www.nscf.org.au/home/learn/permaculture-education-2/permaculture-design-course-2/
They've a course starting in 8th August.
I know that t tree is planted as discribed with a vegetable planter, and is also being planted into ex cane paddocks, but I doubt that more widely spaced and expensive stock such as macadamia and blue berry would be treated so harshly. By the way I sincerely hope that macas work out well on the flat ground as the erosion that occurs from the bare soil under the trees for harvest proposes on the hills is a disgrace
Yeh it's more to do with picking the nut up of the ground, it's most effective to use a type of rolling rake that flips the nut up into a catcher, it doesn't work so well if there's trash on the orchard floor ( grass, stick etc) and if you have contours the fallen nut gets washed into the contour and is buried with the loose top soil and can't be harvested.
So unfortunately erosion is encouraged, and when it rains in the hills around Lismore the Richmond runs red. No wonder it made it into the top rooted rivers list
There's been many attempts at an efficient harvest system - collars around tree into a collection conduit, outrageously expensive and prone to clutter with trash - tree shakers so the crop can be gathered at a specified time, both methods failed as the root system of the tree is a tad week. You would think that since the nut is spherical it would be as simple as playing marbles ! The prize will go to the grower whom develops a shade tolerant lawn bowls type ground cover or a robotic hands and knees type picker upper good luck with you endeavour
Cheers Woko.
We really enjoyed the process of planting the trees. It's great to know these trees, if all goes well, will outlast us. Also I'm fulfilling a dream of my dad as he wanted a macadamia orchard on the farm. Unfortunately I was not interested in planting trees till after he died. I now often think my life would have been a lot different if I'd gotten into this 20 years ago.
There is a fellow up in Queensland who is working on a small scale drone type nut harvester. If it comes about I'd be keen to buy two or four little autonomous battery powered drone harvesters than a big tractor & harvester attached.
We are heading back to the farm/orchard in a month. The main task is to plant 70 more Macadamia trees. We should get them in the ground in two days. This planting will be aided by a little vehicle we bought for the farm. It's a Club Car Carryall. With its tray and a trailer it should make it a lot easier to move material around to plant & mulch the trees. Next year we will plant around 320 more, a different variety that prodigious and doesn't grow into huge monster trees. This may do us but we might plant a couple of hundred more.
Ive been reading on how to prune new macadamia trees too. If they are correctly pruned I hope they will start fruiting in a few years so I can blow the big smoke away. It sucks living here now with everyone sh!Tscared.
I'll probably buy a windsurfer LT & go sailing in the river over summer if we move back there. It will be a flashback to 35 years ago. There are probably more sharks around now than back then.
Living in Sydney suburbs I have a couple of citrus trees, they fruit quite prolificly BUT we have possums that feel the need to take a bite out of every piece of fruit and sometimes devour the entire skin, leaving the skinless fruit hanging on the tree.
get a good dental/dental plan for your pesky possums and grow some chestnut or macadamia. whats the go with water supply moby ? im only small scale like 50 trees citrus stone fruit etc.
The soil around your trees looks pretty sandy busterwa. Have you considered mulching the trees with organic material like wood chip or straw to build up and enrich the soil around the trees?
Sweet moby planted them in 2- 1.5 1.5 deep top soil (just like planting them in a pot but in the ground)top soil was pushed up buy a loader when they cleared the house pad. The top soil has broken down nicely with widgety grubs and worms present have added key elements like lime to raise offset the soil ph .. it If the become deficiency will throw out lupins ..
Im only doing it as a hobby But the extent your doing it is very calculated like commercial.I make my money in heavy industry
Anyhow You know what your doing Ill put some heavy mulch across the ones that with get baked in the summer ;-) .
There is some variety's that wont grow in my area So situation awareness is the key to success.
We leave it at that and not give to many secrets away leave the industry specialised ;-)
Keeps the price of your produce up ;-)
Im gona chuck in a few macadamia have a line of 6 But its a gamble with the frost in the early years If it fail will dump pecan trees in there.
Good thing about nuts Its not like stone fruit where they harvest and go off Nuts can be dried and stored.
