If you live in FNQ and have a mean streak and want to kill your your durian October to December planting will probably achieve that. 27c to 36c with tropical summer sun, even if rainy is not appreciated. I actually think April May June plantings are better if winter is not too cold.
Agree with you Mike, October to Dec is a really bad planting time (learn't that the hard way). It's not pleasant for the the one digging either and I myself prefer planting in the cooling rain rather then in the intense sun.
21st of Dec is summer solstice this year and that's around the time when I will start and that's usually around the time the rains come for us here but will wait for the first big rain to come. The soil gotta be easy to dig into, if it's still dryish and hard I postpone (digging in hard soil is painfull). Timmed like this last year and had better survival rate of durian seedlings.
I think around may is when some southerners come up to plant natives with the NGO's around here, probobly best for them as the wet would make them go tropo.
Iv seen that when I plant in may/june durian do ok until sep/october and then they start to suffer. I assume roots are not established enough to deliver fluid to the leafs as it get's dryer and more intense sun.
Thanks Jim, will help me select trees as your experience can give me some confidence to remove un-desireable tree's.
One durian farmer I spoke to said the native fan palm is desired by the native bats that are nectarivores. Mybe it's the flowers they like or maybe it's a suitable habitat. Maybe some palms and some low growing moth-larve host plants "could" increase the population and thus "could" increase pollination. We got large amounts here, they even fly into the house sometimes!
Gone tropo,
September would be between summer and winter solstice, can't see any reason why plants would grow more then compared to around the summer solstice (theoretical peak summer temperature). Average temp for sep is lower then dec so growth rate shouldn't be higher in sep unless we take water and nutrients into the function.
https://en.climate-data.org/oceania/australia/queensland/cairns-589/And durian thrive in equatorial regions where average annual would be around 26 C.
https://en.climate-data.org/asia/indonesia/central-kalimantan-1214/And here we only have those average temps montly temps in dec, jan, feb. If I read the data right.