weedRampage

I was shifting the cacti under cover because they were getting way too much rain and I found this. This rainforest spider looks a bit like cactus spines.

Spore print

I know where to find the stinging tree easily, Dendrocnide excelsa. Next to Wollongong there is some hills on the highway and some rainforest with many mature stinging trees. There is a hill climb coming out of town on the main road and the hills are without any development because of mine subsidence. Moroides... it's called the Gympie stinger so off to Gympie might be a hot tip. Being a member of the Hemp/Fig/Nettle family does anyone know of any traditional uses for this plant?

Everyone knows what I want for christmas now!!

There is a shrub that grows in coastal NSW. Mountain Devil, Lambertia formosa It makes a large amount of red flowers that you pluck from the bush and drink the nectar from. This is the only bush food that I have got into in a big way. Apart from macca butter.. mmm

The western interpretation of ginseng is "it's a herbal steroid" not advisable for children or teens and dosage control is advised for all others I am a big fan of herbal steroids since an occasional use of ashwaghanda has helped me to slip the noose of gradual onset asthma which killed my grandmother before she got to the age of 45. Being anabolic and calming it can make you pile on the flab tho if you don't watch it. Ginseng is an energy booster so no probs there. popular ingredients of chinese herbal mixes include goji and burdock. Goji seems to be good for everything and burdock is a steroid, liver tonic and immune booster rolled into one. Being in the daisy family good burdock like good echinacea or chammomile makes your tongue tingle a bit from the polyphenols.

I repotted today and just as I thought the mix was soggy and sour. pH 4.5 - OOPS! incredible it was still alive Has grown a nice fat red taproot. I repotted into 1/3 acidic clay 1/3 crusher dust 1/3 coarse river sand half a handful of dolomite hopefully I can get it to go ballistic like the ones on the internet.

Last time I checked it was decriminalised in 3 jurisdictions. Still in WA? possibly, the current gov said they were against it.

Buy a dragon fruit and you have a heap of seed that germinate well. Selenicereus are the yellow dragon fruit with bumps instead of scales.

I have one plant that has struggled on for years. The seeds had a low germination rate and the ones that did germinate seemed very susceptible to excess heat or humidity. Only one survived. Description Shrubs, up to 1(-1.5) m tall, erect or partially procumbent, with thick, well developed woody stems. Herbaceous branchlets straight, long, slender, blue-green or gray-green with a powdery bloom, 1-1.5 mm in diameter, rigid, internodes short, 1-3 cm × 1-1.5 mm, finely furrowed. Leaves opposite, brownish, 1.5-3 mm long, connate for ca. 3/4 their length, free part bluntly triangular. Pollen cones solitary or in clusters of 3 or 4 at nodes, sessile or shortly pedunculate; bracts in 3 or 4 pairs, connate for ca. 1/3 their length; staminal column slightly exserted, with 6-8 sessile anthers. Seed cones usually opposite at nodes, shortly pedunculate, elongate-ovoid or ovoid at maturity, 8-10 × 4-5 mm; bracts in 3 pairs, apical pair connate for ca. 2/3 their length, red and fleshy at maturity; integument tube to 2 mm, straight or slightly curved, slightly exserted. Seeds usually 1, elongate-ovoid, 5-7 × 2.5-3 mm. Pollination Jun-Jul, seed maturity Aug-Sep. 2n = 14 (Fu et al. 1999). Range Afghanistan; China: Gansu, Hebei, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shanxi, and Xinjiang; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Mongolia; Russia; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan. Grows in dry and rocky places at 800-3000 m elevation The ones on the internet look really vigorous. I suspect they live in an environment very similar to Peganum Harmala, which is also hard to propagate. P. Harmala is naturalised near Young, NSW, an area that is dryish, at high altitude. The one I have at the moment is growing in a mix that is most probably wrong, too much peat, not enough clay, wrong pH. I will try repotting it and see how it goes.

It would be funny if it didn't send me to sleep so quickly. Arrrharrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Here's something a bit trippy.... Just last week I was at the local market asking the rainforest tree people for Ficus Watkin..whatsis I had an idea that they would be great for encasing a concrete statue or building as a bit of living enviro-art. Really beautiful trees and great to climb when they make a mesh tube out of another tree I have only managed to germinate one many years ago and a cow ate it before it got to be big. If you can send me some I will plant a couple on the camphors around the house.

A couple of fishtank grow flouros would make all the difference. Most of the cactus I have seen with scale have been suffering from water stress. solution.. Bigger pot filled right to the top Less organic material in the mix (not "no organic material" just less) Clay/Crusher Dust/pulverised scoria/bauxite to increase the water retention of the mix get the pH right (7-8) to increase the disease resistance of the plant including scoria or crusher dust in the mix will ensure that the pH stays where it should be for the long haul.

careful even handling those ones

Plant taxonomy consists of "lumping" and "splitting". You could easily lump a large group of trichs as one variable species. The potential for splitting is ridiculously huge given the hundreds of cultivars. I would lump bridg, pach, peruv and scop as one species but I wasn't very enthusiastic about the echinopsis lump. Many of these plants cross but readily throw true to type when re-crossed. So.... I have got a bridge clone that is obviously a peruv cross or is it a cuzco cross Mantis

Tell him to go to a herbalist or two or three.

