Print this entry

We bought this place about 9 years ago in 1997 – 60 acres or nearly 25 hectares. We’re surrounded by Macadamias and forest. The property was originally pine trees and when they were harvested they left the stumps so we go down a hole every so often. It was also a turf farm prior to when we purchased it and we planted the Avocadoes at various stages. We haven’t topped them as yet but it will happen to retain the view of Maleny and we’ve been organic right from the start. I’m in Biological Farmers which has an offshoot called Australian Certified Organic and we get audited each year so I’ve just certified the middle section with the avocadoes on – not the paddock with the cattle. It’s too hard to control ticks, buffalo fly etc. organically. I also grow 150 bananas but I’m building this up.

Pests and Diseases

We’ve had a lot of trouble with Phytophthora particularly when the trees were young even on this well-drained soil but once the trees get to 3-4 years, you might get small outbreaks but you usually don’t get lethal doses. We treated the Phytophthora just by mulching. 3 years into it, I started to use Trichoderma “Trichoshield” which is a product put out by Nutritech at Yandina. It’s not approved by BFA but you can get permission. The reason is that it is made in India and they haven’t certified the factory there. It controls it to a certain extent but you can see I have 2 trees suffering still.

Sheryl How much, how often and when? 

Ross Once a year in August/September just before the spring flush. I buy a kilo and it does the whole orchard and any tree that is suffering a bit, I’ll give it a bit extra. It’s a powder that you dissolve in water then spray the ground. Do it on a wet day or after you irrigate.

Kelly Did you choose Phytophthora resistant rootstock when you bought the trees?

Ross Yes I used trees on Velvic rootstock. I didn’t spray for the 1st three years and I had about 10% loss. ’99 was a really wet winter and that knocked them around so I lost a number of them that year. I have 238 trees but I’m down to 208. The trees that are affected I spray them every 2 months.

Sheryl  Phytophthora affected trees can be recognised by their much lighter colour – they don’t have the dark green leaves.

Ross They also lose their foliage. Over winter, you get recycling of foliage but the affected ones almost defoliate completely. It affects the new roots. We get the monolepta beetle and they swarm in the hot summer months. They breed in the bush and they defoliate the young tips and they also get on the young fruit. They don’t do much damage but it just looks bad which means I can’t sell those fruit as 1st grade. They put a scaly mark on the fruit. The year before we had really bad infestations and I sprayed with pyrethrum which is an allowable input. I try not to spray because I think pyrethrum is not selective so it’ll take out the good insects as well so I just did it when I saw the swarming monolepta. Up to this year, we’d get 10-15% fruit spotting bug damage. I can sell the fruit if there’s only 1-2 marks on them but this year, we’ve had 25-30% damage but it’s been a really big crop this year. For the first time this year, we got fruit fly damage; they went in where the fruit spotting bug hit so we got a fruit drop in Feb/Mar. These are the hard lumps. People want organic but they don’t want lumps either! I don’t do anything about fruit spotting bug or fruit fly. I had thought this year of putting traps around.

Sheryl Patrick Nugent looks after an organic avocado farm up at Blackbutt and he’ll be able to tell you all about it.

Ross There are two main outlets for organics: Eco Farms and United Organics and they’re both down at the Brisbane Markets but I tend to sell locally at the Natural Food Store near Buderim.

Sheryl How much extra would you get selling organically?

Ross In recent years people were getting $1.00 per kg and I’d get $3.00 but this year I’m getting $3.50kg for top quality and seconds and smalls $1-$2 kg.

Member Does it pay to go organic for you?

Ross I think my costs are pretty minimal. If you had to use phosphorus acid your costs would be fairly high.

Fertiliser

I also give them composted chicken manure and in the compost I also put in banana stems, cow manure, weeds and vegetable scraps (sometimes). I spread the fertiliser twice a year when they were young but it’s now down to once a year.

Sheryl So, you can get organic chicken manure?

Ross No, but it’s allowable as long as it is composted and I also spray it with the microbes. The chicken manure comes from Macdougalls at Chevallum and the company stores it in big heaps and turns it every so often so they call it composted and it’s reasonably broken down.

Sheryl How do you feel the microbes are going here?

Ross I’ve only been using them a very short time so I’m not really sure. Les Nichol a vegetable grower under BFA certification has been using them for a while and he’s having really good results and his soil fertility looks great. I also went to a 3 day biodynamic workshop last year but I haven’t taken it up whole-heartedly but I am interested in some of the concepts. I’d like to learn more about it.

Sheryl Talk to Terry Little, Peter Sauer, Col Metcalf or John Hatch. I also put on gypsum every year too – 1-2kg per tree just before the spring flush. That’s mainly for calcium – it’s certainly not for improving drainage in the soil which is what gypsum is often used for but it’s an allowable as well.

Peter What type of gypsum do you use?

Ross  Natural gypsum marketed by QLD Organics. 

Bananas

Sheryl  One of our members has bananas that are so high up that it’s precarious trying to bag the bunch.

Ross I use a ladder but I’d like to find out too. If you plant them too close, they tend to grow tall and the bunches can be small – space them out at say 3x4mtr or more.

Avocadoes

Sheryl  How do you pick your avocadoes up high?

Ross  I climb the tree! 

Sheryl  When I was in Sydney I bought a fruit harvester and got Bob to attach it to a swimming pool extension handle and it worked extremely well in hooking avocadoes high in the tree. If you want one, it comes from Magnamail Q474 Fruit Harvester $12.90  www.magnamail.com.au or ring them on 1800 251 252  Showrooms at 2 William Street Brookvale NSW  9am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday Opposite Warringah Mall.  Shop 25, Kiora Mall, 29 Kiora Road, Miranda NSW  9am to 5pm Monday to Friday   8.30am to 12.00pm Saturday. 

Row Cropping

Ross  I planted a shrub legume mainly Leucaena leucocephala – there are other species as well.

Sheryl Isn’t it classified as a weed?

Ross Yes, a lot of people think it is a weed but so are pine trees! Those 4 trees are my seed production block and I’ve let them grow – it will grow into a tree about 10-15 mtrs high but I just keep cutting it back to keep it for the seed and the ones in the orchard I cut back. It’s mainly grown for cattle fodder; high protein content and cattle really like it but so do wallabies and hares so I had to fence it off. Another one I planted was Sesbania which you might find a better species in terms of its available nitrogen content of the leaf and more rapid breakdown of the foliage to provide that nitrogen source. As you can see, I planted the Leucaena between each Avocado tree but now the Avocados are shading the tree legume so the productivity of the amount of material I’m getting from the legume trees is gradually declining and some of them have died right out because they have been completely shaded and they are not shade tolerant so now I have to think of alternatives so I might have to plant a block somewhere which I can cut and bring back to the trees. What I could have done was plant a row down the middle between each row of avocadoes and then you cut with a forage harvester but I suppose why I did it this way is that I didn’t have much material at the time but in hindsight you could do that if you had enough material. It might take a while for the avocadoes to take up the nitrogen in the soil if they are further apart. Most of the nitrogen input you’re going to get from the foliage.

Member That Leucaena is not a nitrogen fixer with nodules – it’s the leaf that you just let rot?

Ross The nitrogen that goes into the leaf is fixed by the nodules so every time I cut it, those nodules get shed so the tree gets stressed so there’s nitrogen going in where the roots of the trees are but also the nitrogen that’s being fixed in the leaf and I throw that material under the avocadoes so you’re getting sources from both.

John Stocking rates in cattle – how does Leucaena compare with kikuyu?

Ross Central Qld is the main area where they grow Leucaena for cattle feed and in comparison, it’s probably double the stocking rate and a third again in production in terms of liveweight gain.  They regularly get 1kg per head per day with Leucaena.

