kadakuda

cant wait! I should add my last reply, i typed "mice", i meant "mine", mice have so far never harmed my yopo/cebil trees.

They dont do cold. Here in Taiwan they only grow in the far south well. Luckily they do well in partial shade and one could get creative growing them with something else as a companion to try and protect from some cold. Though i wouldnt grow them unde ran acia, the light under an acacia is probably as dark as i would personally grow them. I also grow them in full sun here, they do equally well i find, at least once a year+. One could also consider growing them like a bertel nut. use a banana or similar crop while they are small and establishing. i think bigger trees can take slightly more cold temps?

once it starts, is it there to stay or come sand goes?

rivea will take the heat if it has water or is in ground for a bit. the bigger worry is the seeds spreading once it throws out flowers, i had to kill mine in some locations to avoid it getting into the wild here.

very nice looking plant. do you ever get seed set? any idea roughly how long from bloom to mature pods? and any idea if they need special polinators? mice have stopped flowering for the time being.

I use the black plastic on ym farms as well, i love it and it works very well. Though there is no 100% Ssolve all. black plastic is amazing, but dont get teh platic bag looking material get the woven stuff. the weave may creat small niches for seeds to land on and grow, but so far in my experience only some grasses penetrate it. Assuming the cactus ou have are big, mulch is the way. teh black plastic mulch is nicer because it wont act as food for pathogens and pests. I mulch extensively with organic mater, but not near my cactus. If you live in a wet area, fungal rot will kick your ass if you are using organic material mulches. I often pile all inds of "mulch/matter" on top of y tree rows then cover with the plastic. it adds nutrition sure, but also much moreair space under the plastic. My black plastic gets up to about80 C and so far have not had troubles growing any kind of perrenial (ie deeper rooted plants). the biggest issues i have are some kind of mle or other burrowing rodent, they love hanging out under the plastic. It also makes it much safer for snakes. my rows for leafy stuff are usually 2m wide with a 50cm ditch in between for watering and walking. its nice to put a peice of wood across the ditch and sit there to weed by hand, saves the back. deeper ditches are better IMO, and weeds/debris can get thrown in them, making them slow composters. everytime water runs through its like a like fertilization, which takes its deeper down causing deeper/stronger roots. i love the system persoanlly. but i wouldnt use it for veggies. Cactus works wonders, but i think the biggest issue is going to be moisture and rot. maybe avoided by cutting a circle out, snstead of an X, then filling around the cactu stem with rock to avoid mold and weeds around the plant.

cool pictures, id be scared to let mine get that big. But the key there with rain is they have MASSIVE roots. their leaves do lose a lot of water,so potted plants can dehydrate fast. but in ground plants tend to make root growth a priority from the beginning. my area is dry in winter as well and they are teh only plant i have that dont even thinking about wilting, even after months of no rain.

thanks for advice guys. i have been spraying the trunks and branches. we got hit with huge sun and heat for a couple weeks, so all the branch tips are hard and dead. but luckily a couple trees have sent out new buds from the stem so looks like those are in the clear. 1 died for sure, rest we shall see. i ended up rerouting an irrigation ditch t them, so always moist deep down.

Long time no talk, hope everyone is doing good. I will pu tup pictures if i can get my card fixed. Long story short i hav ebeen moving my old farm to a new one and waited for the last minute to move the kratom. They are about 20cm diameter at teh trunk and i topped them. Problem being i had all but abandoned that farm for a solid year+ and so it is super dry, normal fo rhere in winter. the kratom droppped all their leaves. i watered them 3 weeks prior to removing them. They are moved adn at the new farm next to large mango trees for sun protection from morning through to noon. I got them watered and all that we moved them with large ball bal intact and with machines. the brnch tips are still green and tiny leaves are still green unter the stipule. the biggest problem is tha tits dry season and the trees have a hard time breaking the fast to dry stipules, so they rot inside without actually breaking free like they would when wet or when in better condition. i am worried now that they are going to just quit and die. i have broken many free by hand but now am worried with 33-40C air temps right now at this spot and 55 degree surface temps on th eleaves that they might jsut dry up and get hard instantly. Anything i can be doing to help this along? normally i am 100% organic but this one time i will make an exception if there is some kind of hormone or somehting that might stimulate new growth. I jsut want to keep a couple clones alive as they were hard to get and pick through...so keeping at least one stock plant of each type is pretty important to me. thanks for any advice.

