots tied into the top tyre, filled with furnace ash growing tomatoes. They weren’t too bad; determinate type tomatoes, so they just hang down over thetyres, slots in the tyres to stop water getting (and) staying in there – that was last summer. This summer it has been Eggplant, Lettuce, Pepinos and Cucumbers and they have all done well. It works quite ok and is running on tank water. I might learn more about conditioning the water the hard way if I started using the dam water, but I have plenty of tank water just for 50 plants. I like the idea because it largely looks after itself.

The previous Christmas I went to the daughter down in Sydney, and I told the guy next door the minimum to run the hydroponics which was fine. This year I went to Perth to visit my other daughter, the guy next door was away and I gave the lady over the road the run down and she sounded interested. The plants survived. In this editing of the talk, what I was trying to say is that plants in this type of culture are a little more forgiving than the novice would believe. For example, last year the tomatoes went for a half day or so without water. When I saw the problem I thought blossom end rot for sure, well they were fine. It is not until you grow things in this way that you start to consider that the basis of all life could come down to no more than a dozen or so chemicals.

I grow avo’s, custards, tangelos, papaws. I have a few bananas. I am trying to process a few lightly roasted macadamias with just a thin layer of chocolate on them. I have a few acres of rubbishy country that I have filled up with bana grass (pennisetum purpureum) that was planted before Christmas and it is 2mtr high now. The plan is to scoop it up with the tractor and spread it around the avo’s. With avocados you need the antagonistic organisms (fungi/bacteria), use manure, straw calcium sulphate (gypsum) built up to antagonise the phytophthora. You can spray phosphorous acid on, you can use your fertiliser right, you can irrigate properly, but the root rot is nibbling away 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It increases the cost of growing avo’s when you have to maintain this sort of stuff. They are not so good when the root rot gets going. Being a natural rainforest tree in its native situation it does not have protection against sunburn, so when you lose 50% of the leaves from root rot the sun comes in and burns the branches and that is the big problem there. As well the avo’ tends to ration out its photosynthates to favour fruit development first, and then vegetative growth second, and then what comes a poor third are the roots. So you can get a great looking plant with a great crop on it, but if you don’t keep pushing everything into it, like water and fertilizer. In 12 months time it can still have another crop on it with a few yellow leaves, and looking pretty crook, so that is the problem with avo’s. They will overbear themselves out of existence.

The hydroponics are in three rows: the first row is all Pepinos, then I have the other two rows of Pepinos. But in the pot you can have a Pepino in the middle, and while the Pepino is slowly growing you can put a cucumber or a couple of cucumbers, or maybe a tomato, or even a lettuce and it matures, and then the Pepino is up and going.  What I have yet to find out is whether the old plants can hang on well in hydroponics. If they don’t want to hang on, if I have to keep on layering them into the associated pots to keep younger stock all the time, they might get the chop. To propagate them, put a little marcott on the Pepino just with grass, you don’t have to cut around it or anything. Shove the grass around it, put a bit of old plastic bag around it, tie it on and 2 weeks all the roots are in there. Cut it off and stick it in the pot; so they are easy to do a marcott on and you can do a plant that has 30 or 40 leaves. Of course if you want to go for mist you can take cuttings and put it in mist. Even in hydroponics I have just stuck a piece of a branch in the hydroponics with all this heat and the thing grows. The system gets a half a litre of water 5 times a day on each plant in summer.

Member: Any problem with fruit fly in Pepinos?
Don: They absolutely go mad over them. You have to treat. They seem to get in fairly early in the fruit when you don’t really think they are there. Pepinos are a climacteric type fruit. You could not grow them and treat them like tomatoes. With tomatoes you can harvest the fruit when they are not really ripe, not showing much colour, and they will still turn out sort of all right, whereas they are best if they are left on the plant until they are fully ripe. But Pepinos need to be on the plant until they are fully ripe, so that is one big problem with Pepinos.