Sheryl I’ve got an article at home that says you can get 2kg a day with Chicory.

Member Do horses like it?

Ross No, because it’s got mimosine in it – only ruminants can utilize it. Non ruminants like pigs, chickens, horses should not use it as there’s an alkaloid in it that causes hair dropping. The Thais eat it in salad but you should only eat a little bit.

Member  So that’s why men go bald – from eating salad!!

Gretchen Why didn’t you use Pigeon Pea?

Ross They’ll only last about 3-4 years and that’s also the problem with Sesbania. You could use Acacias the same way – Acacia  cunninghamii I tried at University experimentally but the problem with Acacia is that it doesn’t break down very rapidly and what happened was you actually used nitrogen from the soil to break the acacia leaf down whereas this gives nitrogen back to the system so that was the problem with the philodinous acacias like black wattle with the big thick leaves. I don’t think we tried any with the compound leaf. 

Kelly Our local Landcare Nursery at Maleny do have some that are indigenous species but they might be hit by the local bug.

Sheryl  Has anyone else experimented with any other nitrogen fixing plants? We had an article on Lab Lab some years ago. 

Peter B  Pigeon Peas drop their own seed and up they come. King Parrots also love the seed.

Sheryl  How thick do you put your mulch on? 

Ross  10-15cm.

Print this entry

I must admit I have a problem with certain magazines – people write articles, the readers go out and do what is suggested and it doesn’t work. We’ve been here around 20 years – when we first came here the idea was to have a bit of everything that we thought would grow in the area mainly to feed ourselves but if there was a bit of surplus left to sell or process then that would be good. I suppose over the time we started out like a lot of other people when they first hear about all these wonderful unobtainable things. You spend half your life and half your savings and put them in and they either die, or worse than that, they probably fruit and taste like nothing, so you then spend 5 years trying to dig them out. We’ve just recently rediscovered wine making and have found that anything is palatable if you turn it into alcohol, so now we think that some of those things we were going to get rid of, we might just leave them!

We had a major set-back 6 years ago when the house we had been owner-building for 14 years burnt to the ground. That took maps, information, books and all sorts of things including rain records for 14 years. So we’re only now just starting to get back on top of things. We moved back in 12 months after the fire. We didn’t have a lot of windows, no internal linings, only some doors. We then decided we needed some WWOOFers (willing workers on organic farms). Over the last 4 years we’ve had about 140.

Eighteen months after the fire when we went around having a look at some of the fruit trees there was a block of mangoes which I had planted just prior to the fire, every single one had been ringbarked by rock wallabies. I think there was about 40 different rare mangoes so I lost interest in things for a little bit – I think I saved 2. We’re now back on the final stage of our rebirth and we’re getting back into livestock so we now have a few different breeds of chickens. Even after 20 years we don’t have all the answers – there are still a lot of questions – your combined knowledge here is more than mine will ever be so hopefully you’ll be able to tell me a few things today – pleasantly I hope!  We used to have a lot of bracken and ageratum but by improving the soil with lime and dolomite we got rid of it.

We have 3 cows and produce our own milk and they calve every year usually which gives a regular supply of beef – we have a couple of sheep and lambs and we seasonally buy a 6 week old pig and have that for Christmas but the shed is in dire need of repair so we didn’t get a pig this year. We get in a load of sawdust and lock up the sheep at night.  Sheep and goats are particularly susceptible to intestinal worms on the North Coast because of the high temperature and high rainfall so it also reduces the pasture contamination. Once a month we scrape all that up and add some shredded cow manure, chicken litter and put it in the first compost heap. We build one, a week later it gets turned into the middle and a week later, it gets turned back over again and two weeks later we use it. From start to finish is 4 weeks so those English books that tell you that you need 12 months for your compost to mature are not true.

The trees get a bucket full every time we go around. We use it fairly fresh around the fruit trees, a little more ‘aged’ in the vegetable beds which are pure compost. A lot of research has shown that compost is most active when its just finished – when you leave it lying there, you might get earthworms moving into it but its lost a lot of its goodness. There’s beneficial fungi and microbes in there so if you left it for a while, they would probably die out.

Sheryl Any footrot in this area? Phil No we have Suffolk and they seem to be fairly immune to footrot and they’re apparently the best eating.

 We’ve decided to go into organic egg production because we’ve now got onto some good organic feed and we have just got 2 dozen day old chickens and that will be the nitrogen booster for the compost. The brown ones are a commercial one called Lohman, they spend their entire life laying eggs and not eating very much. The white ones are an old-fashioned type called Light Sussex and we put an Indian Game male over a light Sussex female to breed our own meat chickens. Commercial meat chickens are 6 weeks old when they are despatched to KFC. We also have silverlaced Wyandotte and by using a Brown Leghorn rooster over a Silverlaced Wyandotte hen at day old the males and females are different colours so you can get rid of all the males at birth. Use a Gold over a Silver – doesn’t matter what they are and sex them at a day old. Our feed comes from Aus Organics west of Toowoomba.

On the coolest part of the property we planted Nashi, Sub-Tropical Plums and a few varieties of Apples – Anna, Einshiener, Golden Dorset, Tropic Beauty. We have an Apricot because you never know, they might actually be wrong about global warming and we might head to another ice age and I’ll be the only person on the Tweed with apricots!  If you haven’t planted an Ice Cream Bean then I suggest you don’t – they’re a noxious weed. Good for mulch but impossible to get rid of! If your fruit tree doesn’t crop, you hear Nurserymen say you need another for cross-pollination but I think some trees just take 3 years to crop or so.

George I have a Cherry of the Rio Grande that flowers like mad but probably only 2% actually fruit.

Phil  I’ve always liked the idea of a soil test but I’ve never liked the price so I probably spent the first 15 years just doing what people said I should be doing in organic gardening and permaculture magazines.  When you are given a fertilizer guide and it says that you should be adding 100 gms of this or that to your Mangoes in September, it always assumes that the condition of the soil is universal around the world and that’s what they need but we know it’s not, so 3 years ago I decided to get some soil tests done  – I tested the pH myself with a popular home test kit myself but the tests came back differently.

Sheryl There is no world standard in soil testing – I discovered this because we have a friend who is in this field and he discovered this because clients would send off the same soil samples to different laboratories and they would return different results and the machine he works on cost $400,000!

Phil We decided to go with Tony de Vere from Brookside Laboratories at Highfields which is just past Toowoomba – costs $77.00 per sample – he then sends them to America where they are analysed using the Albrecht method which is the latest ‘in thing’ and as I understand, Albrecht was around in the 40’s and 50’s in America and he was another of those people who were ignored in his time. What he did was take different samples of soils, put them in a centrifuge, and flung everything out so all he was left with was soil and he then started to add things to them until he found an ideal growing medium and he came up with a formula which he calls base saturation and basically you’ve got things in percentages so it should be 68% calcium 12% magnesium 5% potassium etc.  Albrecht says that everything will grow at 6.3 so there is none of these Blueberries need a pH of 4 and Olives need 7. Everything is in balance so when you read magazines that say you should put 4 tonne of lime or somebody else says you need 2 tonne of dolomite – lime has only got calcium in it and dolomite has calcium and magnesium and if you don’t know what you want, then you’re wasting your time.

The figures that come back from Brookside Labs are just a jumble of figures to me but fortunately there’s a lovely company called Nutritech on the Sunshine Coast that take those figures and at no cost to you interpret the results. I tested the soil where I grow Persimmons in Nov. 2000 and it was way too low on everything – Nutritech give you a star rating and it was one and a half stars and the standard goes up to five so it was poor.  I’d done all the things that people had told me to do – I’d applied mulch and compost and years ago I used pelletised chook pellets so I used some of Nutritech’s products and some other things which were acceptable for an organic farm as not all of their products are (we are certified Organic with NASAA and have been since 1995) so this year we had another test done and everything is up in the medium range where it should be and now they’ve given us a wonderful 4 star rating so if Albrecht is the be all and end all, then we’re pretty close to where we should be.

