The Biosphere Blog

Updated: The Si-Hong from This Previous Update of This Post This all began on 1st October 2024, when I first mentioned this little Si-Hong: Which by December that same year looked like this: In that post I mentioned how its sole mother fruiting branch… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 2nd April 2026. By far the best all-round pest control method is to simply exclude them. This is of course often easier said than done, but for many many… more »

This post is of updates of three previously mentioned trees: a Si-Hong which featured in What Would You Make of This Tree?, first posted on 1st October 2024 and with a follow-up on 13th December 2024 here; and, two cuttings which featured in Miraculous… more »

Just a quick update on the two cuttings here. First the stronger, flourishing Silverhill: Four weeks ago I wrote that “I will swear blind I saw the teensiest unmistakable shape of a Silverhill jujube fruit", that disappeared sometime after a… more »

Chinese jujube is notorious for not striking from cuttings - as are Japanese maples! Of course I had to try, and did, and have, becoming less and less interested and more and more uncaring about it as the years rolled by. But still kept giving it a shot… more »

Updated: This Post Back on 1st October I wrote about this little Si-Hong: I mentioned how it had just one branch, a single fruiting mother branch, circled below: Yes, that knobbly protrusion is a branch! It grows just a few millimetres a year and… more »

What Would You Make of This Tree? Below is one little Si-Hong, grafted in 2023, in a pot of 190 mm diameter and height. Is your first impression somewhat unfavourable?! I find this little fellow so charming and full of heart, that I can’t help but… more »

I noticed random jujube trees looking a bit ‘not right’ one day in November 2022. And then almost overnight they looked even more ‘not right’ - as in looked like they were outright dying! Pathetic drooping brown leaves covering… 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 »

Soil Organic Matter (SOM) ‘Organic’, in science, means nothing more than ‘contains carbon’. It doesn’t imply ‘healthy’ or ‘good for you’ — atrazine is as much ‘organic’ as is glucose.… 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 »

The Air-Pot® Having recently discussed root anatomy here and here, and this being the time of year deliveries are being prepared and people may be thinking about pots and potting, I thought I’d keep to the root theme by writing about a particular… more »