Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It will be interesting to see how they go... for some reason I thought they would not like it too wet
If they do go well I will be putting them in too!

Here are images of my 3 passion fruit plants - the one (number 3) which is in its own growbed seems to be doing much better than the rest. I was going to plant it out into the garden because it sat dormant for so long, but it must have sensed my intensions and strated to grow upwards fast!

Axl,
What is your reasoning behind this. From my understanding when you say you are going to stress a tree, what you are saying is that you are going to make it believe that it's own life is in danger and therefore to continue its family it must reproduce. The reproduction is where we get extra or a large qty of flowers/fruit.

Now based on the fact that we believe that by stressing the tree it reacts by producing more fruit we are assuming that the tree isn't stupid. Therefore would it be reasonable to assume that the tree will/could then learn from this behaviour and thus not produce the same result year on year. ie if we damage/stress the tree every year soon we will start seeing long term damage to the tree/loss of fruit production?

As you are a son of a farmer, I presume you have a lot of experience in this area and I am interested in your thoughts. My basic understanding of the subject comes from a recent workshop in wa by another person who claims to have a lot of knowledge about fruit trees and trees in general. He would be of the opinion that stressing a tree year on year is bad.

For those out there, stressing a tree can be done in many ways, such as not watering/little watering during key times of a trees cycle, or even ring barking to a degree. But before doing any of these you should make sure that the approach is correct for the type of tree and also the time of year is also correct.

FJ, my two bobs worth is this...

What you're saying about stressing producing a reproductive reaction is essentially spot on.

However stress is stress and all organisms require a period of recuperation after a "stress" period to return to normal health

How long an organism takes to rebound is dependant on availabilty of food/water, rest and probably a degree of harmony ie non-stress

If you were to continually stress your tree every growing season, even with optimal water/temperature/food and pest conditions you would ultimately sicken or fatally woung your plant... I suspect that (like people) the plants resistance to pests, minor injury etc would be lowered and therefore the plant would be more suseptible to disease

If you've ever grown a lot of veges you'll probably have seen this.
The more you pick the young leaves the smaller the plant will grow over the same lifetime as a plant which has been untouched until mature.

Constant pickings can be great for the purpose of consumption and staggering the harvest but ultimately it results in an explosive run to seed as one last desparate attempt at survival

Also you'll notice the taste towards the end has become more bitter, possibly because the plant isn't taking up the nutrients and more particularly the trace elements as well.

Indeed I believe it is the lack of trace element uptake that is the primary concern... over a normal cycle the trace elements are slowly and steadily accumulated as required.

Add stress and I believe you effectively suck the trace elements out of the plant in order to produce the flower/fruit

Meant to add ... no I don't believe the tree "learns", I believe it is just to depleted to flower/fruit...

It hasn't repaired itself sufficiently to do so

Farm wisdom here says if a tree is not productive, you should beat it with an ax handle or blast it with your shotgun once. Dunno, never tried it.

well thats a good en'

...to bring our hens on to lay I rest the axe on the chook pen.
seems to work a treat....
C1

Hey I didn't mean interegation lights, lack of sleep, forcing the tree to listen to endless commercial radio... come on I'm not cruel. What I meant is that, for example, Mangoes flower normally in winter, which in the tropics is a dry time of year, but they do need a reason to reproduce, yes they will naturally flower and fruit anyway but if they have it too easy you won't get much from them. reemember they are a tree not a vegeplant and are going to last a long long time. possibly bursting out of any 'AP' system. and if they are let go with continious access to water and easily obtainable nutrients, they will grow and grow and grow.....so you do need to encourage the tree to throw flowers. what normally happens/ed in our orchard is this, in summer the fruit is picked, then the trees get pruned back into a controllable shape, then they are ignored and watered, Add fertilizer as required, remember there is a lot of nutrients gone out with the fruit. .....towards the end of autumn, stop watering the trees. There is still sufficient soil moisture to sustain them(depending ont he size of the tree and how far its roots have gone down) during winter the tree will throw flowers, and set fruit. once this is done irrigate and fertilize as required. If tho, during the stage of its cycle when the tree will normally throw flowers, the tree gets an unlimited supply of water and nutrients it will throw a flush of new growth from its tips, rather than flowers. but if you want a huge tree with bugger all fruit(in relation to its size of course) go for it!
Just as an aside There was a mango tree that grew in the mudflats down near the see. occasionally (so the story goes) people would see a white mist drifting off its leaves as it expelled the salt from itself. They are fairly hardy beasts!

for one i know planting from seed is a no no i would just take too long to get any fruit. take some cuttings or get some grafted trees please

RupertofOZ

There is a tree in Africa that releases a pheromone when it is attacked by a Giraffe. This then causes neighbouring trees, of the same species, to modify the chemical makeup in their leaves, making them poisonous to the Giraffe . Giraffes have to stay on the move to feed from these plants to avoid being poisoned.

Just thought I’d mention this, because I found it fascinating and it brought to question allot of assumptions I previously had about the plant kingdom.

On a side note, there is also a Myxomycete, Physarum polycephalum (slime mould) single-celled organism that can negotiate the shortest way through a maze with food at the other end!

This research was conducted by Toshiyuki Nakagaki of the Bio-Mimetic Control Research Centre, Japan, for those that want to read further.

The world is not always as it seem (twilight music)

HMMM, sounds like a good description of some of the kids I have attempted to help educate over the years

AM...
Unfortunately there is no end of the Maze for some kids in schools today... I hate to say it but I have seen some real no-hoper's come and go at the school where I work... It is like they don't really give a damn about their futures...

Tim, you've probably already answered this, but are you also a teacher?

No, thank goodness... no offense to anybody. It would be tough to teach these days, a lot has changed in the few years since I left school. Respect and protocol has gone out the window... for example when I was at school we used to stand when a staff member entered the room, now I go in to fix a computer, look at me, then continue to throw s**t around the room. They laugh when I say to fix their uniform before I change their password... Nah, teaching is not for me...

Picked you for an IT man

How long u been at it? doing well at 20