The Biosphere Blog

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 7h March 2023. Backstory I first heard of biochar maybe back in the early 2000s. It sounded really, really interesting, but I was somewhat put off by the $120… more »

Earth’s Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Concentrations Over Time The previous post covered the fall of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from 97% [970,000 parts per million (ppm)] 4.5 billion years ago, to around 0.4% (4,000 ppm) 500 million years… more »

Last week’s post on the stroma was a prelude to posts-to-come on the light-independent reactions of photosynthesis. These reactions are the Calvin Cycle, in which the inorganic carbon in carbon dioxide (CO2) is ‘fixed’ into organic… more »

Introduction Single-celled organisms are biochemical multitaskers — they need to be if they are to survive, as every process required for their existence must be doable by that single cell. Multicellular life probably began as colonies of independent… more »

I always keep back a few trees every year. As soon as the last bare-rooted tree leaves for a customer, these trees too are packed exactly as if going in the mail. They do not see the light of day, and are completely untouched and undisturbed the whole… more »

Have you ever seen these very smooth round and oval shapes in leaves before, and not known what made them? These aren’t caused by caterpillars, which produce jagged edges. These very smooth edges are the tell-tale sign (to those in the know!) of… more »

Introduction Fruit fly is an absolute scourge of a pest. If you have ever experienced just one infestation for yourself, then you will fully appreciate the devastation and its potential to literally wipe out the livelihood of commercial fruit growers… more »

Back in 1st September 2020 I began a new category: “Life of a Ta-Jan” with the intent of following a new Ta-Jan as it left dormancy, budded and grew during its first season after grafting. And then I had the idea of not only recording growth… more »

This post is for people with small (or no) yards, or who otherwise can’t or don’t wish to set up an outdoor compost pile, but who would still love to ‘do their bit’ and feed their trees at the same time. This composting-in-a-box… more »

Composting Composting is an age-old technique of converting waste organic matter into nutrient-rich soil amendments that add fertility to a soil. There is the slow method of ‘cold’ composting, and then there is the faster ‘hot’… more »

The other day I was chatting to a neighbour about, of all things, Casuarina sp. (’She-Oak’) and the mulch they create from all the ‘needles’ they shed. (Casuarinas seem to be a very much under-appreciated and much-maligned tree,… more »

While waiting for the terminal buds of the 2020 Ta-Jan blogging tree to do — or not! — as predicted, I thought a post on transplant shock an interesting diversion this week. Back on the 22nd September 2020 I did a photoblog post showing the two years of… more »

Last week we covered the location of jujube tree nodes and the two types of buds present at each node. (That post has since been updated to include a crash-course description of the branch types as well.) The post ended with a summary of what each bud… more »

Nodes and Buds A ‘bud’, in botany, is a compact, undeveloped shoot which may develop into a twig/branch, leaf, or flower. The region in which buds are located is called a node, and the area between nodes is called an internode. Nodes are the… more »

UPDATE: This post didn’t make it clear at the time that these trees were handled contrary to norms in the interests of science. (Basically, I wanted photos of two years’ of root growth whilst demonstrating how tough these trees are with… more »