kadakuda

because of mosaic virus? it happens in other plant families as well

me too and i believe it has 100% to do with biological activity. I always recycle soil/additives. its not cheap adn often has caused a lto of polution to get to me, so i lik eto let it go as far as i can. in the end it ends up in large pots outside. I think the absolute *BIGGEST* variable in any soil/plant health coversation is whether its inside or out. Indoors generally has really shitty air quality, jsut packed with pathogens. inside is realyl disgusting and ahs near zero sterilization. it also lacks heavily in bio diversity. on the flip side outside has fresh air all the time, UV sterilizatio and untold biodiversity avaialble, both good and bad. I will rarely, if ever, recycle dirt inside. Because what i feel is the second biggest factor, climate. hot humid places grow stuff fast, including pathogens. so inside plants here can really suffer badly and need a lot of extra care. i would say it takes me about triple the work to grow a plant inside here in Taiwan than back in the PNW. When outside its the other way around. Also with a lot of potting soils, being ehavy in peat/coco, they break down as mentioned many times before. but it gets soggy adn can become farily aerobic. so everytime i recycle i always add more things. sometimes jsut simple stuff like rock adn nutrition, other times, especially with coco heavy soils, i like to cut it 50/50 with a clay silt soil adn then loosen it with pumice. for years i havent sterilized soil for seedlings and never for cuttigns that i can think of (in this climate). Simply because i do it all outside. outside with a shade cloth is infinately better than any indoor setup i have yet to see unless its a commercial type operation and they control everything. indoors, i probably would sterilize, but outdoors i have very little damping off. even supposedly harder spceis liek iboga i haev had godo success with SAB seeds in very dirty dirt. one thing i have noticed over teh years is diversity is always key. on large scale and small. liek a polyculture farm out performs a monoculture farm any day of the weak, so does soil. i used to love using straight coco for things, but found overal it caused massive problems. when cut with real clay type soil adn some added pumice for drainage, i have almost nothing die. EDIT to say, for pests adn the like, i also try to practice a crop type rotation. left over vegetable dirt will be reused in cactus pots etc. mix up the familes and make the pests have to find a ride back over to their favorite meals. but healthy soils tend not to have many problems. macroscopic bugs are the only real issues i encounter. Though soil known to carry true disease liek TMV is best thrown out.

Orinoco basin in Colombia? just got some seeds from the area that are sprouting for him and seem fresh. I cant see any referrences to A. colubrina from there, is it?

good to know. I just dug up mine that i was ground layering to find many a root down there. Happy to see it isnt so difficult.

anyone have any methods for cuttings? I have been ground layering for a little while, in need for a check.

nice! sprays are cool and all, but what if you took pyrethrum, gave it skin, legs and a mouth...you would have biological control. plus their shit is less toxic than anything in a bottle. One reason i am personally so against chemi bug killers is that i see long time farmers here and how fucked up their bodies are from a lifetime of spraying. really nasty shit. I have not yet tried pred mites. tried lacewings and ladybugs, but work well but i find lacewings to be far better, but ladybug larva get a big bigger so maybe can take down bigger stuff. I still have yet to see a lacewing/ladybug larva fuck with an ant though, even if it is smaller.

my personal favorite is ground layering. not fast, but you just never see rot unless you are rough. i use this for p. betel, nigrum, auratum, and an unid'd sp. that is like betel but smaller and more ground cover than climber. whenever i cut fresh and place in water/dirt/cutting medium, i get rot. so when i dont do layering i like to use mid cuts, not tip as they wilt easy, and once most leaves and the stems are cut i leave them out for 30 mins in dark shade but warm dry weather. then i plant them once they have dried up slightly. a sandy mix works well too, just place them so the node is at least half buried in the sandy mix and keep it moist. most of the rot i have seen starts from the cut area of the stem and works up. if time is no issue, plant you plants in trays and when they stretch just burry a node every few nodes, and they will root in a month usually and you dont need to worry about watering as if it dies it just remains part of the parent plant

knowing nothing abotu it, and being blown away by this thread, can i ask if a plant has a smell, is it possible to lock it up in an oil? for example cannabis has all sorts fo different scents, can tehy be harnessed? If i am walking through a forest adn smell a plant that is just unreal, could it be harnessed as well? or is this a whole other huge massive science?

