June 2007
The Daley News
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Winter has arrived here in the subtropics and we have been busy preparing for the cooler months ahead. Our first frosts come to Kyogle in the first few weeks of June and it is vital for us that we have our frost protection in place before this time. Rod has been busy setting up roll back screens of aluminate fabric that will cover our retail shop during the night and can be wound back in the morning. This will mean that we can leave our sub tropical and tropical plants out in the weather and we will not have to move them into the poly houses for the winter months. The aluminate fabric reflects the radiant heat from the earth back toward the ground over night creating a warmer environment and preventing frost from penetrating, removing it during the day allows the ground to be warmed by the sun and the plants are able to enjoy as many hours of sunlight as the day allows. We use the same fabric in our orchard to cover sensitive trees like our paw paws, star apples, and jakfruits.
The Orchard
We have a new addition to our organic pest and weed controls in the orchard, this is our brush cutter. We no longer have to wade through a mixture of cover crop and weeds as they are being cut down before they have a chance to set seed. We still have our favourite weed, the brilliant feral cherry tomato that pops up all over the place and allows us to all have free tomatoes while the price of them soars in the supermarket. This little, juicy and delicious tomato not only can climb 3-4 m into the canopy of the orchard but it also makes a superb ground cover under the trees where it can sprawl all over the ground to a height of 50cm.
We have been enjoying carambolas and macadamias for the last month. We would all eat a lot more of the nuts but they are reasonably difficult to get into so this makes them an interesting challenge, the general consensus is the BONK (Bart's Original Nutcracker) is the best nutcracker when it come to macadamias, although a slab of concrete or a besser block works just as effectively if you like them crushed. The Governors plum is covered in fruit, please let us know if anybody has any recipe ideas of how we can preserve the crop. Custard apples are just starting to come off which will be enjoyed by us all, another of the favourites amongst the staff and young Torin. Think he needs to know the proper way to get his teeth into a Hilary White Custard Apple.
Rods Fresh Farm Nuts
We are delighted to be able to offer Rods freshly harvested pecans for sale this year. The harvest was completed in April and is a buzz of activity around the nursery as several staff members are reemployed as farm hands for a couple of weeks. Now experienced in nut collecting the team work frantically for a month gathering pecans while the nursery runs on a skeleton crew and the sulpher crested coctatoos drive us nuts with their screeching. The harvest was down by almost 50% on last year because of the lack of our normal heavy summer rains and the fact that pecans are biannual producers. For more information on Rods pecan grove see our previous newseltter from June 2005.
Grafting fruit trees
We are frequently asked questions about grafting fruit trees, why we do it and what the advantages are. There are many reasons why most fruits trees are grafted specimens and one of the main reasons if that seedlings may not grow true to type, meaning they will not be that same delicious fruits that were picked from the parent tree. There are of course exceptions like the Bowen mango which is polyembryonic which means that the seeds will grow true to type and be the same as the parent tree. I remember when I was young I used to try to grow anything that I could, I would sprout my date seeds and mandarins but they never amounted to much, I think I was just intrigued with the initial burst of life from the seed. If I had succeeded with my mandarin I would have been very shocked to find an incredibly thorny tree with small tasteless fruits. Grafting is the union of two or more different trees that are closely related, the bottom part with the root section becomes the rootstock and the top becomes the fruiting variety. Grafting allows us to replicate a proven good quality fruiting tree and multiply this is into any number of trees 
that are identical. It reduces the fruiting time and eliminates the juvenile phase in the growth of the tree. Grafted trees will begin to be productive in about their second or third year compared with six to twelve with a seedling tree. Grafting also enables us to take advantage of the qualities of the rootstock plant, for example it enables us to produce dwarf fruit tree by grafting them onto dwarfing rootstocks, or the rootstock may be more adaptable to cold climates or heavy soils, qualities which are then imparted to the grafted variety. It is important to care for your grafted tree once it has been planted. The more vigorous rootstock will continue to produce shoots for some time and it is very important to remove all shoots below the graft union, this is called desuckering. If you leave the suckers on the tree it will drain the energy from the plant and you could risk losing your graft. View our video of Katie demonstrating grafting.