Member: Tell us something about the tyres?
Don: That gives you the height above the ground. People will tell you if you are going to put this in commercially you are going to need heaps of tyres and one day the disposal cost could be high. With slots in the tyres so they drain I have not found any problem with mosquitoes breeding in them. If you don’t put the slots in them they tend to tip over, they fill up with water when it rains and they fall over. There is a stake in between each two tyres and that is a cost.

Sheryl: There is some literature to say that we should not use tyres to grow plants in, but you are just using them as a prop so your plants growing in pots inside the tyres can hang down, and the plant doesn’t touch the ground.
Don: Yes, you could say that. Slow breakdown rate as far as I am concerned. I use tyres for my irrigation sprinklers. I have a couple of tyres high, I put a little cross in the top of the tyre and a little slot in the bottom of the tyre, and I put my sprinkler there. Sprinklers are 0.5 mtr high above the ground so they can be located when they get covered by weeds. When you create the right conditions to grow a crop like avo’s you are also creating the right conditions for  weeds, and it is your tropical legumes like Glycine, it is the main one, and also Green Panic. These things just grow. I can slash and a week later it is a foot high in summer, and so very often I will start my slashing when the weeds are like that in between the trees, but around the trees I will have that down with a smaller mower, sprays etc.

Member: Can animals be used within crops?
Don: When you start with animals everything is fine until you start spraying the crop, then you have a different taste there and they start experimenting. Then you have the problem too of the residues of the chemicals that the animals could be feeding on so that is a problem. You can use sheep or goats to do a lot of damage to the weeds, and when they start to chew the bark get them out, but then there are the sprinklers and they get caught up in the pipes etc.

Member: Can you tell us more about the Ring Spot in Papaws?
Don: Ring Spot on Papaws is a virus and it is in the plant, and the only way is to chop them out, but like bunchy top in bananas once you destroy that plant you don’t need to burn it or take it away. Once that plant has wilted the aphids can’t feed on that plant, and so chop the plant up and leave it in your garden. Then in three months time stick another papaw plant in and you will not have ring spot. The only way that you will have ring spot is if those aphids were able to go and feed on some other Papaw somewhere, and then come back onto your Papaw.

George: How is bunchy top spread?
Don: Bunchy top is spread either by people moving planting material that is infected with bunchy top, or via the banana aphid. The banana aphid has to feed for a certain amount of time on an infected plant and then it is able to infect another plant for several hours. If that aphid goes and feeds on a lantana plant, or a thistle, or a grass, it loses the virus. It can’t maintain the virus in its system. If it has living young, which aphids do, some aphids are able to transfer the disease to their living young, and I think the cucurbit viruses in watermelon and zucchinis can be shifted that way, but the banana one I don’t think it can be. The mechanism that the aphid has to spread bunchy top is not an efficient method of distributing the virus. That said, if you have a backyard down in a gully and no one knows it is there, and because of the terrain you can have difficulty detecting the disease, when driving around. Southern Queensland has hot spots of bunchy top – Mapleton, Montville, Palmwoods, Woombye. When you get into the city or town, then you have a bit more access when driving around but it was always a problem. Sometimes a farmer would get one bunchy top every year and he would chop it out and that would be the end of it. He would recognize it early, but the problem commercially with bunchy top is what is called “symptomless” carriers. You have a banana plant infected with bunchy top but it won’t show symptoms for at least several months. So aphids are feeding on it, going around the local vicinity infecting other plants and then one day, it gets recognized and chopped out, but that plant has been infecting for a long time. That is the biggest problem, that is why one farmer will get one or two every few years and he will see it quickly and chop it out. Another grower might end up getting rid of considerable areas, because a patch might be so thinned out to become uneconomical. Bunchy top in otherwise healthy plants exhibits itself well, while plants with nematodes, or drought stressed, are harder to see the symptoms. We in the industry talk about “old men”. They are bunchy top plants that have had it for a long time. The centre leaf basically in a bunchy top plant is shorter and not as wide as the previous one. The banana plant throws over 40 leaves from the time it comes out of the ground, to the time it gets a bunch. The first 30 to 35 of them are visibly longer and wider, once they get to about 35 leaves if you suddenly start to see that the leaves are shorter and not as wide as previous leaves, then there is something wrong and that could be bunchy top.

