Stillman

I would be very very surprised if its N rustica it was definitely deposited by birds and I can't imagine too many N rustica tobacco plants about up here. "wild tobacco" the solanum grow to about 3 or 4 metres and live about 35-40 years from wikis. I have seen eggplant "trees" up north Ingham area that have 4 different varieties on the one solanum stock with a trunk 15cm in diameter. White wind, as far as I am aware like all grafts its "poisons" should not be passed on to a graft, however tomato plant leaves and eggplant leaves have a poisonous quality anyhow. The Italians in far north qld seem to love it as a stock. Have you done any research on grafting tomatoes, that is the coolest idea ever I wonder how many years you could get out of one plant. I am going to do some research on this. I have 3 plants of this in total the larger one I took a pic of and two little seedlings. I figure I will grow the plants up to about a metre or maybe a bit bigger, then start experimenting. I'll keep you posted.

I'm thinking this solanum mauritianum, is there any interesting reading about this plant. I was thinking about grafting egg plant to it.

as eatfoo says any of the tomato dust products should nail it. just don't read what it does as it is a horrible death lol. When I grew commercial amounts of chilli this stuff was a god send during certain months.

I was wondering why I could never find seed pods of the MG that grows round here. I never realised MG was illegal in Australia.

interesting I was wondering about the bark I'll google it thanks .I thought it may still have "juvenile" bark (for want of a better word.) I have a friend who is an environmental engineer and he is going to send me a link to a website that has a Key for various australian natives. I think without flowers or seed pods they are pretty hard to id Although some are more obvious than others.

The ones they eat are often farmed but house hold feed them kitchen scraps etc I'm looking at it from a feedlot meat raising purpose. ie the shortest period from a to be is specific dietary requirements. You could definitely free range them on lots of grass but this would require a large space as they eat a lot and there diet would still have to be added too if you wanted healthy "pigs"

I have a few TC hives I rob the bigger one every other year and get almost a litre of honey. The honey is amazing but. You can't rob them if your winters are harsh. If you want native bees talk to tree loppers offer them a carton of beer for every hive over a certain size. Trust me before to long you will be on first name basis with the local bottle shop and have more log hives then you can poke a stick at. Then once they settle you can have a go at boxing them, best thing about native bees is they have "queens in waiting" so you can split a mass and as long as there are enough bees in both they should form two separate hives. I was going to get into it in a big way leasing them out to lychee, macadamia,mango farms schools etc but with time constrates never got there unfortunately.

I have alot of guinea pigs and a few small children so sadly am not aloud to eat them. There are certain breeds which are much larger within the cavy hobby. Long haired breeds like shelties often produce boars up to and over 2 kilo. If you take a long hair boar the biggest you can find and breed it with the largest short haired sow and then breed consequent sow off spring back with the same boar you will see an increase in size of the off spring. the boars are always going to be bigger. But I would think you wouldn't want to eat them after say 3 months as they have a scent gland on there rump and as they come into breeding age like other game I asume the boar meat may be "flavoured" from testosterone. Also if I was going to breed and grow for eating I would have them on a strict grain and chaff diet very little greens, probably capsicum and tomatoe 3 times a week. The most economical way to feed them is to buy a 20 kilo 3 in one horse chaff and a 20 kilo bag of economy horse grain mix. mix it your self and it is a very nutritious food for them. All the grain and chaff would help to bulk them up. My other advice would be to keep female and male separate until breeding time. And follow a breeding program. Perhaps two bloodlines with only 2 Boars and a haram of sows. But to be perfectly honest the turn around for meat production would be quite slow, your looking at a 70 day gestation for one and then they wouldn't be up to eating size until around 6 months. In that time they would have eaten approximately 100 dollars plus in food Would be good as an experiment but I don't see it as a particularly cheap source of meat, unless you have say 40 sows and then obviously the food bill will be greater but I guess there could be a niche market there too. The most sustainable and fastest turn around meat product in the world is Japanese quail farming. They take remarkably small area to keep them in are mature and reeady for slaughter in 6 weeks and have a very lucrative by product there eggs which sell for roughly 3 or 4 dollars a dozen. All you need is an incubator for say 250 dollars and a good breeding program and you have a very high quality gourmet meat product. I've been breeding and eating them for years and honestly there would be more meat on a jap quail then a guinea pig and having had to kill both. Quails are alot easier to knock on the head.

Also here is a pic of what I initially thought was G denudatum but I thick its more G damsii or anisitsii which I believe are the same plant just with possible locality variances? I don't think I have had this one flower on me yet. But here is a shot of my G anisitsii that I got from a different source it has much more red pigment which is a common trait in the species.

