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Post by templeton on Nov 10, 2019 23:55:34 GMT -5
Fun? Baiting pommy bastards ...but that's a bit too easy these days what with BREXIT (what were they thinking?) their weird PM, and even weirder leader of the opposition...
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Post by templeton on Nov 7, 2019 16:06:39 GMT -5
The grower has a long list of possible failure points - . Sounds like he doesn't want any competition. That was my thought...research suggests they are pretty variable in production and can be a bit cantankerous in growing.
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Post by templeton on Nov 2, 2019 20:27:48 GMT -5
As I was driving to work this morning, I passed the local primary school and all the kids were in a costumed procession (Hallowe'en!); cheering, that; I remember doing that nearly three score and ten ago; I remember us dancing the Maypole, I guess on the First of May (Hooray, hooray, it's the First of May; outdoor...um, never mind); verboten, now, of course, having been a Pagan practice, don't you know; s'pose it's only a matter of time before Hallowe'en is also crushed under a juggernaut of self-righteous fundamentalists, fearful that they'll not get into their imaginary heaven if they are tolerant of other people's beliefs, such as letting children costume and seek free candy. Templeton: have you tried the potato/honey method of rooting green cuttings? No i haven't - I'll look it up. Re halloween - there is considerable resistance in Aust to this - we never celebrated this when i was a kid, but over the last decade or two the supermarkets are full of nasty plastic witch and ghost gear, specially grown big orange pumpkins ( in early summer ffs - probably imported), and kids patrolling neighbourhoods. Nearly everyone over 20 is bemused by this new 'tradition' - the more cynical of us see this as yet another facet of the inexorable creep of NorthAm culture - or maybe its just that we never burned witches here T
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Post by templeton on Oct 29, 2019 19:10:53 GMT -5
hi Steev, re pistachio - I've grown a couple of dozen from seed this Austral spring. I just bought a pack of unroasted = raw pistachios from the grower at my local farmers market. He was most sceptical. Soak overnight, into some coirpeat in a ziplock bag, onto a heat mat for week or two at ~21C, then potted on the germinating seeds. i got maybe 50 % germination. The grower has a long list of possible failure points - they will be 90% male, they females will be no good, they will grow for about 15 years then they will all die of nematodes and fungal rot. I have also purchased two grafted plants, and im keeping the below graft rootstock shoots attached for the moment, in the hope i can take cuttings of the resistant rootstock, and graft some more plants onto them.
I also bought two more packets of different varieties of raw nuts which i intend to sprout as well.
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Post by templeton on Sept 16, 2019 3:59:59 GMT -5
Hi guys, back on deck again. I'm keen to get back into my red-podded projects - got a fridge full of varoius generations, but it is getting a little late in the season for sowing. Have just moved to 2.5 acres of creek soil, so still a lot of work to set up beds - hopefully I'll have time to at least go through the seed store to see what i have. And Rebsie has posted! an inspiration for my breeding projects.. T
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Post by templeton on Jan 4, 2019 1:52:36 GMT -5
I saw enormous ones last year in italy. They were very tender - no idea how the growers got them to market looking good.
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Post by templeton on Jan 3, 2019 0:21:37 GMT -5
I'm going to do a controlled mesocosm experiment - the fleshy 'fruit' suggests consumption, either as a germination trigger or a transport mechanism - whether it is an obligate trigger or not is interesting. It seems to root sucker after fire, so I'm going to go with smoke water as a germ aid, and seed nicking. My 3 X 2 matrix is going to be 1 Ferment, 2 Scarify, 3 Control X
1 Smoke water, 2 no smoke water.
At the end of the Millennium Drought we had 2 very wet La Nina years, and then got seedlings in the forest, so I'm thinking of giving all these trials a very good watering. I was going to sow into replicate trays and shallowly bury the trays in the forest, but a native nurserywoman has suggested that ants and mice might predate the seed... Should have thought this all through before the fruiting season T
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Post by templeton on Jan 2, 2019 0:41:33 GMT -5
Thanks Walnuttr, The podocarps are off in a totally different bit of the plant world, they're southern pines, so gymnosperms.