The real determination of bunchy top are the lines which are like morse code when you look in the younger leaves from underneath. You might have to hold the leaf up to the light and you can see these definite lines. Once you have seen it once you will know it, and you will know it from then on. Bunchy top affects Lady Finger, Cavendish, Gold Finger, the whole lot.

Member: What is Panama Disease in bananas?
Don: Panama – there are several races or strains of panama disease in bananas. It is a fungus. It is in the soil, if it is there. Lady Fingers are the most susceptible although there are a few other types that are grown experimentally which are more susceptible. Cavendish are less susceptible and Gold Fingers are less susceptible again. You are not supposed to have Cavendish in the backyard, so if you had Panama disease and Lady Fingers the next alternative is Gold Finger, and of course Gold Finger produces an enormous bunch. If it is over fertilised, especially in summer or you try to ripen it too quickly, the fruit has a short shelf life. Managed right it is a good banana.

Member: What type of soil is suitable for Avocados?
Don: If you have a soil that is droughty, that wets up fairly quickly when it rains, and it dries out quickly after rain, that is not very good. If it is a heavier soil that does not warm up like a light soil does, so its temperature is more uniform throughout the year that is better.

If the soil is naturally high in calcium and organic matter and has a good moisture retention then that is a plus. Deep, well drained soil is not prone to water-logging.

The other thing is that avo’s do not have root hairs. The plants that have the greatest number of root hairs are probably the grasses. I read once where a grass had a total length of all the root hairs, even though they were only about 2 or 3mm long, can be so many thousands of miles just in one plant. All the little root hairs keep on growing out and then dying all the time, but they give the plant a great surface area to take moisture in, but avos do not have root hairs. The finest roots are about 2mm wide and no root hairs, so once you drop your moisture in the soil down to 10% below field capacity the plant temporarily shuts down. Field capacity of water – the soil has been saturated and when it has been drained out what is left is the water holding onto the particles of soil, and that is called field capacity and it varies with different soils. It is lower in a sandy soil and higher in a heavy soil. But a heavy soil will have plants wilting when the water is at a higher level than in sandy soil, so in some ways a sandy soil can feed water into a plant when there is not very much water left in the soil.

Member: Is there a symbiotic organism like a mycorrhiza for avo’s?
Don: Under laboratory conditions there are some mycorrhizas that colonise the roots of Avocados. Research in the future to establish a symbiotic relationship, be it with a mycorrhiza or some other organism — in the field, that has significant benefit to the crop, appears to be on the move by the looks in California and Israel. Certainly it would be an interesting field to work in. The future could see work on it in this country if plant pathologists are able to get the funding for this research. Macadamias have a mycorrhiza. There are other mycorrhizas that are adaptable to a wide range of plants, and they are sort of beneficial to all of them, but there are some plants that have a specific mycorrhiza for that plant. 
Member: Where would mycorrhizas be obtained?
Don: To get a mycorrhiza of a specific type for a specific thing you would have to talk to a laboratory and someone who is likely to propagate that thing and distribute it out to you. Another suggestion would be a specialist in the particular crop.
Member: How do macadamias get mycorrhiza?
Don: That was the old thing with the macadamia nursery. The macadamia nurseryman, if he propagated his macadamias in pots, before sale he would collect some soil from the orchard and put some on the top of each pot, and that would inoculate them with the mycorrhiza.

Member: Are there suitable ground covers for macadamias?
Don: The sweet smother grass sounds as though it is going to be used a bit more in macadamias for under the tree. Macadamia growers tend to have a problem by removing the leaves so they can harvest, so they don’t have the organic carbon going back into the soil so much, and this may be one of the reasons why they often have macadamia decline after a number of years.