The best ant documentary is a live 24/7 feed. to access, go outside..some lucky people may not even have to leave the comfort of their homes. in canada we have "black ants" we call carpenter ants which do a number on termites. some ants do severe damage to wood houses on their own i think. EDIT: here is apic in philippines. the stemps were bulged out and hollow like this and what i thought at the time were spiders would come out very fast. back and only 1 per "room". too fast to see, but now i can see ants ebing possible?

good luck. i did it for a while with ladn snails, then realized i hate eating them adn the local market was too small. hope its better there. teh poo is great to add to things, but is pretty hot and slimy, so adds to molds a lot. i would use it on indoor stuff, outdoor stuff i jsut rinsed the bins and watered plants like you would with compost spray, minus the foliar. Some snails are carries of disease as well, so careful. around her ethey can carry a disease that rats also carry which does some damage to people, blanking on the name.

I think you are right about those nests being for pest farming, in fact i notice it with scale as well. I should get some shots. they LOVE to do this on my miracle fruit trees wher ethey farm teh scale which does incredibly well on the fruit and tender parts fo teh plants. on cactus i dont see them do it with pests, but i do see them do it on lophs and wooly flat tops. i have been thinking it si due to teh flowers/fruits/seeds which they chew up and carry away. my other thought was nesting, but then the ants here are undergound fellas so i doubt they will be going up on a bench onto the top of a cactus in bright hot sun to make a nest.

Ants sure are amazing creatures. I am always amazed at what they can do. planthelper, is that Anadenanthera? mine are like yours, adn ants make very good use of them here (not Aus). Out of curiosity, are Australian ants known to be something different than other regions?

If you are allowed to import insects with paperwork, all you bug problems can be solved here: http://www.arbico-organics.com/category/beneficial-insects-predators-parasites lacewings are so effective its almost scary knowing they are in your garden. thank god they are small and we are not.

Wow, you guys can get tehm as assorted cactus there? here they are still collectible amiong a lot and are still somewhat pricey (at least compared to nursery types). and its even fairly symetrical, what a beauty. all my c. hypo are grafted and completely fucked up from rodents and snails. I almost forgot how stunning they can be. does Australia have hte lizard skin cv? its a really rough textured skin

very good advice. something i used to have problems with treating one thing then getting another. pests i see in my greenhouse (all cactus) Ants - for me mostly indirect, but have had ants drill through Lophophora species. They have brought aphids, scale, mealy and probably mites. i see them farming aphids and mealy on things like Agave sp and larger columnar cactus in the ground. nesting pots can bring soil pests but i have more problems with mold/bacteria from the nests stopping drainage and helping along rot. snails/slugs are a big issue. dirt floors with weeds outside they come (african land snails for me) in from. i only got rid of them with a combination of slowing down wet season and about 40kg of salt layed out inside (20x50'). they have not been a huge problem since, but htey would eat antire large grapefruit sized plants in a night adn leave teh spines. even heavy spined plants like Corypantha elephantidens they can get through the spine mesh and eat out het plant. amazing. the only oines i find htey avoid are ones with fine/thin spines adn many spines, so they cant manouver around them. Mammillaria are fairly safe for example, but Lophs adn trichs are fair game. spider mites are bad in dry. my greenhouse doesnt get them because i maintain a grassy patch in the middle of the greenhouse which raises humidity a LOT, never see them (i do see htem outside on leafy plants). plants at home i have seen them. teh answer to spider mites is LACEWING LARVA. i have used all kinds of sprays over the years. nothing even comes close to the same ball game as biological pest control, and lacewings are jsut 100% insane mite killer mothers. So much so that i dont even worry about spider mites anymore knowing i have a source for lacewing. Many country's AG extension should be able to sort you out for bio pest control species. rodents are a problem only slightly. they eat fruit and do dig. for many, you jsut lose teh fruit. for slower growing smaller cactus liek ariocarpus, astro/lophs etc that tend to ahve 1-5 fruit in the center of the plant, the rodents actually dig through the wool looking for more, sometimes damaging the apical mersitem and then making the platn grow funky. Earthworms along with underground rodents can actually move enough earth to collapse greenhouses. that might depend where you are, but being Aus you have giant earthworms as well, and much bigger than ours. i say this cause 2012 half of my greenhouse sunk adn the plants/benches on that side compeltely fell over and all over teh ground, lots fo death and damage. all because the worms dug out under neath the poles (remembering my greenhous eis dirt floor with plastic fabric on top) and made them fall over. their mounds were up to 1m high and 1.5m wide. mealy/scale i see but never a huge problem. using sprays helps, even wussy overpriced organic sprays worked for me. scale was harder to get rid of chemically, but easy as pie mechanically...just time. pathogens liek mold and bacteria are bad in any greenouse. in leafy plant houes like darklight mentions, cleanliness is paramount. if it were me doing things liek veggeis or something, i would pour a pad on teh floor, or at least put gravel on top of good plastic for weeds and to help with avoiding most pests. keeping those microclimates is important. my greenhouse is all cactus, and yet sometimes i see condensation on the sides of the plants (grafts/tall plants) where qas short little guys like lophs stay bone dry baking out in teh sun with no tall neighbours around. I think on top of teh great advice already given, another very important thing that is probably more important to hobbyists who continually add few plants over teh course and thus aise teh chances of infection. so quarantine would be wise for any new stuff coming into your establsihed house. I use my home for this, and once plants are clean, put them in the GH. especially certain things like tomato, you need to be sure you are not only not bringing in pests, but diseases and viruses.