Time to transplant into growing pots..

Bunnings has usually got Myrtillocactus cheapish.

My guess is that with all that water around you in Auckland you get a lot of rain! A small perspex greenhouse would be the best you could do for them to control the water. Lophs don't mind water as much as they mind the fact that water flowing through the pot for months on end will alter the mineral balance in the soil and make the plant susceptible to rot. One of the strategies for dealing with this is watering from the bottom of the pot by standing it in an inch of water for an hour or so. I would advise 1/4 or 1/2 strength soluble fert once a month in the warmer months. No fert in winter unless you can keep the temp above 10 degrees C with a good greenhouse. On the positive side the weather in Auckland is pretty consistent, temperatures don't vary that much from season to season. Spring Summer Autumn Winter Auckland Temp © 18/11 24/12 20/13 15/9 Rain days 12 8 11 15 I would hazard a guess that your local soil is the red, acidic clay. You can use this with 50% coarse river sand and 2% dolomite for a good growing medium.

Everything that makes a lot of plant material quickly needs a lot of potassium.

Coke and coal has high levels of Lead and Mercury in its ash OK for ornamentals but not that good for something you are going to consume given the ever present heavy metal load in the modern diet you could put real wood with some river sand to store the heat for cooking in your webber bbq the ash from wood is a good source of magnesium, calcium, sodium and potassium It has a strong alkalinity but most soils on the coastal area will buffer excess alkalinity. If you used it on an already alkaline soil you might run into trouble. ... a la frazz... the best use for ash is heavy potassium feeders veggies, fruit trees, mull

D-ROOL I especially like the arrangement in the shrub.

Repot into 50% Coarse River Sand (or fine river sand if you can't get coarse) 30% Backyard Dirt 20% Crusher Dust (or 20% extra backyard dirt and a handful of aglime/dolomite mixed well) Give it a good watering with 1:20 urine/water Put it out in 50% sun I buy sick cacti often and the rot stops immediately after they are repotted in the right mix. When you repot prune most of the fine roots and 1/2 length of the thick roots off the plant with a sharp pair of scissors. Remove all of the old dirt. Put it in a BIG pot if you can.

Got bags of rustica from my last vegie garden and buckets of seed too Its a bit lazy but I just chew with a pinch of powdered oyster shell -really does the trick- Anyone want free seeds? pm now don't delay

Writing in this thread has definitely helped me to go over all the issues of cactus soils in my own head and has prompted some experimentation in soil mixes. From the results I am seeing the only ingredients I am using now are Local (acidic) clay 50% Coarse river sand |40 - 50% Fine river sand | Crusher dust 0 - 10% and Dolomite if no crusher dust used in the mix Fed with dilute (1:20) urine The reason I am using the local acidic clay is not because it is good for the cactus but because it is what is available in the coastal area to supply the clay fraction of a mix, the fine organic humus, and bugs (arthropods, nematodes, bacteria and fungi). If I was living on the tablelands or on the western slopes of the great divide the soil would be a better starting material alkaline medium clay. Coarse river sand is a better long term soil ingredient than fine river sand because it has a greater diversity of minerals in it. Coarse is a bit too dry and chunky for seedling raising though. Best for seedlings is sifted (the fine fraction) coarse river sand with a bit of crusher dust in the lower soil level for extra minerals and water retention. River sand adds silica to an acidic clay that has had a lot of its silica leached out by rainfall. The extra silica changes the clay matrix to give it better water and nutrient retention capabilities, makes it more like the desert soils. Crusher dust supplies alkaline minerals and some nutrients too. On the down side it is quite gravelly which is a waste of space in a pot. A small amount enough to address the pH of the mix is best. Dolomite can be used to correct the pH and supply the soil with Magnesium and Calcium. An easy solution but does not have as diverse a mix of minerals as crusher dust. Urine also supplies many minerals but cannot address the pH imbalance. It will make the soil alkaline for a couple of months and then acidic as the ammonia is oxidised to nitric acid. Desert soils are very low in organic material and have almost no visible organic residues. I think a lot of the problems with disease that people are having are a combination of the wrong pH, moisture stress from low clay soils, and rotting organic material. I have about 1000 cacti with no(!) rot even when they get insect damage in a location that gets about 2000mm of rain a year. I don't use any fungicides or insecticides. If you don't attempt to duplicate the natural system then you will waste a lot of effort and money compensating.