We’re now looking at what we’re short of and that is Nitrogen and Potassium and they’re a bit hard to get organically – it’s alright for those of you who aren’t as you can chuck out a bag of Urea and I think that Urea is a wonderful product in that it is pure (unlike pelletised chicken pellets that could have growth hormones, antibiotics and goodness knows what else in them). You can stabilize Urea just by composting it with sawdust and this would be a nice source of Nitrogen for you if you don’t grow organically. We can use blood meal, fishmeal and a few other things but they’re very low in Nitrogen. With Potassium we can use Potassium Sulphate but preferably not directly on the ground so we compost it. It’s acceptable under organic standards but there are limitations to the amount you use and whether a soil test tells you that you need it. If you don’t need Sulphur, then you wouldn’t use Potassium Sulphate. I think the best value and source of Potassium is actually molasses as its nice and cheap but we can’t use it directly as it’s not organic but we do put it through our compost heap.

The other things we’re short of are Manganese, Copper, Zinc and Boron so I’ve bought those in a pure form and because my roots are mathematical and not esoterical like the bio-dynamic people, I’ve scaled it back to what a tree needs and how much to put in the compost so theoretically my compost is balanced which is what the plants need, whereas in the past with pelletised chook poo and compost, when the results originally came back, the phosphorus was almost off the scale and the plants don’t use it – there was no nitrogen and no potassium. Our phosphorus is slowing coming back to what it should be.

Just recently I read a suggestion that organic matter has a more important role in nutrient uptake and nutrition of plants than actually what is there and we’ve always had incredible organic matter levels – betwen 7 and 10%. Organic matter is a big buffer so that if there are excesses or deficiencies then that buffers it a bit – it also holds the moisture in there and keeps the weeds down. One of the first pH tests we had done on some Mandarins came back with a reading of 4.05 and the guy from the lab rang me up and said that he’d never seen any soil with a reading that low and the Mandarins would die within a week if we planted them without liming. This was originally old banana country and bananas and sugar cane are basically grown hydroponically – the soil’s just there to provide a medium for the roots to grow in and it’s jut a matter of applying a water soluble nutrient which I why conventionally grown bananas have no taste.

The other thing we’ve just into is Compost Tea  – I’d like to have it tested but its $240.00 to do the full bacteria/fungi growth etc. The more you read about it the less they seem to be telling you about how to do it! Basically all I’ve got is an aquarium aerator I borrowed, half a dozen airstones which were 80 cents each and the stainless steel drum I picked up that someone had put out on their footpath for one of those clean-up days, I asked the guy and he said he had used to use it to make yoghurt and no longer needed it. Basically we have a Hessian bag of compost suspended in there with a little Molasses, Fish Emulsion, Seaweed and Humic Acid and it’s aerating nicely and after 3 days we put it out around the trees.

People who are writing articles are usually salesmen and they tell us the wonders of rock dust, zeolite, compost enhancers etc. and I don’t dispute that the things they are saying are true but I rang up a guy about a compost inoculant and said that I already make compost what would the benefits be? He said that it was to put the bacteria in and I said that it would probably already be in there anyway, and he said, oh no, so I asked him what he was composting and he said sawdust and urea and they are two sterile materials – there’s no life in them so of course in this situation you would benefit from a bacterial input. CSIRO put out a little book on composting and they said that if it is working properly, then adding activators is like adding a grain of sand to a rock slide.

The most successful thing we’ve had that grows really well here is Coffee – last year we harvested about 100kgs – this year it’s been atrocious because it’s been so hot and dry and we’ll be lucky if we get 30-40 kgs. Hand harvested coffee will always hold its price so we’re not talking about what goes into Nescafe or Bushells. Basically there’s two types of Coffee – Arabica which is the gourmet coffee and Robusta and it’s called Robusta because its robust and tastes like mud! It’s usually machine harvested or in Third World countries they’re still hand harvesting it. Good Arabica grows on good soil is hand harvested at its prime and it needs to be picked and processed very quickly which we do and once you’ve got it to the dry bean stage you can pretty much keep it indefinitely. Once you’ve done that you have to roast it and most people say you have to consume it within 24 hours so at the supermarket it’s probably been there for 3 months so I don’t think it’s worth the spending your money on!

Coffee grown in this area is naturally low in caffeine. Coffee grows true to type from seed and there’s very little variation between them so there’s no use going in and finding the best tree as it’s all pot luck. There was a lot of coffee grown around here in the old days – ours comes from the local school. There’s a guy in the Dept. of Ag who is really pushing coffee in this area. I’ve just planted two new named varieties – one is supposed to be dwarf – trouble with coffee is that it gets 4 metres tall – we’ve tried pruning and it just suckers and the side branches just keep going out – they only crop on the ends – you can’t kill a coffee tree (one of our Fruit Club members did!)  We had a wwoofer who had dug out a tree (thinking it was lantana) so when I found it I just put it back in the ground and it grew again! If you put a coffee tree through your shredder and it has beans on it then where they land on the ground, it’ll grow!

George What about the variety where all the beans ripen together? Phil I’m not sure that that is possible; I’ve just planted some of the new commercial varieties.  In fact I’m thinking of getting my wwoofers to dig the trees up, bring the plants back to the house, pick the beans off, then they can take it back up the hill and replant!!!! This method would restrict next seasons growth, we could prune the top off for a bit of mulch as well as doing a bit of root pruning!!!

Sheryl Do you have a small roasting machine? Phil Yes I do and we also have a hulling machine.  A roaster that will do around 250gms of coffee is worth around a $1000.00 and 250gms of coffee will last you 10 minutes – no – 3 days! There is an organic roaster in Brisbane. I use old popcorn machines which you can get in garage sales for $5.00 and I then add a bakebean/spaggetti tin on top so for $10.00 I roast 280 gms of coffee and it takes between 8 and 10 minutes depending on whether it’s summer or winter. I know what colour coffee I like so when the colour is right then I tip it out. Put a wedge at the rear of the machine (coffee beans are heavier than popcorn so that’s why you have to get the airflow going so what happens when you put it on an angle it actually flips it over the top so once the coffee starts roasting then it gets a little bit lighter and you get some air in there, you get it popping like popcorn. When it’s the colour you want, tip it out onto a tray and dunk the tray only into some water (don’t wet the beans) as it’s critical that you cool the coffee as soon as you can after because if you leave it, it is still roasting and it starts developing the off flavours – if you want mild, then do it only 5 minutes – Turkish you would leave it in for half an hour until it’s black and smoking! I’m thinking of patenting these popcorn machines!! Then once you have cooled it down, you need to grind it and drink it as soon as possible. The problem with using a conventional oven is the movement. The problem with using a rotisserie is that you cannot see inside.  Somebody was telling me he used a BBQ rotisserie but it was taking him half an hour.