I have managed to germinate about 100 or so seedlings of this Gymnocalycium. Its a very common type I believe I picked it up at bunnings but I am having trouble IDing it. I initially thought it was a Gymnocalycium gibbosum but could be Gymnocalycium denadatum also, or a hybrid of either I guess. I managed to set a single fruit and as far as I am aware they are not self fertile. Unfortunately I have lost my records of what Gymno I used for pollen lol I think either a G. baldinium or G friedrichii

I have been collecting various salvia for the garden just an uknown hybrid I think but does anyone know this type and has it any potential?

So for years I have been curious about mushrooms and the science of growing them. I have grown them accidentally in various manners in various gardens some edible some not so edible. I am only in the last few days actually researching about why and how it all works and as all of you know no doubt, its really amazing stuff. At present I have a garden bed which I have been dumping of all things guinea pig waste which consists of saw dust lucerne and barley chaff lucerne pellets and various grains and of course guinea pig waste. Well the other day I noticed clusters of what looked like what we used to call blue meanies popping up everywhere. and a few other unknown mushys. Its been really muggy up here and after turning the top layer of decomposing waste underneath was a nice mat of what I think is mycelium. This has struck my interest in "organised cultivation" and I would like to have a play at the mushroom gig in a very low tech way. So I have taken a few samples to put in some sealed containers this morning to see if I can grow anything from released spores and I am going to give the bed a good wet down in the hopes that more volunteers develop. If and when they do I will take some pics and I was hoping maybe some would be kind enough to Id them for me. I am not overly phased if they aren't very "special" as such at this stage I am happy just to learn how they work. I am actually more keen to set up a log with shitake spores or try my hand at some oyster mushrooms down the track or even some morels if I could get the spores (or if that is even possible" as I am a chef by trade and the culinary purpose of mushrooms has always been of great interest to me. Anyway just thought I would introduce myself on this section of the forum as I might pop up asking the odd question over the next few weeks.

thanks for the advice guys, Over the next few weeks I will take some pics of what I am up to. I want to do a shitake log eventually. I have a well planted filtered light area in the garden that shitakes would, I think, do well.

thanks for that EG, so there is no benefit for leaving any leaves? Im about to start a heap of graft attempts on some tiny Gymnocalycium hobitan, nishki off sets in the hope of propagate my own mutations from seed.

I have the exact situation I was going to let a couple leaves grow only, then remove the rest that come along but I'm not sure as I am very new to peres grafts too.

that is a beautiful specimen what species is it L.w caespitosa? I love the clumping nature.

I figured as much we have just used it in cooking, I was going to pickle a heap for sushi and sashimi might be good in a green tea as well I guess. There must be a few kilo or rhizomes there and it grows so fast over summer.

I would think for most cacti slightly acidic to neutral ie 6 to 7 ish anything much below would be getting too acidic above would probably be too alkaline? But just check that for specific species others may have a specific ph that works well for them.

my rhizomes are a white pink colour and hot as hell quiet bitter too dug a couple up to take pics but the memory card in the camera has failed so will try and get a pic up in a few days.

I used course sand as a top dress which provides a nice effect for the cacti garden, underneath this layer is an organic /peat mix which has excellent moisture retention and holds nutrients etc. Depending on your climate and rainfall I wouldn't completely disregard using a sandy mix at least. Trichs, cereus, gymnos etc might not mind a bit more moisture but some species will struggle if kept too wet especially in the winter months. Like I said above with such a large space you might be better off having various soil mediums in different areas specific to species requirements which would be pretty cool.

I wouldn't use crusher dust it may compact to heavily but pebbles and rocks for sure I mean at the end of the day different species of cacti have different requirements so maybe some of the big trichs might favour more traditional garden soil while others may need more sand, just have a play with it. That size area will look amazing I only had a couple metres to work with but you could really layer it amd landscape it up a treat.

I just got a heap of cutting of a very beautiful Salvia from my Grandmother of all people. when they take and are in flower I will post a pic.

Mind you may not be cost efficient to build up an 8 by 4 metre patch.

I made a cacti garden recently, we have in that spot similar heavy soil. Rather than trying to improve the existing soil I built a raised bed, probably built it up about 200mm, first two thirds was peat/sand organic matter mix last third (top dressing) was sand. So far so good, plants seem to love it and we have had a fair bit of rain with no issues with wet "feet" yet. I have a mixture of trichs and various smaller clumping cacti in it.

Heres my clump of galangal