G'day from Brisbane, australia

[Puremagick3]

Hey greville, my bottle palm will over take urs lol its just a baby ATM haha.

Yeah I love my coconuts, when I lived in Sydney I really wanted one but there near impossible to find down there. Then I moved up here and there everywhere. I found all of mine floating down the bay after falling off peoples plants. So the first two are successful out of the 4 I found that time. The newest one that's just sprouting I found on it's own.

[Puremagick3]

i dont need any syagrus seeds PM3 but when your foxy gets bigger

I'll bear that in mind

[Nigel Fear]

Nice pics Nikko, welcome aboard.

Don't know why you wanna grow holly though with all the stuff you have there, I'm alway's trying to eradicate it...
and Oak seedlings where the squirrrels keep burying acorns everywhere.

if you like, I'll gather some Holly berries and acorns next year, and do a swap with ya.

[Puremagick3]

Nice pics Nikko, welcome aboard.

Don't know why you wanna grow holly though with all the stuff you have there, I'm alway's trying to eradicate it...
and Oak seedlings where the squirrrels keep burying acorns everywhere.

if you like, I'll gather some Holly berries and acorns next year, and do a swap with ya.

Well there exotics to me. What I would love is a hawthorn but cannot find them anywhere here. Except in the mountains. So annoying. I love tropicals the most as there easier to grow but also love the challenge of colder climate plants and ur be surprised to learn that they do not get burnt by our sun which on occasion will be as strong as uv index 16 ( ur sub gets to around uv index 7 I believe)

[jreinhar]

Brisbaner,

I have a bit of different conundrum from my UK palm-growing mates. Where they have cool summers and mild winters, here in New Jersey I get Brisbane summers followed by sometimes brutal winters. This past January, the harshest in a generation, we barely got above freezing in the day and one night saw the temperature go down to a frigid -16 Celsius. The winters here are short (yesterday we hit 29 Celsius) but weeks of freezing weather are hard on palms.

New Jerseyeans have had luck with trachycarpus, sabal minor and needle palms with minimal protection. But I really would like to try a pinnate. My hope is to grow a pindo, or jelly, palm with a combination of heavy mulching, a Francko enclosure (translucent plastic enclosure) and maybe some form of supplemental heating, like a light bulb, for the coldest nights.

Do you think a Chilean wine palm might prove hardier than the pindo?

[Puremagick3]

I don't know much about the chilean wine palm but I just researched on it. For hardiness the pindo can take down to -12c (sorry don't know degrees f) and in the blue mountains here they grow Trachycarpus, pindo, Phoenix canariensis_CIDP and even queen palm in lower altitudes. Where they grow the pindo itgets down to -8.3c in winter with days around 9c and summer days around 23c and it grows well there (the climate is very similar to uk) and can be frozen for weeks at a time. So I would say pindo is ur best choice.

Oh ur summers are a little cooler then our summers especially ur night temps. But unlike uk u get good summer heat for the palm to recover from the winter.

[jreinhar]

Professor Dave Francko at Miami University in Oxford Ohio (zone 6a) grows pindos as a dieback perennial around the campus. I'm a half zone warmer, so I'm hoping I can get a trunked specimen going. We'll see.

Central Jersey may not have the settled summer heat of the tropics, but we make up for it with withering heat waves. Last year we had weeks with temps poking up to 38 C and not dropping below 26. The long days are killers. But they let us grow all manner of tropicals. At my community garden I grew hordes of bottle and wax gourds, and friends ripened hands of bananas (Raja Puri).

A friend who recently visited Queensland told me about a lovely Mediterranean region to your east, I think he said it was the "Granite Belt" or something, Queensland's wine region. Sounds marvelous.

[Puremagick3]

Oh yeah the granite belt is north west of me. Yeah can get cool out there as it's more inland in the outback. You can get some nice tropicals going in non tropical areas. Just need to pick the right ones. Being in zone 11b we can grow most. But still there are tropicals out there that even I can't grow without winter protection. The main one being lipstick palm. I tries to grow one last winter but failed miserably. Died within 2 weeks of buying it. It can't stand less then 15c for long periods. Unfortuantely we maybe mild tropical but we still regularly get temps under 15c even as low as 4.2c on rare ocassions. so next time I will make sure I protect it from the cooler winter nights.

[jreinhar]

My father's family is from Southwestern Florida -- Fort Myers/Naples. I recently went in with Dad to buy out my late grandmother's townhouse partly because the real estate market collapsed (Fort Myers was ground zero for the subprime debacle) and we couldn't see giving away a gorgeous riverside condo for $17K. But the larger reason is that Grandma had mangoes and coconuts growing in her courtyard. I love getting up in the relatively cool June mornings to collect the windfalls for breakfast.

Still zone 10a gets periodic frosts. I remember a key lime tree that was killed by a January frost, its fruit looking like so many ornaments on the bare limbs. One ironic thing about Florida is the torrid summers mean you have to grow tomatoes in winter. Many a night grandmother had to throw blankets over the vines when a cold front moved in.

Perhaps for that reason the coconuts never got as tall as the ones I see in the true tropics -- maybe just four meters, tops. But the cocos were still wonderful and productive. I can't retire to someplace as wonderful as Queensland, but maybe Ft. Myers will do!

[grub]

This past January, the harshest in a generation, we barely got above freezing in the day and one night saw the temperature go down to a frigid -16 Celsius.

Similar lows to me then but shorter lasting winter, hate to report my Wine Palm has already pulled and I was reduced to one Butia last winter, this has now been dispatched by this Winter . Of course, if you buy big enough like Henry, they do well http://www.hardytropicals.co.uk/forum/v ... f=1&t=5487

[Puremagick3]

Haha Florida is like here. We have to sow tomatoes, etc in winter. It's to hot for them in summer.

[Renae]

Do you mean too wet in summer? Cos we get high 30's & 40's and they grow great??

[Dave Brown]

Sorry to hear about the Jubea Grub, not cheap to replace either.

You guys are making me wonder how we actually grow anything at all Cold, wet winters and lack of summer heat

Tomatoes are from Africa as far as I am aware, so should take full sun. but a need constant supply of water. They do seem to wilt here in hot sunny weather (high 20sC) not what you guys would call hot In the UK many parts struggle to get a crop ripening outside. Even here in Kent 'The Garden of England', with one of the warmest UK summer areas for ripening fruit, we do not get ripening tomatoes until end of July, with the main crop in August/September.

Fort Myers sounds like heaven to me

[Puremagick3]

We have the heat and humidity remember. So they end up getting blight unless u use tomato dust. So it's easy to grow them in winter cos it's our dry season. Although technically u can grow all year round if u have the time to tend them. I recently put my winter crop of peas, beans, capsicum, eggplant, sweetcorn, zeccini (can never spell it lol) and cucumber.

Yeah Dave it does make u wonder how anything grows over there but it sounds like u all push the boundary on all ur tropicals especially. I have to say u guys must be pretty good gardeners to pull it off. You deserve awards or something. Cos since I Been on this forum it's unreal to read what u have to do to over winter your tropicals but ur all so dedicated to doing it. Good on you's. I guess us guys in the tropics take our climate for granted.

[grub]

Sorry to hear about the Jubea Grub, not cheap to replace either.

Oddly enough Dave, the Washy that was sharing a fleece with it hasn't pulled (yet)