check out permie sites, they use fly larva in etups a lot. great composters adn great protein source. can even setup automatic feeder setups hanging over your pond/tubs. they are likely going to be our main source of "meat" for fish food once our ponds are dug.

I have gotten anumber of fruit from lone flwoering plants, but i never tried sowing hte seeds so i am not sure fi they are viable or not, but you could expect fruit some of the time.

i dont cull, at least not intentionally. cheers for the warning, i will keep them in the greenhouse during winter i think.

cheers thanks Torsten. i think if its like iboga i should be fine. we are right in the middle of our annual cold snap and its about 14C right now (3am). the iboga are not dieing, but certainly are not the happiest plants in teh garden. i have seedlings from SAB fruit growing now as well, which are growing inside unheated very well. Mindperformer, not sure if you were thinking of me or not, but i didnt go there, i traded with someone who lives there. I have never been to that continent (yet). when you go, can we expect some seed collections and photos while there? Update on the seeds. they are germinating within 24 hours, all are outside right now in the cool winter weather and doing fine so far. i did 3 batches. 1 tray in vermiculite 1 tray in expanded clay pellets and 1 bag of sphagnum moss. seems though that fresh seeds just germ super easy regardless. I almost regret putting down about 1000.

good to know, cheers. We are in the middle of buying new land further south and from what we have seen it stays a few degrees warmer than our current spot. Iboga and Durian both grow here through winter outside, is A. peregrina more cold sensitive than them? i was reading some old posts here about the cold. do you guys have any growing now that have withstood outside temps in the cooler times? Will be keeping a few, should i be so lucky as to get lots of sprouts, in the greenhouse where 20 is about the coldest temp possible anytime. Will they be able to withstand temps up to 55C? i have had a number of leafy plants growing in there up to 60 without much trouble surprisingly. the sides are screen and half-3/4 open all the time so good air flow.

great thanks for looking. they look different in that way from teh ones i had gotten previously as well, but i cant be sure fo teh ID on the ones i got before either. the ones before were "active", these ones are yet untested but traded by peopel who use them for this purpose there so should be good. some herbarium shots if anyone else is into it. http://fm1.fieldmuse...ge=25&x=76&y=10 if anyone has access, can enarge teh photos. http://plants.jstor....imen/k000504690 these are my old seeds which came from some north american reseller which i now forget, about 5-6 years ago. my platns now are from thses seeds, but thought i would put up teh seeds pic in case its useful. htey all had the ridge adn center indents, but no where near as pronounced. i have agood number of seed an dit seem pretty consistant in the new oens to all look like above photos. also these ones from Colombia are smaller than what i rememebr previous ones from the states adn brazil being. will have more pics as they grow.

ya, i am not finding any sources of colubrina in the area either. seem sonly Anadenanthera peregrina var. peregrina is in Colombia (?) http://www.tropicos.org/Reference/267?tab=distribution colubrina http://www.tropicos.org/Name/13015659?tab=distribution peregrina http://www.tropicos.org/Name/13015662?tab=distribution

Gotcha

If it worked as stated, it would seem to me that it could probabyl be put through the commercial machine and propagated large scale. The Asians would do it if it promised $. or more liekly they might find ways of synthesising its magic juices. rarity and slow growth are not always complete killers of ideas when it comes to mass producing plants though.

peat moss does that, but it along with other simialr things like coco do WONDERS for making caly soil AWESOME. you cna dig it in a bit, or jsut dump it on top fo rless effective but saves time. i used to dump waste peat/coco in parts of my farm adn jsut let weeds grow over it. 2 years later it is by far the best soil on my land, and it goes down a solid 10" ( i jsu tspread a good 4" over teh dirt and walked away). I wouldnt buy it fo rhte purpose, but if its around and in teh way, i like it. I am seeing a lot of farms here now instead of drying the spent coco fruit to make powder (its liek a recycle program here for various things liek this) they are jsut cruching it and spreading it as is in big chunks over the farm (mostly other coconut or betel nut trees). it wouldnt do a great deal for nutirtion but it would certainly help protect teh bare soil from light and cut down weeds some.