George Somebody was just telling me that they use their microwave. Phil Here’s some coffee we picked 3 days ago which we put into a bucket of water and ferments and we leave it there for a week or two. We wait until the slime/mucilage has gone from the outside of the bean, then stick them out on the rack – that’s the green bean stage – and at that stage you can more or less store them indefinitely. Connoisseurs tell us that 12 months after it’s picked if you roast your coffee then that it’s coffee at its best. It must be true because somebody said it was!  George Have you tried putting an aerator in there too? Phil No, I haven’t. Peter You can leave the beans in there too long can’t you? Phil I’m sure there’s a critical time length but …I then put them out onto shade cloth which I have on an old wire bed to dry in the sun and I just hose them down again. The final stage which is the most difficult one and another expensive machine is taking the parchment off  so you then end up with a tiny little bean which when roasted puffs up one and a half times its size. I use a Kenwood Chef with a mincer attachment and just take the cutting blade out – basically the commercial ones work on a corkscrew and they rub against each other – chaff comes out one way and the beans come out the other way. If you have a liquidiser with a plastic blade which are impossible to get these days, then you could do it with that. Whoever the first person was to process coffee and got a drink out of it, I don’t know why they would be doing what they did! Sheryl When you’re storing them; do you add anything that takes up the moisture? Phil No, I just store them in hessian sacks underneath the house – they will take on and release moisture so before we put it through the hulling machine, we’ll put it out to dry for another day.

Lindy  We grow Fuyu Persimmons – 2 years ago we bagged them and did really well, last year the birds realised what was in the bags and the crows ate a good third of them and this year we’ve made nets for them. Phil  In the early days I believed everything I read  and people told me that you needed more than one variety because they needed a cross-pollinator and we did that and then I read that if you had cross-pollination, they were more likely to produce seeds so in the last couple of years we found they were getting more and more seeds in them so the ones I knew that were not Fuyu I’ve taken out and moved somewhere else during their dormancy – you can’t kill a Persimmon tree. I moved them a long way away.  The first year the Fuyu were the first ones to come on and we didn’t get any seed then in later years we were getting seed so we wonder whether that might be it. We’ve used both paper and cloth bags and as Lindy says the crows ripped through the paper bags and pecked through the cloth bags so we’re now going to complete exclusion. We grow pumpkins, cucumbers and rockmelons in toilet rolls (cut in half) in a plastic tray and when they just start to get soggy, we plant them out which minimises transplant shock. Egg cartons are much shallower.

Phil We’re starting to establish Pinto Peanut around each fruit tree – it’s a bit slow to establish but once it’s established, we won’t need to do any hand weeding. I did an article for your newsletter on Pinto a while back.  We’ve made an Elder Flower champagne and an Elderberry and Banana Wine but I find them a bit rampant so I get stuck into them with a chainsaw (Elderberry can be a weed). We use concrete Besser blocks for our raised vegetable garden and this seems to be the way to go – we tried timber and a few other things. Last year we had trouble with the birds getting the strawberries so we got some of this bird scare tape from Greenharvest and it seemed to work – the red and the silver make them think there’s fire or danger and they go away so we decided to move into 2002 so we got disco balls and painted every other square with red nail varnish.

Sheryl Have you tried mirrors that Kasper uses? Phil No, but I’m sure it would help. We plant everything on contours – we peg out where the trees will go, stick in a peg, put compost down first, newspaper and chip mulch on top, pull the stake out then put the plant in. We’re putting in a particular Lemon Myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) which has more beneficial oils and less of the off-flavours – from Limpinwood Nursery just outside Murwillumbah. We have two types of Davidson Plums – I have some of the North Qld type which grows out in full sun and is a lot more vigorous and fruits at a different time of the year. Some of the Jaboticaba came from Paul Recher’s place.

Another popular misconception is that the ground under lantana is magnificent – I had the soil tested to prove that it isn’t. When we clear a piece of land of lantana, we either sow millet if it’s spring or oats if it’s autumn and we do this immediately and anybody can come back here and check the creek and it will be clear there’s no erosion or soil loss in the wet season and it also increases organic matter. It’s a temporary crop and I don’t think it will re-grow next season. We don’t irrigate (except for the Blueberries). We have 40 hectares but they measure it on the flat and as we have 90 degree slopes we have about 300 hectares. Jude Get a horse. Phil  I don’t like horses because they do a lot of damage to the ground  and you don’t need a donkey when you’ve got six children!!!  Rainfall is 1800mm.

We’re making up total exclusion netting against the fruit fly following Dr. Dick Drew recommendation (he’s an Entomologist with the DPI) We get netting which is 1.8mm x 1.8mm cut the four corners off and put another strip around it and drop it over the entire tree and it’s the only thing that works so my plan is to keep all my trees down to that size and make a few more nets each year. They cost me $25.00 each –  I got the netting from Vinyl Plastics at Beenleigh.  Use 50% shading. It doesn’t matter if you have a gap at the bottom as fruit fly doesn’t go underneath and birds haven’t been a problem. The other thing we do to discourage fruit fly is to use bait traps and I went through all those complicated contraptions of cutting coke bottles in half and siliconing them back together and eventually I decided that the easiest thing to do was to put a hole in the top (Phil uses a small plastic drink container that has a blue lid). My tops are all colour coded according to the bait inside, so its easy to replace them. I found Wild May very good but don’t know if you can get it anymore. I’ve tried Bovril, urine, yeast – refer to my article I wrote in your newsletter a couple of years ago. In the NASAA bulletin there is a bait that has been approved in organic agriculture. (It is called Nu-Lure and will be available through Grow Force, Primac etc in 20 litre containers in November).

Soil pH should never be used as a guide to calcium requirements – base saturation is the appropriate guideline. Magnesium has more impact on soil pH than calcium so reducing calcium and increasing magnesium through excessive nitrogen will raise soil pH. Liming requirements based on pH levels are irrelevant in this context as calcium can still be deficient because magnesium has more impact on pH, if you reduce the calcium you can actually get a reduction in the pH if you use the wrong one.

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

Print this entry

We prioritize what we want our money spent on within the Association because we have limited funds. Phil and I have been here 26 years. The research and development is run by Roger Broadley from the Maroochy Research Station and Alan George does the breeding work and the tree manipulation work with Bob Nissen, Don Hutton, the late Dan Smith, and Geoff Waite. Alan George started work on trellising years ago but and dismissed it because the trees were too vigorous but he’s come up with a lot of new varieties of Custard Apples with which we have trial blocks all the way down the east coast and there are two trial blocks in NSW – we’re the one closest to the coast and there’s another inland. We decided to trial his new varieties on the trellis with dwarfing interstocks and it hasn’t worked very well as it was a straight up and down trellis but we have another variety from someone else that is a self pollinating Pink’s Mammoth called KJ Pink so we feel it’s going to be conducive to trellising. The Victorians developed an open Tatura trellising that they put stone fruit on, so along with Phil and Alan George, they have put in an open Tatura trial at the Research Station and we have also put one in here and we think it’s going to work. We also decided to put one lot under netting and leave one lot outside.  On our web page we have a member’s section but just recently we’ve put every article from every newsletter since the newsletter was started 12 years ago so now we have a search engine, you can search by author etc. The Taiwanese grow a lot of Custard Apples.

Pests 

Sheryl What sort of pests are you having problems with?

Patti  Everything. Fruit Fly, Fruit Spotting Bug, Yellow Peach Moth, Avocado Leaf Roller, Possums, Birds, Rats….We had a conference in Ballina last year and Phil presented a paper on “To Net or not to Net” and we estimate we lose 30% of our crop in a bad year and people don’t realize this. Although we don’t have much fruit fly here, we bait spray 6 weeks before picking every 7 days with Maldison and Auto-Lysate and this is so we can send them interstate.

