Q&A: Casuarinas: Fixing Phosphate, Planting them, Coppicing them, etc.
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- čas přidán 26. 08. 2017
- Question: How to use Casuarinas in a Permaculture Design.
- Limit the number because they can shade out gardens or take space from fruit trees.
- Not great for coppicing but can be heavily pruned.
- Great trellises for climbing vines.
- Incorporate with other legumes, being sure not to overcrowd.
- A source of nitrogen, phosphate, and silica.
- Good whippy tops for buffering wind.
Please consider to make videos where you actually show the casuarina (and other trees) in action and how you manage them. Thank you.
And they are great for helping the endangered black cockatoos
Would have been good to get some videos in of Casuarinas growing. To see what they look like. Their bark, foliage, saplings, to mid aged to large trees. Sizes. Etc
Great advice, and very helpful too. Thank you! We appreciate your advice here.
Yay, you have dogs! Would love to see them.
Another reason to space out casuarina trees in a food forest, is the allelopathy effect their dropped nettles can have. Too many planted together, will inhibit growth of other plants. Which might be beneficial if your design was to create a natural gap (ie: fire break, or access road ) with little maintenance. But as far as a food forest is concerned, the allelophathy effect from casurina nettles, needs to be controlled through diversity.
I miss these trees from my time in hawaii. beautiful trees, nice wood to work with too! i hope to plant a few someday....
Can you use the old Casuarina wood as hugeculture? Is the wood allelopathic and does it damage the soil when composted?
Does anyone know the species of climbing yam Geoff has at Zaytuna and often mentions? Is it the same Chinese aerial yam that can be grown in temperate zones?
Please consider the video of casuraina morphological and anatomical
Study
Hi Geoff,
You suggested to permanently Forest slopes steep more than 18°. Can this areas be used as short rotation coppices?
good shade tree for organic shade grown coffee in Timor0Leste.- seems like the phosphate mycorrhizae must be of benefit here.
Does anyone have experience with growing food forest under Casuarina trees. With the Chocko or Passionfruit vines how far from Carina tree trunk should we plant the vines. I have 2 rows planted for windbreaks 20 years ago, Double row, and there's 20 years of litter underneath. Can one grow any other species, vegetables successfully under Casuarina in arid/semi-arid area mid-west/Western Australia.
I could also adapt drip irrigation, as mainline in place. Started trees/windbreaks on drip.
Casuarina was planted, after the loss of both Radiata Pines and Tassie Bluegums on drip. They perished the first summer with 40C plus, record temperatures for 10 days, on my sandplain hillside and cyclonic easterly hot searing winds.
All planted trees perished in 3 days from green to brown. The biggest growing disaster I have experienced.
The At Department recommended
Casuarina Cunningham's, which survived.
No I have this 20 year legacy of a Cunningham tree forest, with internal forest floor on 2 X Double rows, providing good ecology, With shade and soil humus I think to experiment with food forest IMG, with supplement drip irrigation system for either vines or vegetables or other fruit forest trees.
Would be great if anyone has had similar situation or success experience to see. Also growing in ecalyptus tree shade.
areas. I noticed the Italian snail doesn't seem to bother or intrude the forest floor, like it does paddock pasture, for some reason. I have abandoned my commercial attempts to grow produce on this 10 acre property, which has good underground bore water.
Looking at implementation of permaculture design for house garden, and advance from there .
Having planted the 2 shelter belts. I'm thinking 2 more intermediate shelter belts on the property would set a solid framework for permaculture design.
On the hillside and 20 feet of yellow sand, and no runoff observed over 20 years, I have determine Swales wouldn't be of any benefit to this semi-arid sandplain permaculture experiment.
G'day Geoff. Question(s) Casuarinas, ..So do they have root nodules with bacteria similar to the nitrogen fixing bacteria that can be found within the roots of the plants within the Pea / Wattle family but instead these bacteria fix phosphates?
Deon Grantham casuarina fix nitrogen with Frankia bacteria instead of a ryzobium bacteria and accumulate phosphate with a mycelium fungi relationship.
No worries. Thankyou. Keep up the great work!
Have a 25m casurina Buckinghamia that has cavitation at the base, any idea on how it would respond to a hard pollard? 1/3 - 1/2 the height?
:-)
How much of a frost can they take?
I have them growing naturally on my place, they can take frost, drought, wet ground, anything really!
How that "fixing phosphates" ?