Member: What affect does Banana Weevil Borer have on bananas?
Don: Banana beetle or banana weevil borer, tends to affect a plant that is unthrifty to begin with – more prone in the Cavendish types. You can treat for the problem by spraying around the base of the plant. A lot of it is sanitation by getting rid of the old plants. The beetle borer became resistant to dieldrin then gradually they became resistant to other chemicals. A chemical will come out and it will do a good job for a few years, and then a grower will say “I never had control”.  The only chemical that you could get for beetle borer for bananas in the backyard would be Lorsban [now a group 1B Insecticide, and too hazardous for use by householders – website.ed.] but it costs about $50.00. Your best strategy for beetle control is just practice general sanitation, water and fertilise reasonably well you can get away with a lot. I have not treated my bananas with anything for beetle for about 10 years and they still produce reasonably well. The lady fingers are more tolerant of that type of thing. Nematodes are very often the culprit because they weaken the plant, and the beetle tends to get in more where you have a weaker plant. A starved plant is more likely to have problems like beetle.

Member: Have you found any residue in bananas in Australia with these things?
Don: When the banana plants are sprayed around the base with chemicals to control beetle borer there has been no evidence that the material has got up into the fruit. Even in the days of dieldrin, when people used dieldrin around the base of plants the only way problems occurred was when the fruit was sprayed illegally.

Member: How can macadamia nut borer be controlled?
Don: There are a number of chemicals that can be used for the macadamia nut borer. If you have a macadamia variety that has hardened the nuts by Christmas, it is usually tough enough that it is not really all that prone to the problem. If you have a variety that is susceptible you would have to monitor the activity of the pest and do a treatment, and it would be easy to control I guess compared to other things.
Member: What are the predators for the borer?
Don: They are actually a little wasp and the eggs come on a card and then you staple it onto the leaves and the eggs hatch out and they parasitise the nut borer. Member: How would these insects be kept?
Don: If there are hosts for them they would become naturalized in the area. Member: Would they be successful? Don: It depends what you are going to spray. You would have to buy them in at the same time every year. I know one grower that has been buying them in for lychees, but I am not sure what he has been doing for the other problems that you would get in lychees.

Member: What problem is the Fruit Spotting Bug?
Don: The fruit spotting bug is a fair problem in avo’s and custards, to a lesser extent in macadamias. There are two species. Both species affect avo’s, one species affects custards. Chemical control is virtually the only way especially in the early part of the season when the fruit is soft. The harder varieties like Hass and Sharwil are less prone once you go past Christmas. I have Fuerte, Hass,Sharwil and Reed and I drive along and come to a Fuerte tree and I go for good coverage, but the Hass and Sharwil I fly past them. I will still do both sides of the tree. Whereas custards this year I have not seen much bug in them at all so I have been going a bit lighter on them for better or worse.

Member: How does the DPI monitor chemical use?
Don: They do residue tests. When I first started in the DPI a visit to the Brisbane markets would see cabbages coming in that were reeking with dieldrin, and no one had any powers to do anything about it at all. But if they were rotten or had grub damaged they could be condemned. Well now cabbages or anything can come into the markets riddled with grubs, that is quality control, let the buyer beware. But if someone in chemical services of the DPI goes to a market, usually from some kind of an idea that a district might be using more of a chemical that is normally used on, say orchids, and there is only about half an acre of orchids in the area but there are 1,000 acres of another crop in the area, they will say “what is going on?”. They might go and sample something from the markets, or shops, or from the farm, and analyse the produce for that chemical. It is not the way to run a business by using chemicals that are not registered for the particular crop. Sometimes a chemical might be only registered for a certain stage of a crop, like only on the non-fruiting ones not on fruiting ones. Following the directions on the label is the best port of call.

Member: How does Anthracnose occur in mangoes?
Don: Anthracnose happens when you have cold and wet conditions. You can go to the Philippines or New Guinea where the temperature is never below 25 and it rains all the time and they eat mangoes six months of the year, but you can go to a place like Bowen where they get a few cold times every now and then, and a little bit of rain. If they do not spray they will lose a certain amount of their crop. Down here you are in that situation where the cold and the wet is coupled with little eco systems around south Queensland. There are some little eco systems that are a little bit colder and a little bit damper, and not enough air flow to dry the plants out quickly, and they are very prone to anthracnose.