Varieties   The flavour of KJ is the same as a Pink’s Mammoth. Because KJ sets a lot of fruit, they are much smaller than the normal Pinks Mammoth so we’re going to have to grow it totally differently to how we grow anything else. We’re going to have to prune a lot heavier, and a thinning regime. We probably pruned half of the fruit off and we still got small fruit so we’ll have to thin much more. They also set a lot mis-shapen fruit as well so a lot of the trial work will be on how much fruit to leave per butt size of the tree like we do with stone fruit. You leave so many fruit per cm of butt of the tree.  It’s not viable for us to produce small fruit as it takes twice as long to pick, twice as long to pack and half the money. We originally had 600 African Pride but we’re slowly replacing them with KJ. According to Keith Paxton where KJ Pink came from originally, you have to prune heavily and fertilize heavily. Trialing, we have Maroochy Gold, Maroochy Jewell, Maroochy Yellow,T6, Palethorpe don’t set fruit.  I like Maroochy Gold – it has soft flesh but not as sweet as Pinks Mammoth. It’s too vigorous to grow on a trellis. The DPI have released all the Maroochy varieties but they’re under PBR. Maroochy Smoothie is not being released because it has internal quality problems.

Sheryl How much water do you put on your trees?

Patti We have undertree irrigation and moisture meters and we try to keep the moisture between 25 and 10 and when it reaches 25-30, Phil irrigates. We use Intell Sprinklers.

Sheryl Are more people coming into the Association?

Patti On the Sunshine Coast there are a lot of small growers but they’re tending to go out of it as the land is being subdivided or they’re getting too old and their family don’t want to take over but the growers who are staying in are putting more trees in. We also grow Peaches and Nectarines and we made more money out of those than the Custards. We want to identify a good backyard tree and commercialize it as a backyard tree so it has to be reasonably dwarfing.

Trellising The upright poles are 6mtrs apart and the trees are 3 metres apart but I wouldn’t do this again but in a backyard situation, it would be feasible. The original Tatura came up and went to a Y fork and you put a tree in and one the other but this one is open so you can walk down the middle so you can prune both sides whereas with the old style Tatura, it was too difficult to prune. This is 30º to the vertical; the stonefruit people put theirs in 15º to the vertical but we’ve actually opened it even more to try and get them to flatten out so we’re hoping to get less vigour. Only use the heavy wooden posts as steel doesn’t work. The fellow who designed the open Tatura in Victoria is Bass van den Eden and when he came up for the Stonefruit Conference and saw ours, he declared it a world first the fact that we had incorporated the structure in the support system. The netting came from Netpro in Toowoomba.

Rootstocks  We use Cherimoya rootstock with a dwarfing Cherimoya inter-stock and then the Maroochy Gold on top but Roger is really disappointed they are so vigorous because he really thought the inter-stock would slow them down.

Recipes

After cooking your curry, add some chunky segments of Custard Apple.

Add some segments to some blue vein cheese.

Patti is the Secretary of the Australian Custard Apple Growers Association.

 “Custard Apple News” is the newsletter of the Custard Apple Growers Association and comes out quarterly  $66 per year.    www.custardapple.com.au

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

Print this entry

Merv Cooper is a longstanding, highly active member of the Club. He describes himself as a ‘pomologist’ – what is that, you may ask?  Well, one dictionary definition is “the science of fruit growing”. This is highly apt description of Merv, who takes a very scientific approach to his fruit tree growing, particularly in the area of selectively breeding feijoas.

Merv and his wife Sybil live at Loganlea on a block of about 1 acre, where they have been for about 10 years. Roughly half of their block is devoted to fruit tree growing, with the rest being landscaped with attractive ornamentals. The soil is fairly acidic clay, which Merv treats with lime and dolomite. The orchard’s water supply is from rain-water, gravity fed to drippers, and a bore which can run sprinklers. A feature of the garden is the heavy use of mulch in the form of wood chips. Merv makes quite lot of this mulch himself, using his own chipper. The orchard is completely mulched between trees, with no competition from grass or weeds. Part of the reason for this approach is Merv’s philosophy of ‘minimalist watering’. He reasons that fruit trees should be tough and able to cope largely on their own, although he does water his young trees, and occasionally the larger ones, if they show signs of stress.

One of his water-saving devices is to use 25 litre plastic containers, with a short piece of 13mm poly pipe inserted were the tap inlet is, with a dripper on the end of the pipe. He places these next to trees that require water, and fills the container with a hose every day. The dripper lets the water run slowly out, taking from 12 – 24 hours to empty the container, and thus giving the trees a very slow and deep watering. Merv’s scientific approach is illustrated by the experiment he conducted using these containers. He used his watering method on several trees over a long period, and then dug down next to the roots to see how far they had gone down into the soil, compared with other trees planted at the same time. The slow drip method gave better results, even with citrus, which are considered to be shallow rooted, showing deeper penetration of the roots into the soil, and thus a better ability to cope with heat stress or lack of water.

Merv takes a proactive approach to orchard management, using techniques such as heavy pruning every year in late autumn, and the regular use of boron and potash, in addition to fertilisers like Nitrophoska, superphosphate, and chicken manure pellets. Boron is used every year, in the form of borax at the rate of 1gm per litre, sprayed on at early flowering stage. Merv says this helps fruit set, particularly with custard apples. He also swears by the use of potash, giving his trees a dose once a year. This is applied at about the rate of a 1.5 litre container (for a largish tree) of sulphate of potash spread widely, but Merv says the quantities are not too important, as you can’t really give them too much. He keeps a hive of native bees, which help in pollination.

Pest management is also important to Merv, and he uses several techniques in combination. Fruit fly are controlled with a male attractant and protein spray to knock out females. Cloth bands tied around the trunks of trees (especially citrus) are soaked in chlorpyrifos, which prevents ants from climbing up the tree, and thus controls aphid and scale (chlorpyrifos is available as a commercial product such as Pidgeon’s Pest Controller). Merv monitors pests carefully and if he does have any problem, tries to identify the culprit under his high-powered microscope.

The trees in Merv’s collection are too numerous to list – he has just about everything you could think of! Amongst the more usual citrus, stone fruits, tropical apples, pears, mangos and bananas are some special features, such as a number of members of the Annona family (including Poshte, Cherimoya, Soncoya and Atemoya), and three types of Grumichamas – yellow, black and white. Some edible natives are the Midyim Berry and the delicious Aniseed Myrtle (Backhousia Anisata).  There is an unusual ‘orange raspberry’ from Papua New Guinea, and a large Guasaro tree, both of which he says have really tasty fruits. Other items of interest are a sweet Tamarind which keeps longer and tastes better than the regular variety, and the White Sapote ‘Chris’, which is a very good variety.

In a special section of the garden, Merv is testing his theory that you can interplant species requiring different levels of soil pH, by only treating the immediate root area of the tree, to alter pH as required for each species. He defines the area to be treated by placing sleepers in a square around some of the trees. He has planted in close proximity, a number of trees including Longan, Olive, Governor’s Plum, Blueberry and Rollinia, and believes that the roots of each will avoid the areas where soil pH is not suitable for them.

Merv’s really special interest, though, is selectively breeding Feijoas in the pursuit of a really good variety suited to the sub tropics. He has had a long interest in Feijoas, stemming from his background in the biological sciences for 30 years, working in the administrative and business side of plant development and pest management. In New Zealand, he was involved in obtaining plant variety rights for two varieties of Feijoa (Apollo & Gemini) and their subsequent commercialisation. When he moved to Australia, however, he found there was little in the way of industry support for Feijoa growing, and that the varieties available were very inferior. Inferior seedling trees have been marketed in Australia, giving the species a bad name in terms of taste, whereas the superior selections are actually very good.

Merv explained that the Feijoa grows naturally in only a very limited area on the borders of Uruguay and Brazil in South America. It was first described by a German botanist named Sellow  in the 19^th century, hence its latin name Acca Sellowiana. These trees produce a very poor fruit that is not worth eating but an infusion of the leaves was used by the indigenous people of the area to treat dysentery and cholera. One specimen was transported to Europe in the late 1800’s and it is widely believed that all varieties that are currently available originated from this one plant.