ok thanks guys. trouble is they are leafless, only the tips of the branches have tiny leaves starting under the stipule. i oulled them off but everything dried and god rock hard after that so im worried the plant doesnt have the energy to push through new growth. was hoping there mabe be something for that? we tried 1000's of cuttings this past winter off these plants, none rooted will try layering if any pull through, but right now there are no backups in good condition.

I have some older palnts that still have yet to flower in ground. I go timpatient a while ago and got new seeds and they flowered and set seed in 8 months. the month thing can be misleading, they flower in the long day season, summer here. I'm only guessing its a light trigger, but could be water too as here it is wet when they sstart flowering and dry when they stop. When the plant is big enough adn has good roots it should flower soon. but i do notice some plants seem sterile. Pollinators here are mainly hawk moths at dusk. mine all grew in insanely hard clay heavy soil. dry season your shovel breaks, they never got watered or fed for 5+ years. some flower profusely others dont.

Here are semo pictures of Lophophora fricii crossed with Lophophora koehresii. Male was fricii female was koehresii. Daddy. seed grown L. fricii 9 cm. mommy, with flowers and fruits of this breeding. grafted L. koehresii 9 cm. batch one (the koehresii has 4 more fruits coming from the same breeding). March 01 2008 April 02 2008 i have 20 that i am growing as seedlings, but they still look like.....nothing..... i will update as things grow. I have also tried breeding a Astrophytum asterias Hanazono with another koehresii...just for fun...i don't expect anything though.

I have gotten some platns over teh past couple years from SAB shop, and they are growing along nicely. One of our future projects is to open up a little coffee shop on our farm here near teh mountains and serve home grown brews. right nwo we grow things liek cacao, cofee, cinnamon and other herbal tea stuff. too hot here for tea tea, but lots grown in higher mountains here so thats easy to get. One thing that is fairly unknown here is yerba mate and it grows good here. I am not fully into it yet as my oldest platns i think are only 2-3 years, but i want to start learning adn experimenting with harvesting. From what i haev read so far (online) it seems older growth is used and trees that are harvested are not harvested again for 1-2 years to let leaves grow back. So far it all seems easy. teh one thing i read that was new to me was the heat treatment. they said they heat teh elaves to some temperature (forget now) to kill an enzyme on the leaf surface. or may to kill teh outer waxy layer protecting the leaf? there was talk of oxidyzation. guilty of a really bad memeory. I am thinking of planting a fairly large amount of land in this plant because i think local tea lovers, who have accepted coffee shops like they laced cafe with heroin, will be right into mate. Asians love their stimulants. just want to know how to do it right.

honestly i have been layering mine so have not let them grow up. but i will be pruning when i plant in ground for abotu 3m bushes i think. So far, all the little plants i got from the SAB have done excellent. The processing with heat part is now what i am curious about.

dont feel bad. when i moved out here i tried for 7 years to import salvia. with and without paperwork. the only time it eventaulyl happened with live plants is someone brought some in their luggage from the states when they came for a visit. If you ar ein the tropics or hot area, it will be harder. They will grow, but if you live in a truly wet region, it iwll be even harders till. Salvia do better in temperate [non freezing] north america than hot/humid places it seems. they rot super easy. i am currently thinking that sally, when grown in hot/wet areas, should have little to no organic stuff rotting in the pots. I have been experiemtning with this, and heavy soils, moist soils and soils liek coco with compost and stuff all make sally root. root/stem rot. Also dont import in hot season. I had about 8 25cm pots filled with growth this spring, the heat shows up and now i have a few cuttings left in water.... If you have the climate for it and you can keep it above flood levels and probably under cover, fo rheavy rain ares, in ground seems the best way. I used to grow nice healthy bushes in Canada with no prblem. like growing coleus. Come out here and i can say it is in the top 5 hardest plants for me to keep alive here.

