August 2007
The Daley News
Even in the middle of winter the nursery is a buzz with activity. Rod and Rick have been busy working on our new poly house which Rod is putting the final touches to. It is looking beautiful and will be ready to fill with young plants in the coming weeks. Now is the perfect time to be making hardwood cuttings, we use 
this technique mainly for figs, grapes and the dwarf black mulberry. We are also busy collecting, cleaning, labeling and storing all our scion wood for grafting in late winter and early spring so the cool room down at propagation is bulging at the seams. This is the propagation material for all of our deciduous stock which needs to be cut just at the right time, as the buds begin to swell but before the break bud.
Thank to all of you contributing in the forum. People have been asking all sorts of questions and sharing pictures of their fruit trees.
We now Mail Orders Fruit Tree to Western Australia
WA can now enjoy getting their fruit trees mail ordered to their door step using our website. All the freight and quarantine charges are calculated for you when you enter your postcode from our website. Thanks to all the westerners who kept asking us and for your feedback on our blog.
Three months after our customers place an order, we ask them to fill out a survey. Here is some of the feedback. (Testimonals) I would like to thank all our customers who have taken the time to fill out and return the survey, this information is essential to us so that we can continue to provide you with the best plants and service.
Our Daley Visit To Tropical fruit World
Tropical fruit world is the brain child of Bob and Valorie Brinsmead. They purchased the property back in 1972 with a view to bringing up their children in their own piece of paradise and paradise it is. It is is situated in the stunning Tweed Valley surrounded by rolling green hills, dramatic mountain scenery of the Mount Warning caldera and the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean to the east. When they first purchased the property it was a grazing property but Bob had grown up nearby when the department of agriculture had owned it, they grew avocados there for research purposes, so he was well aware of its fruit growing potential. Bob started by planting lots of varieties of avocado and mixed subtropical fruits like custard apples, papaws, lychees, guavas, macadamias, citrus and so it all began.
We were very lucky to have Bob, Brian and Aymon give us a tour of the property and answer our many questions as we went around. We all had our favourite fruit experience as usual. Greg and the twins had a great time sharing their knowledge and experience with Bob and Brian as they are all involved in trialling new ways of doing things it was a wonderful opportunity for us all to get together and share our experiences. Tropical fruit world is so much more than just an orchard and a tropical fruit
experience it is a food forest. It was great to see coconuts in fruit this far south, the mammy sapotes were not quite ripe but looked spectacular on the trees. I saw my first vanilla orchid, tried an Abiu for the first time and looked longingly at the star apples and the sapodillas which unfortunately were not quite ripe. The jakfruits looked amazing with their huge fruits hanging from the trunks and branches and we all enjoying trying a wide variety of unusual fruits, not to mention the ice creams at the end of the day. Bob was saying he has about 500 different varieties of trees and about 10,000 trees in his amazing forest. Bob and his family have also developed the Australian nature of the property and conserved the existing rainforest and wildlife. 
There are plenty of activities for kids as well, with train rides, the flying fox, farm animals and wonderful nature trails.
Bobs enthusiasm has not waned over the years and he is still in the process of creating inspiring spaces and exotic gardens, his latest projects include an Inca garden, an Amazon and Aztec garden, an Indian garden, a South Pacific garden, a Chinese garden, a South East Asian garden and an Australian Bush Tucker garden.
I asked Aymon what his favourite fruit is, "Personally, my favourite fruit is the yellow dragon fruit." he replied. A very good choice in my mind, not only because it is extraordinarily beautiful but also for it delightfully delicate flavour.
Recovering From The Big Freeze
Forum: Your Stories of the big Freeze
This winter we received the coldest overnight temperatures in this part of the world on record, this tested our frost protection to its limits and showed us the difference just a degree or two can make when it comes to frost damaging plants. We have in place a thermostat system that turns on automatically when the air temperature reaches 0 degree. As the air cools the water coming out of the sprinklers it freezes on the plants covering the surfaces with a coating of ice. The ice prevents the
cells inside the plant from freezing, when water changes from a liquid to ice it gives off heat and this protects the cells from damage. This system was very effective in protecting the young plants in the nursery where they are under the coverage of the sprinklers, the orchard however was another story and it is a very sad and sorry picture at the moment. We are not alone however, I have spoken with an enormous number of very disheartened people who have had unprecedented low temperatures that have damaged their home orchards and years of work. Hopefully by the end of August we should start to see signs of recovery and this will be an important time in the home orchard this year. It will be the young plants that will have been hit the hardest. A quick test to see if your trees are still alive is to scrape the bark with your fingernail, if there is green showing under the top layer of bark the tree is still alive,
however if it is brown and brittle and snaps under pressure it is lost. Young plants can be protected by wrapping the stems in a protective material to prevent frost damage at ground level as this can ring bark young plants. Covering sensitive trees on frosty nights is essential but these are only effective measures to a certain degree. While the aluminate fabric is very effective to -2 degrees, our papaws were ruined despite it at -7 degrees. Larger trees are more likely to recover, burnt off canopies help to protect the trees from further frosts and should be left on until the end of the frost season and the warmth of spring kicks in. Once the weather and the soil warms is the time for action. Prune back any dead wood, this will help to reinvigorate the tree, a thick layer of organic mulch and fertilizer will see it on to the road to recovery.