The plant prefers acidic soils (pH ~ 6.0), a sub-tropical to temperate climate and is mainly pollinated by birds such as honeyeaters, rather than bees. They are currently grown mainly in Italy, USA and New Zealand where several good varieties have been developed. Australia has never really had a good breeding program for selection and commercial development of the feijoa.

Merv is one of the few people that not only loves growing interesting and rare fruits but has taken this interest one step further. He has been actively trying to develop new and improved Feijoa varieties suited to sub-tropical climates for some years now. His efforts started when he imported seeds derived from about ten named overseas varieties. He collected seed from two different international locations in order to get as great a genetic variation as possible. From these seeds he propagated 600 seedlings. The best 200 of these (selected for superior disease resistance, tolerance to drought and many other criteria) were planted out in his garden and allowed to grow to fruit bearing size.

The best of these (selected on the basis of disease resistance, overall tree shape, flavour and size of fruit) were cross pollinated with each other. This process involves bagging the flowers and only allowing pollen from selected varieties to pollinate the fruit. This provided seeds for a second generation of Feijoas from which he obtained some eighty plants from which he has obtained four distinct selections which possess the desired characteristics. The cross pollination process has been repeated to give a third generation of Feijoas seedlings that are currently still in pots. Overall this breeding program has taken about ten years and Merv believes that with luck and a little more time he could develop a new Australian variety.

Merv emphasised that Feijoa fruits have to be fully mature for good taste. The fruit is mature if you can place your hand underneath it and gently lift the fruit. If it easily detaches from the stem it is ready, and should not be picked before this stage as it does not ripen well off the tree. The fruit can keep up to 2 weeks, perferably in the fridge.

The scientific approach taken by Merv to his fruit tree growing has led him to collect a large quantity of books and notes about feijoas, native bees, and fruit tree growing topics generally. He is happy to share these resources with others if they have an interest, as he believes in sharing information freely. Give the pomologist a call if you want to know more about these topics!

Print this entry

Bob – you’ll see some netting where we’ve planted some new breeding lines of stone fruit so we don’t lose any of the fruit to birds, bats etc. We also have fruit fly exclusion netting about 2mm diameter which is a clear monofilament type to allow adequate light penetration and no fruit fly to go through the net.

Q.  How do you go with humidity under the fruit fly netting?

Bob – It’s increased

Q.  Do you get any fungal problems?

Bob – No, not as yet but we’re just trialing it to see what problems we are going to have.

To show you what happens when you don’t net, 2 weeks ago we had fruit here on these trees then we had a flock of parrot and there’s not a single Persimmon left.  The only way to be environmentally friendly is to put up netting. My way of thinking is that if we want to have a clean/green system of growing fruit and vegetables then everyone should be paying – not just the growers or the industries.

We have high chill pears but they haven’t fruited.  We tried a whole range of low chill pears a few years ago grafted on Pyrus callarina rootstock and they fruited but we removed them from the Research Station due to money to work on pears. These have come in from our plant breeder who transferred to Maroochy from Stanthorpe, Dr. Bruce Topp. He’s now working on Stone Fruit – we have some Apricots but they have not fruited or flowered heavily because we’re too low-chill and they need high-chill environment. We also have a Strawberry breeding block.

Sheryl – what’s the new PVR type we’ve been hearing about?

A. I think it’s the Camerosa type.

Bob – we can’t get KJ Pink Custard Apple because they think we will use it to cross with other varieties.That is up to the people who have taken out a plant patent on that variety.

Part of the exclusion netting work I’ve been doing with other people – Geoff Wade is our Entomologist, Dr. Ennis Lloyd, & Dr. Alan George. We have a net for bird/bat/fruit-piercing moth.  Sometimes growers will put on fairly heavy insecticide spray which will destroy the predators and sometimes there’s a commercial decision made to eliminate one pest which takes out the predators for another pest. They then re-introduce the predator later so there are many systems that have to be managed in running a commercial enterprise.

We have a monofilament net over the lychees.

Collection Block

Carob –– they have male and female trees for the types used to produce beans – the main use for this hermaphidite type is for feeding cattle and that’s the reason why many of the hermaphodite types were bred.  They can feed cattle with this foliage – particularly in very dry, arid conditions as these varieties will grow well.

Sheryl – there are big plantings in S.A.

Bob – we get fruit on this tree but lose a lot due to too high a level of moisture.

Sweet Tamarind – we do have a tamarind here but due to the cool conditions it does not produce good quality pods

Sheryl – you’re better off to buy it in a packet at the Chinese shop already prepared!

Bob – Abiu fruits very well here, Wampi – Tem Pay & Gay Sham, both good varieties, Star Apple doesn’t get much dieback – we have the purple type, a green one as well as a yellow type. Wax Jambu, Water Apple has had quite a few fruit on it, Mammy Americana took about 7 years to fruit

Robert P – I got my Mamy A as a root graft from Cairns.

Bob – the Mammy Sapote in California in 1987 was worth $5 million making them into sherbets and drinks in the restaurant trade.

Robert P – are these prone to phythophera as they can get dieback

Bob – heavy soils seem to affect them – they like a lot of organic matter

Robert P –  I’ve heard that if you have trouble with these you can put it on as a foliar spray

Bob – you can spray or drench the ground with a phosphoric acid but it is not registered to be used with this tree fruit.

Bob Feijoa – if it won’t fruit, graft a few varieties onto the one tree so this allows for cross pollination.

Patrick – another alternative to grafting onto Feijoas is to plant 2 trees into the same hole.

Bob White Sapote need pollinators as well

Robert – my Pike seems to set by itself, Vernon, Bluemthel are pollinators.  Will Pike and Lemon Gold be OK with each other?

George Lemon Gold is a partial pollinator

Bob – Yellow Gold needs a pollinator.  Denzler is an ever-bearing variety – all Casimoria fruit is thin-skinned and won’t last so it’s very difficult to get it to a consumer

George – Miracle fruit likes a bit of shade

Bob – Mulberry – Morus alba – Morus nigra is the European mulberry (black) but it doesn’t grow very well here.

Fruit Fly Exclusion Netting Trial

Netting – we have black netting and white netting – that’s the fruit fly netting.  The normal black netting is used for bird/bat and the white is the special fruit fly netting from NetPro with the logs being donated by Coppers Logs.  NetPro erected the netting for us and the net was manufactured by Gale Pacific in Melbourne.  The black net is cooler by 3 degrees and the white net is hotter by 5 degrees compared to ambient air temperature.

Sheryl – black absorbs heat – how is this?

Bob – black netting intercepts more light whereas the white netting with the translucent fibres lets more light go inside.  The light bounced around inside and with the restricted air flow the heat is trapped inside due to the smaller diameter of the net.

George – so we can use black and get a slightly lower chill factor

Bob – yes, but you’ve got problems with fruit fly exclusion. With the netting last year we didn’t spray the block at all for fruit fly, we had 100% infestation of fruit fly under the black net if we did not spray – it’s approximately 10ml mesh.

With the fruit fly netting on we’ve had 4 male fruit fly trapped – they’re runts and we don’t know whether they incubated in the ground over last season or because they are so small they got through the net – the other thing with the male is that he won’t sting the fruit.  We have attractants to pull the fruit fly inside the net to test its effectiveness.

George – do you have male and female traps inside or are you using the yeast bait to see if there are any female?

Bob – no we just have the pheromones – we don’t use any chemical sprays.

George – With Grumichamas they never use to get stung but now they do and the grubs are a lot smaller than the grubs in normal fruit – I think you’ll find that the fruit fly will eventually mutate to be able to get through there and I think you’ll selectively breed small fruit fly!!!

George – nature has its way of getting around things unfortunately!