So if you wanted to do everything for yourself in a modern fashion without hookign into the grid (aside from choice) how much do you need? Assuming you wish to accomplish the following: energy creation for your home waste management food shelter sure, many things would come from outside resources liek buying materials, phone, tv car etc. but it seems the big costs (energy: food, water, electricity (substituted for oil/gas) can all be made/harnessed on the land you live. And because many places have winters, lets assume a 8 month growing season for field crops, though greenhouses and some nifty techy stuff can extend that to all year). 2 adults and 2 kids who will become adults of course. add any changes you think may be appropriate. i have found the equivelant to about about 30x80 feet have supported me and my wife for plant based food quite well, though it was not incredibly intensive and lots of waste because we dont rely on it. that was also in the tropics. curious to see what you guys think (if anyone else is thinking about this).

they will be come green if the cells having been really damaged (ie very brown adn probably sunken). the green will come back. i think if it were me, adn without seein pictures, i would ue shade cloth for now. If you jsut moved them in, it could simply be that you didnt acclimate them. sudden changes of light/heat comapred to slwo chagnes makes all the world. my greenhouse regularly ges over 60F without much issue.

that happens at the crown adn outer extremities more. if you whack off the tips of branches, especially shaded lwo ones, you get all kinds of new buds forming. i have not yet tried air layering very much, but i have rooted 2+ meter cuttings about 8cm thick in my irrigation pond. with kratom, you nail the climate adn they root without any effort at all. i used a machete and split the wood on th ends and they still rooted.

Is kratom self fertile? this will be year 2 i get flowers, but i only have 1 clone big enough in ground flowering, so am curious. Here they flower twice a year it seems, winter and summer. This year they are going nuts. Went to go take cuttings and could only find a handful of stems without a ball forming in the stipule. Seeds possible? or more accurately as i know seeds are possible, are seeds viable?

I tried seeds a few hours after harvest and didnt get any to grow, but we have grown seeds imported through the mail. So i dont think in my own plant seeds that it was a fresh thing ( i also kept seeds adn sent some away, nothing grew anywhere anyhow). I dont grow rifat unfortunately, be nice to know if it was for sure. like plant helper mentions they do best cuttings from a flush of new growth. depends on climate when that is though. here it happens all year except when flowering. we have 2 flowering seasons here, winter and summer. problem is with the flowers killing the apical meristem it takes away from growth severely until they finish, then new flushes come out from lower nodes. I try to prune mine a bit now to keep it leveled out adn have even flushes. uneeven flushes show dominance and then a really awkward crooked plant later on.

man, thats pretty cool. i usually give up pretty fast after contam, nice to see it stuck with. i think you have motivated me to get back into it soon. pretty cool area of science. like the ephedra, thats one genus i have had 0% with.

ya, when you start taking things out of a more or less balanced soil, then you have to start compensating for teh thigns that start getting out of whack. as far as leafy tropicals go, the absolute ebst things i have ever grown were grown where we through left over fruit, spent mushroom gunk, you name it. if there were ever an area of my land that would glow at night, that would be it. some people microwave, others sun bake. some add crushed shells, others walk on snails. some add bone meal, others just leave that dead animal as is. in the end, all methods work fairly well when done correctly adn the paltns grow on. for me it is really about how much work si involved. organic recycling, fo rme, makes everything easier, platns super healthy and frees up huge amounts of time. also have an outdoor garden, or pots, is nice. if teh dir tis really just rank, it can be thrown out there and used for something useless like roses.

That is so important! its the main reason why i always spike my coco coir with rock amendments. coco can get seriously anaerobic, something i didnt even notice until plants started dieing.