Qld Garden Expo Nambour

[ClissAT]

is July 7-8-9.

So I decided to shout myself a day out. Ticket was $16/concession for one day.
Not sure which day I'll go yet, maybe Saturday if the weather is good.
I checked the program & there seems to be the same speakers on both Sat & Sun.
Some different speakers on Friday.
I thought I might attempt to confound the speakers who will be running the Q&A where you can take leaves to have them assessed for disease, etc.
I will take a collection of unrelated various yellowing leaves from my garden & see what the speakers come up with. I guess they'll say mineral deficiency which is sort of correct.

 

[stevo]

don't forget to grab some photos!

edit: do you have a camera any more?

 

[ClissAT]

Oh yes I fixed my cheapo camera & found my expensive camera tucked in the passenger seat frame of my son's car when I went to clean it about 3wks ago.

 

[Letsgokate]

Was thinking about going but just got back from being away and have lots to catch up on. Be interested in your report on it.

 

[ClissAT]

Well today was the chosen day! Turned out quite good all round.
Sunny, no wind, fantastic temperature.
I got lots of brochures as usual & took several photos of things that got my attention.
I missed Don Burke because there were no sign posts to tell people where they were in relation to the map & no sign posts indicating where places were. By the time I found it there were no seats left & I desperately needed to sit down. I sat in on a talk about bamboo but the guy's computer battery died right at the beginning so no photos which was disappointing & he was reluctant to give the correct names of suitable bb varieties so I came home without any. I find that sort of behaviour exasperating.


Firstly in the photos department was this nifty inground composting system that goes into the ground at each tree or in each garden bed. It can have a flat lid for mowing over or a raised lid so it doesn't get lost in heavy growth.
It take all waste from used paper towels, kitchen waste to doggie do do!
She seems to have a couple of web addresses, one being a facebook page I think.
www.compost.com.au
www.directcompostsolutions.com
07 33583716 0467006529


The hydro tower system has a facebook page:-
Pick Fresh Hydroponic Garden Towers
I think this system would work really well on small unit balconies or in retirement village units where individual garden beds are not allowed.



These rusty garden statues were so cute. The chook / emu/ whatever it was has the most inviting look on its face! But it has a rose in its beak.



I always wanted one or more of these fruit salad trees until I was told that the strongest graft will eventually kill the others. They are really expensive but maybe these days, they have solved the graft problem.



I really liked this ingenious trellis method made with a bicycle wheel, a length of galvanised pipe, some baling twine & a decent sized plant pot. I suspect the pipe is sitting in a lump of concrete in the bottom of the pot. This one has snow peas growing in it.




I got a flyer for a fruit fly lure that is sprayed weekly onto posts placed every 3m throughout the orchard or garden beds. It's called Natrua-Lure which is a natural molasses looking formulation.
From the same people I got the address of an app for mobiles created in Murwillumbah where you photograph the insect then using the app, have it identified & get treatment & control info.
facebook page:- Insects & organic gardening/ Bio-logical App www.insectsorganicgardeningapp.com.au
They had a closeup photo of the difference between a lady bug juvenile & a woolly thingo (sorry the brain has stopped working tonight!) The biggest difference is that the lady bug juvenile moves around fairly quickly if you touch it while the woolly thingo stays put due to feeding on sap.


I purchased several tropical or rare fruit trees today from a tropical plant nursery along with a haul of plants & bulbs from Garden Express which is usually an online seller that I use sometimes. Being the end of the second day they were discounting items so I was lucky to get lots of stuff cheaper plus avoided postage costs.
I got potatoes ready to plant now, 4 kinds of cane berry vines, hippeastrums, jonquils, roses, etc.
I cant give you the name of this tropical fruit tree nursery because it was not shown anywhere I looked & not on the list of available plants that I ordered from yet they were doing a roaring trade! Most bizarre! So no return business from me obviously.
The list of fruit trees are:- Avocado types A&B, Bi-sexual PawPaw, Brazil Custard Apple, Jaboticaba, Soursop, Vanilla Bean, Wampi, Yellow Sapote. I must say I made a mistake with the last 2 as they are not what I was thinking I was buying! Actually, I don't know what I was thinking to be honest! So who knows whether they'll get eaten once fruiting. Maybe they'll just become bat food!

Anyway they are for my new food forest along with other pawpaws, mulberry, pepino, the berry vines, parsley used as a pathway boarder & several others I cant remember right now.

I'll report a bit more tomorrow.

 

[ClissAT]

Ok well I got the name of the nursery I bought the tropical fruit trees from by checking my eftpos transactions today in my bank account.
It's called Forbidden Fruits.

While I was walking around yesterday I was hoping to come across some professionally created display gardens but only found organic, permaculture & community garden type displays.
Not that they themselves weren't great. They were, with most plants marked & many with some cultural notes, cooking tips & a photo or 2. It was good to see how they fitted into the scheme of things. I missed a fantastic talk on using unusual greens.

I did a brief flit through the huge potted plant shed. Not that interested in the normal sort of garden even though I do have a large flower garden myself. But I didn't need to buy more! I guess I missed the vegie seedling section which I would have liked to browse more thoroughly for unusual species.

I met the Katek people & it was nice to chat with them for a while about new products & the direction of the fertilizer industry. I was interested in buying the property NW of Gympie that they eventually set up their chook manure factory on. When I looked at it for sale it had been an organic free range chook & duck meat producing farm with several large poultry sheds, silos, tanks, various other buildings & a small abattoir. It was in the process of being dismantled when I first inspected but there were still some 100's of ducks there waiting to get to the right age to kill. The second inspection revealed an empty property because the clearing sales had been held & I realized it did not come with the infrastructure I was told it would have. I was wanting to set up free range egg production with chook manure as a side line.

I also still had working & show quarter horses & needed to set up an arena & stables. The front paddocks were the only level land but were strewn thickly with 15-20cm gibbers which would have been rather expensive to clear away & plow out of the ground with a special attachment on a large tractor.
So reluctantly I turned it down, but while still in the office getting ready to inspect another property some people walked in & I overheard them telling the real estate agent they wanted to set up a chook manure factory & she told them about the place I had just turned down. So I guess they bought it & it became the Katek factory.

Among their new lines, they have a new shaker bottle for their chook poo pellets so you can shake out just a few for a pot plant or to go around a small plant in the ground. They gave me one for free & this morning I gave it a test run on my potted tomatoes etc. It works very well but would be a challenge to reload due to the narrowness of the neck. Maybe the bottom of the bottle needs to flip open also for ease of reloading. They also have gone down the same path as Searles & some others to produce liquid manure with additives. I think all that genera work very well, some better than others in different applications. So, horses for courses.

 

[Letsgokate]

Video from Rob Bob's backyard farming on his trip to the expo

 

[LeafMeAlone]

This looks like a great day! Love the pics, and thanks for sharing the video. I...might have to try and get myself to one of these sometime soon!