Sheryl – getting back to this black & white netting – you can’t compare two different colours if they’re not the same density.

Bob – no that’s a normal (control) – that’s normally the type of netting that growers have been putting up.  What we’re doing is applying a different regime with 2 different management strategies to each block. One looking at the effects of normal commercial practices carried out on this site (block) compared to our modified practices out on the other site (modified is the white netting).

Bob – we have both the yellow and the red Pitaya but the cacto-blastus gives it a real flogging. They do best in a hotter climate. They’re growing approximately 10,000 acres of Dragon Fruit in Vietnam. There’s also the spineless type.

Robert P – the yellow tastes the best.

George – Gordon Vallance used to crop them very successfully down in Mullumbimby – basically the red flesh one.

Article compiled by Sheryl Backhouse

Print this entry

Many members will know Mark Kickbusch, who attends club meetings regularly, generally with several trees in hand to donate to the raffle. I wonder how many would suspect that Mark lives in a quaint cottage on half an acre, in an historic little town, where he tends over a hundred rare fruit trees. That town is Forest Hill, near Gatton, and Mark has lived there for 9 years. It is not really very far from Brisbane – about an hour’s drive – and is a great place to go for a Sunday drive because of its historic buildings (two pubs!) and surrounding landscape.

Mark’s property has the lovely black soil for which the Lockyer Valley is renowned, but it is subject to quite heavy frosts. So Mark has planted numerous stone and pome fruits which can withstand frost, and these are doing well, but he experiences some difficulty with the semi-tropicals. Not for want of trying though – as he has quite a collection of warmer climate trees like mangoes, custard apples, Kwai Muk and Green Sapote. In fact Mark’s whole garden demonstrates his attitude of trying anything out, and thereby pushing the boundaries of where and how we might expect trees to grow.

An interesting feature of Mark’s garden is his collection of really unusual rare fruits. These include, for example, Kitembilla, Paccalacca (which has flowered), Tazziberry and Buddha’s hand citron. They are amongst many other rare and more common fruiting trees.  Some are interesting varieties that Mark has procured from specialist places such as Ric Deering’s. He pointed out, for example, the “Meager” Plum which seems to be quite resistant to fruit fly, and the Golden Fig which he says is the best eating. His Jujube has had a first fruit – this will make many club members envious! A very large Kei Apple tree has not yet fruited, but Mark has planted another nearby in case it is requiring a male and female. A very old original tree in the garden is a 50 year old Persimmon – probably Nightingale.

Also tucked in spots around the garden are some very interesting native fruiting shrubs and trees, including Native Mulberry (which has a tiny white fruit), Native Ginger, Queensland Arrowroot, Bolwarra, Currant Bush (tastes like dried fruit), Wombat Berry, Finger Lime, Burdekin Plum, a special Lillypilly from the Kimberly region, and many more.

No spot is wasted in Mark’s garden. Along the front fence are some interesting vines such as Gold Kiwifruit, Panama Gold passionfruit and Passiflora foetida (from which he makes cordial). Out the back are his productive vegetables beds, with winter crops of cabbages and other greens already well advanced. All the trees are on a watering system drawing from town water – evidence of Mark’s good planning in setting up his orchard.

It is quite clear that Mark is a collector with a passion for the unusual. As well as growing rare fruits, he has several other very interesting hobbies. He restores old motor bikes, collects some very unusual antiques, and indulges in jam-making, and preserving fruits. This makes good use of his excess fruit. Before leaving, we persuaded him to share some of his favourite recipes with the club.

Mark’s Bottled Persimmons:  Most people wouldn’t think of bottling persimmons, but Mark says they preserve really well and make an excellent stewed fruit, served with cream. His method: Take ripe but still quite firm persimmons and pack them whole in preserving jars. Cover them with a light syrup of 3 cups water to 1 cup sugar. Bring to the boil to 170 for 2 1/2 hours

Print this entry

Marg’s orchard is located at Morayfield in the Caboolture district.  She has been growing figs for about 25 years and has recently started growing mulberries commercially.  She has approximately 150 fig trees at the moment and approximately 60 mulberry trees that are presently bearing fruit, plus another 75 planted out.  She runs and operates the orchard solely, but her husband generally helps with the picking of the figs for about three weeks around about March during the very heavy picking period.

She also has about 50 mature lychee trees and 20 mature pecan nut trees.  She used to sell the lychees but found that the cropping of this particular variety, Tyso, was irregular, as was the seed size.  These trees were planted about 25 years ago and this was the variety that was recommended then.  The other major problem with lychees is that unless the orchard is fully netted, the flying foxes and rainbow lorikeets think the fruit belongs to them.  Marg’s orchard is not netted and given the irregular cropping, it was not worth the expense of netting it.  So she concentrated on her figs instead.

The pecan trees are also large trees now and the cockatoos raid these each autumn.  They normally bear good crops though, particularly if the winter has been cold with a few frosts, so she normally manages to harvest enough to spread around and sell some.

She only grows one variety, the Brown Turkey, which came from good root stock and seems to grow well in the conditions in her orchard.  These are mid to late bearing figs which she harvests from February to April.

Marg initially started selling her figs by taking them around on consignment or selling outright to fruit shops on the northside of Brisbane.  She then started to sell them through the Brisbane Markets and she also used to send them via airfreight to an agent at the Sydney Markets.  These days she sells via a few select fruit shops, a few restaurants and direct farm gate sales.

One of the biggest jobs with the fig orchard is the pruning which Marg does in late winter.  As a general rule of thumb, she prunes two thirds of last season’s growth.  As figs generally only grow on the new season’s growth, this is necessary to maintain good crops and keep the trees to a good size for picking.  After pruning, Marg selects the best cuttings for propagation.  This is also a big job, and this year she has tried the cuttings in the bag method to try and establish a good root system.  In previous years Marg has done the cuttings in the traditional method.  Generally with the traditional method, a lot of leaf comes through, but often the roots aren’t developing and the cutting will rot out.

During the farm visit, the figs were just coming out of their dormancy, so they really just looked like dead sticks.  But in a month’s time, they will be loaded with leaf and fruit so Marg said you really should have another visit and see the difference.  It was an opportunity however to see one of the main pests of the fig tree, the fig leaf beetle, in action early in the budding season.

This beetle and its larvae will decimate a tree and ruin the year’s crop if not kept in check.  As Marg tries to use no or limited pesticides, early in the budding season is a crucial time to eliminate as many of these beetles as possible.  The beetles are slow flyers and easy to catch as their general defence is to drop off the tree if touched.  She goes round each tree about 4 or 5 times a week and catches the beetles in a small bucket with oil in the bottom.  This simple method kills the beetle and avoids having to use pesticides.  Any eggs that have been laid or larvae that have hatched, she just squashes.  There was never a known predator bug of the fig leaf beetle or its eggs or larvae, but after years of growing figs and avoiding heavy spraying, Marg’s orchard seems to have generated a beneficial bug which attacks the eggs and larvae.  This bug however, only seems to emerge a couple of weeks after the fig leaf beetle has emerged, so the hand harvesting of the fig leaf beetle early on is crucial.

