Sam Williams

Iv'e set up a little flowerpot heater and you'd be surprised the difference in temperature it has made I think it would be better with a metal core of washers plus the inside painted black but it'll do for the moment. With it being such a small space it really holds heat well. The link is brilliant thank you, i've got some old pallet wood I could use to emulate what they've created. I'll definitely give just the clay soil a try first to see how it holds up.

Thank you both for the ideas, I will definitely use the terracotta pot method for the short term to keep the greenhouse above freezing, I already make my own oil lamps from glass jars and 60/40 mix of white spirits to sunflower oil. I like the idea of just using cob/bricks for the mini rocket mass heater, would clay soil hold up used as the core/heat riser or would it just fall to pieces do you think? as long as the exhaust is cool enough I could just use flexible flue pipe out the window on the greenhouse while the mass is heating up, then remove it once the cob is up to temperature. That would be simpler than a permanent stove pipe out the roof.

Hello all,

I'm soon to be moving into my 8X6 polycarbonate greenhouse for a while (it's complicated) and desperately need an efficient way to heat it, I will be building a large pile of leaves against two of the external walls held with chicken wire to aid in insulation and partial heating via microbial action of the decomposing leaves. All Iv'e got access to in terms of building materials is: extremely high clay content soil, Sand and some bricks. If I have to get some refractory cement, stove pipe and insulation for the panels to protect them from the heat then I will do. So with these materials could I make a crude stove/mass heater to heat my greenhouse while I sleep?

A potential new nation is in the process of being formed in Syria called Rojava. I'm not looking to make this a political post, If this new nation is successful it could have broad reaching implications across the war torn region as a beacon of hope and safety. My question to you all is, what plants and techniques would you consider if setting up a Permaculture farm in this region? keep in mind that importing plants would be very difficult logistically so I will say that everything needs to be grown from seed, and I don't want to have to rely on drip lines and irrigation, other than that all suggestions are very welcome.

-Sam

Just a thought, If you wanted a small monkey puzzle 'bush' in your garden and you don't have space for two then you could graft one bark patch from a male and one from a female. You would essentially have a compact self pollinating Araucaria bush. Something else I've found from peoples posts online of their grafting experiments is that grafting Araucana onto Angustifolia makes the Araucana grow much faster, It would probably cause earlier fruiting too due to partial incompatibility between rootstock and scion as with many other fruit/nut trees.

Hello again Henry, Yes its the same method of bark patch grafting, the difference being that when you graft from a lateral it will only grow to about 6' tall (and sideways-ish) and as long as it came from high in a mature tree it will also produce cones! Also very exciting news for me is that you can in fact obtain Orthotropic shoots from a lateral graft as the grafted tree occasionally sprouts them along its length. This make reproducing full sized trees much easier than the other method of chopping the leader off.

I also now understand how to have a small fruiting araucaria garden tree (around 6') without any pruning. from graft to fruit can be as little as 4 years, maybe even sooner if you grafted onto selected faster growing seedlings.

Hello Henry, Apologies that I haven't answered you sooner I haven't visited the forum for a while. Yes I do grow my own Araucaria. Ive currently got several dozen Araucana and angustifolia seedlings that i'm planning to use as root stock for grafting. I'd love to be a part of any araucaria growing project and will freely give all information I have. my Email is samuelfwilliams1993@hotmail.com.

Hello again,

Yes you get nuts in about six years with this method which is half the time of a regular seedling Angustifolia, the resulting grafted trees also stay fairly low/compact. I'd much rather have a variety that produces early instead though to avoid the genetic disparity between rootstock and scion. The heavy cropping Angustifolia tree that I mentioned is noted for its early bearing at 8 years old. This is just speculation but my guess would be that with the genes coding for early fruiting in the Angustifolia combined with the Hybrid vigor of the offspring (being half bunya), At least some of the resulting trees would produce at a very young age. Again just speculation but it would make sense, It would also be great if the hybrid offspring took after the Bunya in terms of being monoecious but i'll have to wait and see on that one. As long as I plant enough of these trees I will have a better chance of finding two or more early bearers amongst them that I can cross to try and encourage early bearing in future generations. Your welcome, I spend most of my free time digging through Araucaria research papers online (Bit of an obsession).

Thanks for the replies.

Ray South,
thank you for saying so, The way I see it is if I can get some really productive trees growing in such a way that it is commercially viable then hopefully more skeptics will see the benefits of natural farming techniques and move away from tillage, pesticides and artificial fertilizers. In regards to where in Australia i'm thinking of setting up shop, any land will do as long as it's cheap(i'm on a VERY tight budget), the beauty of what I want to do is that it is very adaptable. Sorry to hear about the Bunya seedlings, Iv'e managed to germinate a handful so far in a warm greenhouse. Funnily enough the ones that I buried instead of surface sowed not only germinated sooner but had a higher survival rate, my guess is they need a good deal of humidity when first starting off, also something that I've noticed while potting on my Araucana and Angustifolia seedlings is that they completely lack fibrous roots which makes me wonder whether they would rely quite heavily on fungal symbiosis to really thrive. If you do decide to straight sow any then I would recommend putting a heavy stone on top of the rounded end of the seed leaving plenty of room for the little guy to poke out the pointy end, if you don't weigh down the seeds they are buggers for pushing themselves out of the ground with their taproots.

Henry Jabel,
Araucana do love the UK climate don't they, I know of six just in my area 3 of which are bloody huge and healthy trees. I was in the exact same frame of mind as you in terms of wanting to plant an Araucana forest in the UK, there is a fantastic Self seeding fully mature Araucana forest in northumberland called Kyloe woods which is thriving, over 70 adult trees and countless seedlings and saplings. I would think they would grow very well in Tasmania too, from what I understand its the same as our climate just a bit warmer (might be wrong). There is a man Called Ivar Wendling in south America who has perfected a grafting technique that allows you to have very low fruiting (within reach) Angustifolia trees by taking bark patch graft from epicormic shoots high up in fruiting age trees and grafting it onto small saplings, I don't see why this wouldn't work for Bunya's and is one of the things I want to try out. Not problem haha!, they do hybridize naturally where the two species ranges cross over, the first generation hybrids grow considerably faster than either parent tree, are resistant to Phytophthora from the angustifolia genes and tend to be quite thirsty from what Iv'e been told.