I have 15 mango trees. I have rarely got anything from them because I never ever sprayed them, so rather than knock them down and put them over to tangelos, I am thinking I have left them there for 10 years, or so maybe I should do some spraying, so that is what the plan is next spring. Then you have the protective chemicals like the Mancozeb which you can put on and it is cheap. You put on Copper, but when you see rain go over to the eradicating type chemical (Octave), which costs a lot more to use but you should not put it on too much, because you can get resistance to the chemical.

Member: How might future incursions of pests and disease be handled?
Don: The DPI do random checks of the markets in relation to that sort of thing. There is a certain amount of surveillance going on too. After all this stuff like the fire ants there has been an increased amount of traps put down near the airport and the port for a lot of forestry pests.So the idea would be if we get something like the gypsy moth in, we would end up with earlier notification of it being there because the fire ants were just there a little bit too long. They were there for at least 5 years and probably every month was costing an extra couple of million dollars while they were just growing and moving around the place. So there is a certain amount of plant health people who are going into corners of Queensland and making themselves known, recording what is growing, doing a GPS of it, and then that would go up to Cairns and it is all on a database there. Because you have the mango problems up north, the weevil and two species of leaf hoppers; one is in Mareeba now. Because they treat for fruit fly the fruit are ok to move to markets around the country, but anyone with a nursery in Mareeba can’t send mango plants out of the Mareeba area.

I grow these bush-type snake bean. I tried to get the ordinary old running snake bean. I searched all around the place and I could not get any. I went to the place at Burpengary that has a little market (CREEC), and went there and I got  these. Some of these have been left too long on the plant. They are better when they are a bit smaller. It is a bush and produces a lot then it starts to run a little bit. I have two plants in every pot in the hydroponics and probably not too bad as a thing to grow. I also have a cucumber which I have found down in the Redlands area and I gave the seed to a farmer. He grew it and then when I started on the hydroponics I wanted the seed, so I got the seed back from him. Now there are a few people growing it around the place and I think it is related to the German cucumber or Italian cucumber. It tends to go a bit yellow when it gets a bit older. This is one of the problems. There are a lot of nice things around that are good to eat that last well, but because they go a bit yellow that does not mean that they are going to go rotten; but in the eyes of the consumer they are going to go rotten. The customers might not buy them in the supermarkets once they go yellow. That is the sort of problems in horticulture. There are a few things around that are nice things to have but they need a special kind of management. Gold Finger banana is one, they do not have a big idiot factor attached to them as regards ripening. If you throw in Gold Fingers into a room that has Lady Fingers, the Lady Fingers have a greater respiration rate. They will up the temperature of the Gold Fingers when they are only just starting to ripen. Then they tend to ripen too quick and then don’t have a shelf life.

Don: The snake bean seed pods I have kept for seed – the pods are as thick as your little finger and you have to let them really mature to use them as seed. Once the green colour has gone but the pod is still fleshy the seeds can be removed. To store them a fungicide like copper would be worthwhile.

Sheryl: Banana bags – I can’t get any more of these.
Don: In the backyard if you get a hessian spud bag it is open at this end here, cut it along the bottom and then half way up the end. Then you get a two pronged gadget on a pole and you put it up, and then hang this part here over the bunch coming down. It will tend to hang there for quite a reasonable amount of time. If you get a storm it might get blown off and then you can hook the thing back up again. That works quite well with Lady Fingers.

George: What does a banana bag do? It obviously keeps pests off but what are the other things?
Don: If you see a banana plant that has a half filled bunch and it has got that light amount of yellow to it. That is a sunburn condition which is going to affect the quality eventually. That is one of the main reasons why they use them. The other thing is that it is a stable temperature in the bunch cover. It does make a bit of a difference but it is not the be all and end all in summer time. In the backyard you will still get reasonable bananas without putting any bags on at all. Commercially it is going to give you a better quality product so that is why they put the covers on.
 