Just growing cause kids will eat me out of house and home and rather than pay 10 for a smoko truck lunch can take a bag on nuts to work
Legend Moby
Since dipping my little toe into the macadamia industry I've found growers and processors are very happy to share information with each other. The nut industry is massive and macadamia nuts take up a very small percentage of it, less than three percent. One of the industry's main issues has been lack of supply. A local grower gave me a stack of association magazines going back to 2006. The common theme going through 14 years was increasing the supply of macadamia nuts. I did not really understand why increasing supply was needed to make the industry more profitable till it dawned on me that if buyers have a good supply then they will invest into products containing macadamia nuts, like confectionary and other foods. If a food manufacturer sunk just say a million bucks into a product containing macadamia nuts and then next year they could not get the nuts to continue making the food, they would never ever want to use the nuts in the future.
Frost is an issue early on, till the trees are three or four years old. Its an issue where my trees are as it can get frosty. I think the trees recover from mild frost damage.
Job done moby mulched out turned over sand with organics and left a 200mm radius around the roots as says almond like the drainage. So for anyone growing them in metro west aus . The Johnson prolific and alland brands are perfect. The fritz and mission are a little staggered with the dormancy but i guess as they get bigger the flowering will over lap. All other Nectarines and plumbs have really kicked off flowering off Grapes are shooting Apricots still dormant Should see some action and some growth going into spring.
Hey moby im got a row of 8 thats been reticulated but left open Im looking to put in row Macadamia as there is people growing them in my area. (not on your scale)
Theres not alot of information on them Macadamia seedling in Western aus are pretty much rare as rocking horse **** so im at the stage where to buy off gumtree im checking the variety most plants are ungrafted but im not looking for hudge produce early ref era.daf.qld.gov.au/id/eprint/1964/14/mac-varieties.pdf
Anyways Moby Just wondering (pic off local of gumtree add ) do they need cross pollination i can place them in a ssw fashion for wind pollination Is there a strategy for producing nuts I know they grow here but theres not alot of information on the species variety's etc. Im not a commercial grower but just want to grow a couple Will they self pollinate? they say if you want to plant a tree you should of done it 10 years ago! (are these seedling ng9?)
I grabbed them Moby seller identified them as a A268 or NG8 but unable to confirm until it nuts if not as they get older run another line of cross pollinators behind them , Very surprising as guy was a young bloke Felt sorry as he lived in suburbia and had a row of like 5 planted out about 9 foot high in the middle of suburbia the spacing was like about 1.5 metres Dude was a legend He said that these trees are native and more people should plant them out.
Anyways Moby good luck to you mate organically grown macadamia are at 52$ a kilo shelled at my local wooliez Your a smart fella done the maths!
A wise man always said Have one hand in industry and one hand on the land!
Hi Buster.
What you are doing sounds good. I'm still learning about these trees. A mistake was made with my tree planting. You identified the issue but I ignored it. I planted too many trees of the same variety in one plot. Its hopefully not a fatal mistake for a few reasons. The variety I planted, the 849 can fertilize itself. Secondly I do have some trees of the 246 variety close by. Finally we missed a few spots and still have more to plant. So in two weeks 70 more 849 trees are going to be planted along with 5 more 246 varieties.
However if I made the same mistake with my next planting it would be a disaster. The variety I plan to plant next will not fertilize flowers by trees of the same variety. So I'm going to plant a square ring of different variety trees in side the plot of these trees.
If you want to learn more about macadamia trees a fellow I know has a lot of videos on them. His channel is called Australia Macadamias. He is based up near Lismore which is one of the big areas to grow these trees. The PDF manual you have is good. I downloaded it too.
I don't think its possible to go completely organic with these nuts. There are a lot of insects that will attack the flowers and the nuts. However once the trees get going I'll see what can be done. With the prices growers are getting around $8 a kg for nut in shell. A decent tree will drop 10 kg of nut. These prices are great for the growers.
Good luck with your planting. I think these trees will grow fine around the Perth area as the weather there is similar to the weather these trees grow well on the east coast.
yes moby very specalized the overall yeild would be upto 50+ kilo a tree. i learning aswell even with other trees, had to run nitrogen to upgrade soil. moved alot of sheet metal and old metal scraps today down the back of property ,uncovered 3 dugites of substantial size . put them to sleep very quickly with a sharpened showel they moved very slow. they like even still going down the firebreak without out a head. blue tounges are out now here in wa aswell . gota wear some decent boots gloves and long sleave pants when moving thu the trees and grass mate situational awareness! NO_CONVERSATION_EXISTS