mimzy

I know at markets you normally need indemnity insurance in case people get sick from eating your produce, and I imagine at a commercial level there are various licenses to be held. Thanks Zen Peddler, that was my suspicion.

Nearest offer. Need to move these on.

Are they shiitake blocks in the background too?

I want to get some feedback on a business idea. I'm coming to the end of a PhD in basic sciences and due to a few recent life events I need to get some coin together. During my PhD I spent a lot of time doing microscopy work, mostly histology and bright-field, but also confocal, SEM and TEM. I was thinking of setting up a company where people can send me their samples; animal, plant, whatever (as long as it is soft enough to cut with a microtome) along with a list of what they want to see, and I would do all of the sample prep, microscopy and imaging and send them back pretty HD pictures. I know there is a market for this work in science and medicine, but I was also thinking about opening up the business to the public. Would anyone here be interested in a service like this? The biggest hindrance I can see with this project is sample preservation, although not really a problem with plant tissue. For animal and microbiological tissue I could provide a kit that would enable people to properly fix their tissue. Cost might be another problem, off the top of my head I don't think I could process and image a sample for less than $300. Let me know what you think.

Yeah that's a good idea too. When you get down to the cellular level, it can be quite beautiful how elegant nature's solution to problems can be.

It depends on what you want to image what type of tissue it is. If we take the simplest case, which would be embedding in paraffin or resin and doing normal light microscopy with some rudimentary staining, then the costs would be prep and embedding materials (~$20/cm3), staining (~$5/cm3), sectioning, microscopy and imaging time (~4hrs/cm3, say $40/hr for my time). Without any mark-up you are looking at $185 per cm3 of tissue for the simplest possible case.

I was pondering this today... Hybrids of Acacia alpina and Acacia phlebophylla are known to occur in the Mount Buffalo region, but are always sterile. Phlebs are notoriously hard to propagate and keep alive, but have a great spice profile. I have never grown Acacia alpina, but given it is found across a wider ecological range than phlebophylla, I'm guessing its a hardier plant and perhaps easier to propagate. This raises a few questions... (1) What is the spice profile of alpinaXphlebophylla? It seems at least possible to me that it could be present in significant quantities. (2) Is the hybrid able to be cloned by tissue cultured? If the resulting hybrid is indeed a hardier plant than phlebophylla, then it may also be more receptive to tissue culture propagation. Obviously entirely speculative and a lot of assumptions made. Would love to hear your thoughts

This makes me wonder then... how does wild peres propagate, and maintain genetic diversity? Can't be all clonal can it?

I'm still acquiring the materials for this experiment, still a long way off too. I have phleb seedlings grown from seed gifted by a member here. Alpina seed/plant/pollen is proving much harder to acquire as fewer people are interested in it (see folias comment). I've only done rudimentary TC with using MS media, so I can't comment on holographic's claims. Would love to here about your experiences with Phleb TC Darklight.

This orange spot seems seems to have come with the recent wet period we have had. Appears to be infectious and targets new growth. Does anyone know if its fungal or viral. Has anyone been successful treating it?

Ahh bugger, its grafting season and I don't have any peres now! I'll get some copper onto those leaves tomorrow. Thanks greentea.

Ahh sorry I had it ready to attach and forgot to click upload! Here's the problem.

Put me down for a few of these. PM'd.

Mouth... watering..... alas I am too far. Great looking plants.

Time to bump this one. All the resources I need to give this cross a go are in place; time, greenhouse, lab, etc. If anyone has any Acacia alpina seed that they are prepared to donate or trade with me please let me know, as I would love to get them propagated at the same time as the Phlebs. Cheers.

Damn, if you were based in Australia I would jump on this!

Hey PhoenixSon, I'll take those berries of your hands. I can't afford $40, but I can do you $20 + a big sack of P. harmala seed>? Or some mixed trich seed? Cheers, Mimz

A generous member here gifted me some Phleb seeds a while back and I finally have the set up I need to look after them. I am curious as to when the best time of year is to sow them? I'm from Sydney, so the climate is a little warmer than they are used to.

That sucks dude. I had a few rather mature potted plants taken from my front porch a little while ago. It's a sickening feeling when a safe neighborhood bites you in the ass. It's troubling they were happy to enter your back yard. Still, life comes in swings and roundabouts, pm you're address and I'll send you a mystery box of seed to get your collection back up and running.

The seedlings I put down went into 30% course river sand, 20% perlite and 50% seedling mix. They are doing great! One thing I have never been able to get my hands on is crushed limestone, which I have heard helps the alkaline pH lovers. Does anyone think it makes an appreciable difference to their plants?

There is much wrong with this, I hardly know where to begin. It is important to critically evaluate all all epidemiological studies in terms of their biases and methodological validity. Enough said.

Interesting question! I've never had an experience with which I've though yep this is it, I'm in the process of dying. I have had a few experiences mountaineering when I thought I would probably die. I will share a few. The first one involved a rock climb that I rather naively attempted. Half way up, all of my protective gear wiggled its way out of the rock and left me soling a 30m climb with some tough sections ahead. I though that was going to be the story of me. The only emotion I experienced was terror. The second experience was climbing a mountain in Nepal. I was sleeping at camp 2.7 when a massive avalanche came down and washed most of camp 3 off the mountain. I remember waking up to a cracking sound, knowing exactly what is was, and waited for it to hit. Again the only emotion was terror, with massive spike of adrenaline. These experiences have led me to believe that at the moment of death I will probably again feel a sense of terror at the prospect of joining the void. I have lost a few friends to climbing, IMO death is never the romantic voyage we like to envisage it as, it comes suddenly and leaves anti-climatically.

Oh no! They went quick. I'll pm you re others.

You're plants are always superb coolname. I'll snatch up one of those guys. Bottom left if its still available please

Where are you located chnt? Is pick up an option?