I have heard that a flying fox is able to detect a ripe fruit as it flies over the top of things. They can be flying over a banana patch, and if there is one ripe fruit in a patch they will go down to that one. You can have the flying foxes starving out in the Melaleuca forest and they will eat green peaches, but they will only pay slight attention to the bananas, and a commercial banana grower knows that once a flying fox attacks one fruit it will come back to that one bunch night after night. So he will just leave that bunch there and let them clean it up. They are not really that much of a problem in bananas like they are in other crops, even lychees down here. But lychees up in North Queensland they are a much bigger problem. The lorikeets are the king of the lychee attackers.

Member: What do you know about grafting Eggplant on to Devils Fig?
Don: I used the Devil’s Fig and grafted the eggplant onto it and they went for two years. You are doing it to control bacterial wilt. If you grow the eggplant in soil without plastic mulch, and use overhead irrigation your soil temperature remains lower, and you do not really have bacterial wilt. Same as in tomatoes. Fruit is always a little scarce in the wild I feel because of fruit spotting bug, because you will go to a plant and you will hardly see any fruit on it. Every now and then I would come across a plant that has two or three kilos of fruit on it, so I would bring them home. If you get the fruit and put it in a paper bag and stick it in the house, the whole house has a beautiful spicy aroma about it when the fruit dries out. Of course the Thais and Indonesians use the Devil’s Fig fruit in curries. The giant Devil’s Fig has slightly more lobing in the leaf and brown hairs up towards the top of the plant. I have never used it. There are more thorns on it, sharp little spikes. So I have just stuck with the ordinary Devil’s Fig which looks more like an eggplant plant. If you took the thorns away from it you would not be able to tell the difference much between it and the eggplant plant. However the eggfruit plant has purple flowers while both figs have white flowers with green berries that go yellow on ripening, similar to the wild tobacco plant.

Member: Would the Devils Fig have any potential for skin cancer treatment?
Don: I don’t believe that the Devil’s Fig has got anything like that going for it. The one that had potential was the other solanaceous plant, Apple of Sodom. Devil’s Apple, not Fig, and Apple of Sodom, are very low shrubs with very crinkly leaves and a lot of spikes on them. Devil’s apple turns out to be a one inch diameter cherry tomato look alike, but Apple of Sodom is a green fruit of the same size,with stripes on it which goes yellow when it is ripe, and it is very high in alkaloids and it is poisonous. There was a company from overseas and they wanted someone to grow Apple of Sodom. The DPI looked around and said we have plenty of Apple of Sodom, go to any dairy farm and walk along the fence line and you will find it growing around the place. They analysed the stuff, then they decided there was another kind of solanaceous plant that grew in Ecuador that had more of the alkaloids, and of course the labour costs there would be less, and they grew that for the skin cancer treatment.

Member: How would we be sure we had the right one?
Don: The ordinary Devil’s Fig has dark purple in the stem and is more adaptable. You will go around farms and you will see it around creek banks, and you will see an odd plant here or there. The giant Devil’s fig with the brown hairs up towards the top and the extra lobing in the leaves you will find it in the swamps and you will find it up on the hills in the heavy soils. It is not so much adaptable as the ordinary Devil’s Fig. Maybe the giant Devil’s Fig would be all right. I have seen backyards in Brisbane where people have grafted the giant one and they seem to be having success with it. Sometimes both species live together.
Member: Is there anyone in the club who might have seed of these?
Don: Peter at Beerburrum has the ordinary Devil’s fig.