Andrew, I could get you some seeds, but no one can get it germinate. Two days ago I fed it to chickens - an alleged germination trigger - and nothing came out the other end - I reckon the gizzard grinding action destroyed the seed. I currently have a call out for captive native birds to free feed the remaining seed to, but no responses so far - there are very stringent regs regarding the keeping of native birds in Australia. We have dodder in my local forests too, lots of mistletoes - but different to your northern ones, and some other root parasites in Santalales. We don't have the annual crop root parasites that are the scourge of Africa. Most of our root parasites are long-lived - think sandalwood, which probably makes their ecology quite different to northern ecosystems. T
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Post by templeton on Jan 1, 2019 2:07:21 GMT -5
Interesting; reminds me of cashew. You're in good company, Steev, Jacques Labillardiere thought so too...he wrote "“I discovered an evergreen tree, which has its nut situated, like that of the acajou [English=cashew], upon a fleshy receptacle much larger than itself. I therefore named this new genus Exocarpos…The principal characters of this plant have led me to rank it among the terebinthinaceous [turpentine-like] tribe, next to the anacardium [cashew]. I have given it the name of Exocarpos cupressiformis.”(Labillardiere, 1800 ‘Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse...wasn't it nice of him to write that passage in English for us non-Francophones ) gotta love "terebinthinaceous", I must pull that one out next time someone offers me an expensive red wine... T
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Post by templeton on Dec 31, 2018 20:04:09 GMT -5
I've been a very infrequent poster this last year - study has kept me pretty busy, even too busy to breed peas - Shit! Anyway, here's what's been keeping me mostly out of my garden - and gardening forums. I wrote this article for The Conversation a couple of weeks ago - parasitic plants are absolutely intriguing! Exocarpos article
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Post by templeton on Sept 11, 2018 17:04:12 GMT -5
Walt, This weekend I looked at my hanging bunches of onions in the carport, and found a Mill Creek in a bunch of shrivelled empty shells that was still in good condition. Thats about 9 months old, way older than the 3 months they usually last. Given the reported plasticity of onions, I wonder if you could start to select for a methuselah storage onion? T
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Post by templeton on Aug 13, 2018 0:58:45 GMT -5
just getting into growth phase here. I was very disorganised last year, and/or I had too many different lines to follow, and beds, then harvest bags got poorly labelled. I think I have planted out one of my early Winterton bulbing selections for increase, and a mixed planting of Winterton storage survivors, and a line of topsetting Wintertons. I think I've got 3 of Richard's Amuri reds coming on. I could just let everything cross up nd see what happens...
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Post by templeton on Jun 9, 2018 1:00:33 GMT -5
Hi Andrew, thanks for all the pictures. I'm flat out with writing but do stick my head in from time to time. Keep up the good work. T
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Post by templeton on May 19, 2018 19:40:13 GMT -5
looking forward to the reports, Andrew. Buried in my PhD at the moment, so no autumn peas growing here. A season off is probably good - a chance to decrease disease load in the soil, and the added perspective of a few months without thinking about pea breeding might add some clarity to my breeding projects rather than the enthusiasm of a Labrador puppy that has characterised my previous seasons. And give me a chance to pump out a few research papers.
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Post by templeton on Apr 16, 2018 17:23:12 GMT -5
My reds did get mostly stable at around F5 I think. Didn't continue this austral spring, and I haven't sown this autumn either, since I got a nasty black spot disease last autumn/winter. I've re-assessed my breeding aims too. I grew a semi-commercial crop with a nearby grower - while the local restaurants were interested in the purples, it was eating quality that they focused on, going for my big yellow snow Joni's Taxi rather than my three purple snows, even tho they were a bit reluctant to put a pale yellow pea on the plate. So I'm thinking I will cross my red and purple snows back to Jonis to get tender huge podded peas. I'm also thinking that production and plant size is important, so double flowers and short plants seem to be desirable too. Yeah, I really needed another 5 year project... T
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