I recommend the macademia nut tree!
John Savage
suburbs of Sydney. The macademia is a rainforest tree from Queensland, and
some know it as the Qld Nut tree. Macademias seem to be well suited to the
moderate Sydney climate near the coast, and these are doing well. I made a
point this year of taking note of the length of the fruiting season. One
tree began dropping a healthy number of nuts at the start of February, and
had ceased by the first week of April. So that gave me twelve weeks during
which it consistently dropped around 30 nuts per day. That should be more
than enough for the average home gardener! The shells of macademias are so
hard that I'm sure the nuts would be left alone by possums. The second tree
I'm keeping tabs on hasn't yet dropped its fruit. They are hanging on the
tree like green Xmas tree baubles. An interesting thing about this second
tree is that it has not long finished flowering: it flowered even while it
had fruit from its previous flowering approaching maturity. If you were to
grow a macademia tree you would probably need a large suburban backyard, or
there would not be much room for much else. They are evergreens, and there
won't be much grass growing underneath unless you trim the tree's outward
expansion. One tree in a park is about 20' high and 20' across, the other
in a backyard is 30' high and 15' across.
--
John Savage (for email, replace "ks" with "k" and delete "n")
Angela Higginson
in Brisbane, and have an enormous macadamia, and very well fed possums.
Every season, it drops literally hundreds of nuts, each one with a
little hole in it where the possums gnawed through to get the kernel. I
went inside our roof once, and the place was full of empty shells. You
could hear them chewing all night! I think that in the 3 years I've
been here that we (the humans) have got less than 2 dozen nuts.
It's just not fair!
Angela
arien
@student.uq.edu.au says...
Is a macadamia tree likely to grow in Adelaide?
--
Mel
Please post reply to newsgroup. Reply address isn't valid.
len brauer
could be worth a try they are rated as medium frost hardy, so if you
don't get frost or worse and can provide a warm spot in the garden say
a north or north/east aspect, they could do well.
just remember they can get to be a big tree. there are grafted plants
available also.
len
snipped
--
happy gardening
'it works for me it could work for you,'
"in the end ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do" but consider others and the environment
http://hub.dataline.net.au/~gardnlen/
John Savage
>Don't be too sure about macadamias being too hard for possums! I live
>in Brisbane, and have an enormous macadamia, and very well fed possums.
>Every season, it drops literally hundreds of nuts, each one with a
>little hole in it where the possums gnawed through to get the kernel. I
That's difficult to credit. The shells are so hard I was sure the possums
couldn't make any impression. If your tree stands apart from others, you
might be able to wrap a sheet of smooth galvanised iron around the trunk
to form a barrier that will stop the possums from being able to climb it.
I would expect the possum to gnaw a hole that wasn't exactly small, so
must make a point of examining the jaw and teeth of the next late possum
I find on the kerbside.
len brauer
not sure, would imagine the nut to be to tough for possums.
Angela Higginson
(and I'm talking bloody big brush-tail possums) keep me awake at night
gnawing on macadamias! They stockpile them in the roof and the walls.
I'll post you some - it's true! The tree is huge and overlaps several
others and two houses, so there's no keeping the possums off it.
Angela
Angela Higginson
macadamias - think it buggered its teeth in the process though.
len brauer
so to stop them is there any chance of prunning the tree back so it
doesn't overlap others? just some select pruning. then wrap some of
that sheet tin around the trunk it would have to be around a meter up
from the ground as the little buggers can jump.
you would also want to keep them out of your house i imagine as they
will be peeing in the ceiling, when you have all this under control
build them a home and attach it to another tree, this way at least
they won't be trying hard to find another residence, which maybe just
another way into your house.
i've never tried this one but i have heard that if you create a feed
station fro them and provide them with pieces of fruit etc.,. they say
this helps keep them from wanting to eat your special plants.
i also think if you ring the dept' of natural resources they have a
trapping service and they remove the animals into bushland.
Darren Wilson
wrote:
> That's difficult to credit. The shells are so hard I was sure the possums
> couldn't make any impression. If your tree stands apart from others, you
> might be able to wrap a sheet of smooth galvanised iron around the trunk
> to form a barrier that will stop the possums from being able to climb it.
> I would expect the possum to gnaw a hole that wasn't exactly small, so
> must make a point of examining the jaw and teeth of the next late possum
> I find on the kerbside.
There is a large Macadamia tree in the grounds of St Albans Church at Epping (in
Sydney). At fruiting time, the ground is littered with the nut shells that
possums have discarded.
Don't forget that animals tend to have much stronger jaws than humans. ;-)
Angela Higginson
managed to block up the roof so they no longer get in - that was an
urgent priority after moving in, although one sleeps in the wall next to
my computer. There are so many trees here that there's no need to make
shelters for possums, and we're just down the street from a wild creek
bush corridor. Therefore happy possums. I actually don't care if they
eat the macadamias or not - I got a bit sick of macadamias after working
on a macadamia farm in the holidays a few years ago. And it stops them
eating my vege patch.
Angela
John Savage
>Which reminds me - my mother's cattle dog taught itself to eat
>macadamias - think it buggered its teeth in the process though.
Now that I can believe! The dog would probably relentlessly have
ground the nut between its teeth until the shell was worn away and
thin enough that it could be crushed by the dogs teeth. Probably more
than a few macadamias got swallowed whole, too.
Cattle dogs are *so* Australian! :-)
Bushy
seeing what they do to the nuts I leave on the ground.
After chewing their way in on one side of the nut they lie on their backs
holding the nut up to get at the rest of the kernal.
It's the favourite position for my dog to find them in......
Hope this helps,
Peter