Member: What happens when a tree falls over?
Don: A plant has something called apical dominance, and where you have a tree that is naturally symmetrical if it falls over or half falls over, it will start to grow back to its original symmetrical shape. One of the problems of avo’s and custards is that they have a different sort of an apical dominance. You will get a bud on a branch which will dominate other buds, you will end up with a vigorous shoot growing, and an avo’ tree  can have a branch 6 inches round, going out several metres to the side. When I slash my big avo’s and custards you just don’t drive past a tree, you reverse the tractor back and forwards underneath the tree and it can take 5 minutes just to slash under one tree. If a tree gets damaged in some way, it will eventually try to build itself back to its original shape. The thing to remember is that any branch that is exposed to the sun between 11 – 3pm, if it is perpendicular to the afternoon sun as in the case of avos and some others, they sunburn. A better idea would be to paint the thing with a plastic type paint, or I have used Sunstop, which the pineapple growers spray on. I have used a mixture of Sunstop and casein from milk. White plastic paint, Bondcrete is another one, anything that will stay on for a while that is going to reflect the heat. Oil based paints would have a worse affect than the sunburn so they would be a disaster.

George: You are actually talking major damage when you are saying sunburn. You are talking about the bark dying back to the wood.
Don: Yes, in the case of an avo’ it can actually creep into a branch, so you have physical damage there. It has gone right in to the branch and one day you come along with the chainsaw to cut it off, and what it looks like in cross section is a horse-shoe. That is how susceptible avos are to sunburn. Citrus probably not as bad. Custards will still get burnt. I have two rows of custard apples and on Australia Day 2004 one whole row was blown over and there were ten plants in the row. Two of them were blown over and broken over. T he others just got blown over. So I just trimmed them all up and they have been just fine continuing on growing. In their case I just let the legume grow here and there on the stem. They are not as high as they used to be but they still produce.

Member: What is the technique to prune Avo’s?
Don: You tend to want to take the top off the tree. You have branches going vertically, they command more sap flow than the ones that are horizontal. If an avocado gets a crop on it, the crop weighs it down and so it is not that bad. When I harvest, if I see a shoot coming that is half inch or 1 inch in diameter and a metre long and it is at the extent of my gear that I use for picking, I know that if I don’t cut if off it is going to be 3 m long in a years time. It will have a whole heap of fruit on it then and I can’t get to it so I will chop it off. You hope you are trying to push more growth out sideways that is going to be easier to pick. They are quite a prolific thing and do not have too many problems or weak crotches like other trees do. They do not have the tensile strength of a custard apple. A custard apple is like a jungle gym. When the kids were young they would be up the top of the tree and they would be hanging from the branches and throwing the fruit to you. Whereas with the avo’ if you stand on a branch, it does not have the give. A custard apple 1 inch diameter it will support your weight to a certain extent because half the time it is sitting on another branch anyway. You can crawl around it without any problems but an avo’ is a different structure and a different strength of wood. You can’t really climb around in an avo’ without damaging it a fair bit.

Member: What about other parts of the tree?
Don: Do a minimum of trimming. You can trim underneath the tree because you do not want the fruit hanging down on the ground, but what happens with an avo’ when it gets 3m or 4m high, about 7-8 years old and you think you will knock all these bottom branches off, you are actually knocking off about 1/3 of your bearing capacity. I used to get offcuts from the sawmill. I will use them to stake the branch to keep the branch above the ground – just cut a V notch in them. When the tree gets bigger, the branch looses its vigour and you tend to cut them off but propping is a worthwhile thing.
George: In the backyard you want a smaller tree, you don’t mind losing a few fruit. As I understand it, with Mangoes, Avocados and Lychees, if you prune to size after they finish fruiting, as long as they can get a bit of growth to get some new shoots you will still get crops next year. Is that right? 
Don: That is a reasonable way to look at it.

George: We have an Edranol avocado which seems to stay reasonably small on our block and it produces every year. What about other varieties?
Don: Reed is not a bad avo’ for the backyard. Reed tends to be mor an upright tree than other varieties. The fruit are round like the old seedling types.  Sharwil is a good variety as far as a mid season goes, not so prone to anthracnose, fairly resistant to bug once it gets a bit of size about it. Fuerte and Wurtz are thin skinned varieties and are susceptible to bug and anthracnose. It seems that all the quality problems seem to creep in when your tree is unthrifty. If your tree is growing well you don’t seem to have so many problems with the quality of the fruit. 
George: With avocados it is well worth growing from grafted trees. Seedlings will occasionally never set fruit, sometimes they will take 20 years. We have one that has actually produced after 5-6 years. There are problems with seedlings. The grafted ones are a bit expensive that is the problem.
Don: Avo’s and Custards are the easiest to graft. The ones with hard wood like Lychee and Macadamia are the hardest.
 

