Coldest morning in 63 years

HappyEarth says...
Got down to 1.3 degrees here. We had a light dusting of frost also. No problem with the fruit trees but lost a couple of tomato seedlings and potato plants.

Rich
www.happyearth.com.au

Jason says...
A lot of people are in denial for whatever reason :). Still it's 1.3 degrees here almost every night over winter and I have bananas growing without any real problem. So long as it stays above 0c it's all good. Even slightly below 0c not many actual trees are bothered -2 is fine for almost everything

Brendan says...
Even though I live in the 'tropics', it's been down to -½ºC here!
I live ~30km inland from Mackay and it's always hotter and colder here than where Wayne lives :-(

Jason says...
My rain tank is dry right now in the middle of Winter for the first time ever if that counts for anything :), if it doesn't rain and rain a lot sometime soon it's going to be a long dry useless for growing summer. But I'm ready for the work around, hence the planed mass hit of nitrogen next month so I can get things growing before it drys out :)

amanda says...
hey Jason - our tanks dry 1st winter too...I just did my nitrogen zap yesterday also! I have been waiting for a good soaking rain for months now...depressing isn't it.

No wonder the farmers around here have a high incidence of depression etc....I know how agitated I get when it's sunny month in and month out...but at least I can turn on a tap if need be.

Jason says...
You west Australians need to plant trees starting on the coast and keep going until you hit Sydney, then it'll rain heaps :) all the way across. It's the only way to fix it.

Phil, I graft mine in November same time as Avocados. It'll probably be warm enough for you to graft them well before that, but that's when I do it. I also prefer to plant the seedlings in the ground fairly early on and graft them there in the ground in the final position. I haven't had one fail doing that. I will be grafting some in pots soon (I have about 150 seeds in at the moment) but I think it's better to plant them straight out and graft them in the ground, oh yeah I graft at the solid wood where it turns white/grey not the green stuff. I just tape the graft then put a bag over it, it only takes a couple weeks to start growing most of the time

Jason says...
I usually take Avocado scions after they flower and have the first growth flush, When they are swelling up for the second flush that's when I take them. By then it's warm enough here for them to heal quickly

BJ says...
I purchased a Dade from Bunnings a few months back, covered in flowers. It has continuously fruited and flowered since. There are no other mature trees in the area, so I assume it is a self pollinator and an overbearer.

Phil@Tyalgum says...
Yeah there was another one left, at Sophia's garden centre, just out of Nerang on the way to Numinbah. Although the other plant wasn't labelled but the nursery attendant said they only bought the one variety to sell, the unlabelled one was a better shaped plant but I took the one with the faded "Dade" label just to be sure. I don't think they know much about fruit trees there, the plants look like they had been there for a while. Hey BJ good to know there are named varieties at Bunnings, haven't seen them offered there before.

BJ says...
Yes, they always seem to have Vernon and Dade here. I have seen Pike and Ortego once also. But their Dades often look quite healthy, and as your ordinary Bunnings shopper has little idea of what a White Sapote is, they heavily discounted one for me and I'd have to be daft to turn my nose up at a $20 large grafted dade in full flower with a few small fruit already formed!

Jason says...
Peter, nah I don't sell any but I'll give you a couple or swap you for something or whatever, which one do you have growing now?. I always wondered how well they would grow in Casterton, it looks a really fertile place. I'd like to live there myself one day but the wife is stuck working here right now and there doesn't look like much going on in Casterton in that way.

Pike is very reliable here, Reinecke commerical looks like it will be a good one now that it's started firing on all cylinders but mine was verrry slow to come into bearing. Phil I do have a Dade, unfortunately my taste bads don't rate it, so after year one that tree has been on a slow mission to no where, I hope it'll be better in your climate. I have a few varieties in bad spots so they haven't gone anywhere, Vernon grows well but doesn't fruit much here, Vista and Ortega are OK, Pike makes by far the most fruit so far but Reinecke looks like it will out do it this year, remains to be seen if it does that every year. I'm still a bit suspect on it since it took 9 years to flower properly. All the ones I have fruiting reliably until this year Vista/Ortega/Pike/Vernon taste similar with Pike being perhaps slightly not as good as the others, none are a fruit I would want to eat more than one a day, they taste great first time. But they just aren't something I can eat kilos of like most fruits.

The variety Chris on the other had is a total winner that's nothing like any other sapote I've tasted and I have one little dodgy tree of that, that is going to be where I put most of my efforts with sapotes for the next couple years. Getting that tree healthy and getting some grafts from it up and growing. I also have a few seedlings near maturity (one just started flowering in the last few weeks)
So hopefully they turn out good, it's been a long wait

John Mc says...
Hey BJ,
I m in luck. My local Bunnings will acquire any plant that is available at any other store, even from interstate. They also told me that if I know the whereabouts of my plant, eg a Vernon and or Dade white Sapote, at say, the Stafford store, to let them know and they ll get it for me.

UPDATE: Just rang Stafford, very helpful, but out of stock. He say s the exotics like that come from a wholesaler called Birdwood Nursery.
Anyway, I ll ring around a few more stores.

Other than a very early bearer, what other characteristics do they possess? (dade and Vernon).

Jason says...
Peter, email me at cherimoya removeallthis @ gmail.com . I don't check that very often but I will for a couple of days. I'm working on organizing a few trips around everyones gardens in the area that's into rare fruit growing. There's three here worth seeing, Jantina wants to come over also and there's a few guys over near Warrnambool also that have some good places too. We used to do that all the time but somehow forgot about it for the last 5 years or so. That'll be in Late Spring but if you are over here now well then may as well see some things in Winter when they are a bit more trashed too

Jason says...
Chris is a really good fruit so I'm going to sacrifice pretty much all the tree I have into scions later in Spring, hopefully within a year I'll have tripled the wood I have of Chris. Sometimes with nursery grown sapotes they are just not on strong rootstock and you have to grow your own to get a good one. But yes once I have more wood I'll swap/give it. One sapote I want one day that I don't have is Rainbow, a few people in South Australia have it, it's supposed to be a pretty good one. When did you graft the sapote? I've never tried grafting them this late in the year but late spring and early summer works good

amanda says...
Well - coldest morning ever here! -0.4 wow (well - since recordings in '41 anyway) cool! ;-) except all the low chill stone fruit running amok now...no frost tho' - maybe cos I am near the ocean?

Rev says...
of interest the lleuwin current that takes the warm water along the coast has shown a wekaning trend over the last 4 decades. Its implicated in the irregular perulus settlemnet of rock lobsters you'd have heard about too.
Its also the reason WA doesnt look like the atacama or namibia! so as its wekened the rainfall in SW WA has also been dropping over the last 4 decades (down 30%).
im sure somebody will blame it on GW
however when it picks up again in its cycles it'll also intensify the cyclones up north - which someone else will blame on GW.
LOL
anyone read the fable of Henny penny?
too close to the truth.

The reality is that the current and projected climate are well within the bounds of the last 4-6 million years natural cycles,and many australian species of plants are at least that old (incl the acacia species i referred to earlier) and have lived through many a troublesome time. No coincidentally hominins are also about that old, because its when the world started to shift to its current highly variable on again off again ice sheet phase.

expect the unexpected. weve only been here 200 years, it only looks like climate change because thats just long enough to remember how it was, but not long enough to see it goes in cycles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Australia#Pre-instrumental_climate_change