In the humid sub-tropical climate from Spring to Autumn, the trees are also susceptible to rust, so regular spraying of copper oxychloride or mancozeb helps keep the rust in check.  Failure to do this will see the leaves drop off the trees before the fruit has matured and thus reduce the fruits ability to ripen. Marg pointed out that the soil in the surrounding bushland on the property is quite poor, coastal, sandy, loamy soil.  However years of mowing and mulching have produced quite a contrast to the soil in the orchard which is generally much deeper and richer than the surrounding bushland.  Early in their life, the young fig trees were attacked by nematodes and borers, which Marg attributes largely to the poor soil initially combined with periods of bad weather.  However with the enrichment of the soil over many years, the problem of nematodes and borers has been kept to a minimum. When the fig season starts, picking takes place every day for about three months.  Figs are one of the oldest fruits known to mankind and are regarded as one of the super foods.  They have the highest alkalinity of any fruits and vegetables.  Basically what the experts say about our diet today is that a lot of the food that we eat is high in acid, and you need to get the balance right, just like the garden or the pool.  Neutral is good.  So figs, in that regard, help bring back the balance if you have a lot of acid in your system.  Figs are very high in calcium, potassium and fibre. For fertilizers, in winter when they are dormant, Marg gives them a little feed of lime.  Then in spring and summer she gives them an application of a general all-round fertilizer plus several applications of sulphate of potash. The only fertilizer Marg had put on the mulberries this year was blood and bone.  After the trees have finished fruiting she will prune them, as, like the figs, they will only fruit on the new season wood.  It is also the best way to keep the trees in manageable condition as otherwise they would grow too large.

Marg was asked about the bird problem, but said it wasn’t really much of a problem as there were so many figs, and the lorikeets, the pest of the lychee, only seemed to like the little immature figs late in the season, and because the trees were kept low with the pruning, the flying foxes weren’t much of a problem. She was also asked about fruit fly, but said even though fruit fly was present in the orchard and occasionally stung the fruit, she was told years ago by the DPI that an enzyme under the skin of this particular variety seemed to stop the larvae from developing, and that advice seemed to be right.

Marg’s newest crop of mulberries was right in the middle of harvesting during the farm visit.  Visitors were invited to pick the fruit, which should just drop into your hand when ripe, and taste it.  Marg has sold her mulberry crop this year to an ice cream and sorbet maker.  They are the common black mulberry but are from a good root stock with a great taste. Marg said that they grow like weeds but are a beautiful tree with loads of lovely fruit.  Mulberries have been used in some cultures, eg China for centuries.  In China most of the mulberries are used for food for silkworms for the silk industry, and most of these trees are the white mulberry, as this is the silkworm’s favourite variety.  There are quite a lot of different varieties, red, black, white and pink.  Japan and India are also major mulberry growers.

The mulberry leaf has also been used in these cultures for centuries for medicinal purposes, for tea, as a food and also as feed for stock.  The mulberry leaf makes a wonderful dolmade which Marg said she would show us how to make later in the day, and also taste some she had made the day before. She showed the visitors how to make mulberry leaf tea by microwaving a couple of leaves for a minute or two, then crushing the leaves when they became crunchy and steeping them in boiling water for a couple of minutes.  The resultant tea had a very smooth, silky taste, probably something to do with the fact that they are the basic ingredient in the production of silk!

Marg was asked whether you could change the flavour using different fertilizers.  Don indicated that you need to get the right genetic material, but potash and calcium will help.  They are a pretty tough tree once established. Sheryl said you never really get the ultra sweet black mulberries like the temperate types.  Marg seemed to think the white mulberry was extra sweet just like a lolly, but she thought the tang of the black mulberry was better.  Ken indicated that Sulphate of Potassium increases the sweetness.

After touring the orchard, visitors then did a bush walk through Marg’s property, then came back to the shed where they tasted the dolmades made from mulberry leaves and were then given a demonstration by Marg on how to make them.  Marg then showed the visitors her pruning equipment and one of the native bee hives on the property.

Print this entry

Durian orchard  –  a real treasure trove of biodiversity by SIRA HABIBU         Jitra: Durian pulp in a riot of colours including purple, bright orange and deep red can be found in an orchard not far from the fringes of the Bukit Wang forest reserve in Anjung Lima here. The orchard is a veritable treasure trove of biodiversity as far as durian varieties are concerned. Covering an area just the size of three football fields, it has some 150 trees of 72 varieties of the fruit. Orchard owner Mohd Sofi Ibrahim said he had in his collection 55 state-level champion durian varieties from all over the country as well as 17 wild varieties from the forests of Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Indonesia. Of all these, the 51-year-old avid durian seed collector gives his top vote to the Tenom variety. “It is the most delicious of them all. The colour of the pulp is purple with occasional tinges of orange and dark red. “I was lucky to have come across this wild variety when I was in Sabah years ago,” Mohd Sofi said. Other wild durians found in his orchard include Kura-kura, Anggunang, Alau, Marahang, Pulu Bekenu, Pengiran Limbang, Royal Brunei, Dalit, Pahes and Bunga Simpul.  “Kura-kura is unique. The fruit grows at the bottom of the stem but it doesn’t taste good,” he said.  Mohd Sofi said the Royal Brunei was among the more delicious varieties, while the pulp of the Anggunang was bright orange. “And Pahes does not taste like durian at all. It tastes like the salak fruit,” he said, adding that the pulp of this variety was yellow with tinges of black. Among the state-level durian champions found in the orchard are Cinta Guru from Kedah, Mas Muar (Johor), Tiong Emas (Terengganu), Hor Lor (Penang), Tok Lituk (Kelantan), Basrah (Pahang) and Si Rusa (Negri Sembilan).  Mohd Sofi, who is a retired Bahasa Melayu teacher, has a passion for agriculture and carpentry. “My orchard is my retreat. I find solace here, away from the hustle and bustle of the city,” he said. Mohd Sofi, who also owns a tour company in Alor Star, said he had set up a recreation park near the orchard. “It is a favourite place among school children, especially during school holidays,” he said, adding that the park was suitable for picnics as it boasted a man-made mini waterfall. The durians in his orchard, he added, were not for sale. “But I will be selling durian saplings from next year,” he said.  Ref:  www.thestar.com.my

Print this entry

During a recent visit to Singapore in February this year I visited Mr. Lee Chong Khee at the Head Horticulture Centre, National Parks Board Tel:+65 62725323 Fax: +65 62728029 http://www.nparks.gov.sg

The Nursery covers 20 hectares and Mr. Lee’s main duty at the nursery is to propagate and maintain the tropical fruit trees. Potting Mix used is 2 parts soil, 1 part sand and 1 part coco-peat. The following notes represent answers to questions I posed:

Grafting Tips:

Approach grafting can be done all year round

Bud grafting is best from March to July in Singapore (our September – January) as the branches are too woody at other times of the year and the bud comes off easily at this time. We take buds about 1 ½ inches long (30mm) early in the morning then keep them in a wet cloth and then graft on the same day.  Cover with 50mm wide Nescofilm put out by Nippon Shoji Kaisha Ltd., Osaka Japan.

Marcotting      Always make sure that your marcot is in the shade – not in the sun – can be done all year.

Carambola     Can be air-layered and grafted

Custard Apples     Bud or Wedge graft.  We’ve never tried marcotting them but you can try.

Durian             We’ve tried many methods but find that springtime bud grafting is the best method for peeling off the bud but you can also wedge graft and approach graft.

Jackfruit         We only grow from seed but you could bud graft in Spring.

Mango             If you want to top work your mango and graft on new varieties, chop it off and wait for the new shoots to appear so they’re about 30-50 cm long and about the thickness of a pencil. You can either Bud graft, Wedge graft or Approach graft.

Papaya            We Tongue graft it.

General Notes:

 Durian             Never disturb the surface roots as it has a lot of fine hairs. Damaging them affects the quality of the fruit. Best time of year is March to June.

Jackfruit         Ready to pick 90 days from flowering

Kuini               is from the Mango family

Loquat            Won’t fruit in Singapore – very good in Taiwan and Japan

Nutmeg           You need two

Macadamia     Doesn’t fruit or flower here

Mangosteen    Available April May June

Rambutans     Interior branches should be pruned for air ventilation and good sunlight penetration. This is for controlling pests and diseases.