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We have been growing caper plants in South Australia for over twelve years and have researched caper growing throughout the world. Extensive trial beds of capers have been conducted and we have learnt how to both successfully grow and harvest capers as well as how to propagate them and have selected a variety that is superior to all the others. We are able to propagate (clone) this variety after many years of research and experimentation and have registered this variety with IP Australia under the Plant Breeder’s Rights (PBR) legislation. It is a thornless variety, Capparis spinosa rupestris and we have called this variety “Eureka”. The ‘Eureka’ Caper plant is superior for the following reasons: It is a thornless bush and produces more capers in weight each time it is harvested It begins to shoot and grow earlier in the spring than other bushes

It continues to flower and leaves stay green longer into the autumn and winter

WHERE CAPERS GROW
This hardy perennial comes from the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Capers have become part of our Mediterranean diet along with olives, grapes, almond, pistachio, sun-dried tomatoes, dips and cheeses. They grow very well in the hot parts of Southern and central Australia and now we can enjoy their delights. The plant naturally grows in poor soils, in hot dry regions. However it thrives on the volcanic islands around Sicily. From our experience the plant needs the top 200-300mm to be dry and well drained, never wet or waterlogged. It thrives in the full sun in hot to very hot conditions. Generally it does not like humidity.

THE CAPER BUSH
The Caper Bush grows to about 1 metre high, with the lower branches creating their own mulch along the ground. The leaves are tough and rounded. The flowers, which grow on long petioles between the leaves, are very attractive with white petals and many long purple stamens. Each flower usually lasts only 24 hours, but there is a continual opening of flowers along the stem. Some species and varieties of Caper bushes develops spines under the leaf axil, but the variety we sell are spineless.

THE BEST GROWING CONDITIONS The best growing conditions for Capers is in the full sun, planted on a mound of well drained material over good rich soil.  It is beneficial to add good compost and lime to the soil before planting and twice yearly application of organic mineral mix. The plants require some watering until established. Then they require no watering (similar to planting a gum or wattle tree). They enjoy the addition of organic mineral mix to the soil, in spring and autumn.

Problems   White butterflies can be controlled by organic means.

HARVESTING CAPERS
The Caper, which has been used as a condiment for over 5000 years, is the un-opened flower bud. They should be picked while the bud is still tight. The bush can be harvested every 10-12 days in the hot season. If allowed to flower, the caper bush produces a long oblong-shaped fruit with many seeds; this can also be pickled. Some people also use the young shoots and leaves at the end of the stem both fresh and pickled.

WINTER PRUNING  In the winter the bush is normally totally pruned back to the stump and this ensures a good crop the following summer.

HOW TO PRESERVE CAPERS
The best way to process the capers is to add coarse salt to the picked capers (40% of the weight of the capers) and stir occasionally for about 10-12 days, when the liquid that forms on the bottom is drained off. Add salt again (half the original amount) for another 10 days or so. Then the capers are ready to use, just wash off the salt, or stored in dry salt. They can be made ready for use by soaking in a bowl of water to remove the salt. (Traditionally the caperberry is pickled by soaking in salt water for a day, then washing the salt off and storing the berries in white wine vinegar. The salting process can be repeated if required.)

USING CAPERS IN COOKING 
Capers add a pleasant but sharp and piquant flavour to cooking, and because it is known to promote the appetite, it is used mainly in Hors d’oeuvres. It is used in salads and mayonnaise; as a garnish; as a topping on pizzas or omelettes; in making caper sauce and tartar sauce; and on fish, or chicken. The possibilities are endless.

CONTACT    Brian Noone  0407 189 716     email:  caperplants@va.com.au Brian’s report on the Caper Industry in the Mediterranean Region is available on the web.