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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Re: WANTED: Inga sp., nutmeg, Duguetia sp and others
« on: May 25, 2013, 12:39:52 AM »
Updated my have and want list. took away nutmeg/macadamia and added Baccaurea sp. to my wants.
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Sergio , I would like to ad that one year I collected seeds from these wild cashews , red and yellow , both were growing in the same area , only the reds germinated and none of the yellow .
Luc, how long does this anacardium take to produce?3-6 years here. i have some 5' trees fruiting, they can be kept small with pruning. anyone know how pruning affects flower/fruit?
How does prickly pear do in South Florida?I have grown O. ficus indica, and some other sp., outdoors in southern mountains of Taiwan. max rain = 2.5m/day and lighter days of 50-150cm/day can last over a week. they do well. sitting in a low spot for more than a week submerged, rot can start, but on a mound even in clay they can handle insane rainfall. potted plants are more often than not far more prone to rot.
My experience so far with dragon fruit and artificial light hasn't been good; neither 1000W MH nor high-power LED lights were sufficient to grow the plants well. (Dragon fruit are the only plants I've encountered yet that seem to require real sunlight to be happy...) Luckily you're not trying to grow them with artificial light, just trick them into thinking the nights are shorter.
As the article says, HPS bulbs don't provide a lot of light in the spectrum ideal for tricking plants into thinking they're getting long days; the most efficient would be to get LED lights in just the right spectrum, but I'm unaware of any LED light on the market designed purely for phytochrome triggering. Any energy used to produce other wavelengths of light is wasted in your application as it won't really be strong enough to help the plants grow.
Keep in mind that HPS and MH bulbs don't like being turned on and off frequently; each re-start of the bulb ages it and it will fail much sooner if it is turned on and off frequently (and indeed they cannot be switched back on until they have cooled down sufficiently, which usually takes about 15 minutes).
I've used a Light Rail to move artificial lights over my plants for 15 years now and am very happy with them. Besides (as you pointed out) weatherproofing it, you may also have a challenge to get the light to move enough distance back and forth on the rail while still getting power. My setups have the lights moving at most 10 feet on the rail and I can simply festoon the power cords, but in a larger-scale application it may get tricky.
Make sure you do more research before investing in the lights, HPS and Metal halide lights require a special ballast and the bulbs can explode if you get the oils from your hand on the bulb. If this is for outdoors, you would want to make sure the outlet you connect your light to can handle the light and is GFCI? They do make special HPSs bulbs that have more light in the wavelengths you want, check out Hortilux.
If you want low lumens over a wide area compact fluorescents may be the easiest way to go for maximum coverage although I'm not sure about the wavelength of the light. HID lights loose lumens very quickly as you increase the distance from the plant, much of the light will be wasted. The plants closest to the light will get lots of light and plants just several feet away will only get a fraction of the light. I believe it is called the inverse square law?
I have grown the Yellow Dragonfruit under T5 lights and it has grown extremely fast under this kind of lighting. My Yellow DF actually grew faster under T5 lighting than it did under the sun.i like T5 too. but i wonder if they were not etiolating. because cactus stretch very much when in poor light, and given the growth style of vine cacti and the light intensity of fluorescents i cant see it being good on large poles of plants.
Lamps simulate “Long-days” The name of the game here is to shock the (Pr) {inactive} Phytochrome, which regresses during increasing dark periods, back into active (Pfr ) and to drive them back into the cell nucleus, to keep making flowering hormone. We can either light the crop continuously after dark or light the “dark” period for 25% of each hour, usually starting at about 10pm and continuing until approx 2.00am. This fools the plant into thinking it is all one long day. Plants yield better when they sleep a bit at night so they can rearrange their sugar storage efficiently. However, a continuous light from 10pm to 2.00am can be used with no real ill-effects. 100 Watt incandescent bulbs are usually used, spaced about 5 feet apart from each plant, delivering about 10 lumens {foot candles}. The actual lumen output is not very critical because all it has to do is shock the Phytochrome with a few photons. To save power, the lights can be cycled on and off to give about 25% timed light. There is a technique being used lately where 400 Watt Metal Halide or Sodium (High Intensity Discharge) lamps are mounted high enough above the crop to reach plants 40-50 feet away which are either swivelled on a boom or reflected by a reflector, like a “light house”, causing light to fall on each plant 3 of 4 times an hour between 10pm-2.00am. The HID’s are not very high in 660nm red but they make up for it in Lumen output. Again, provided that each plant feels the equivalent of about 10 lumens of light at each passing, the Phytochrome will be switched back to creating flowering hormone. Taiwan is reported to be creating an additional flowering season, extending from the Fall equinox through to the next spring equinox. This de-facto means that the plant is in continuous production. Cooler off-season crops actually have the capacity to make larger sweeter fruits because the plant can deposit more sugars in the fruit when their metabolism is not racing at full speed in the heat. Pitaya fruit can be grown from between 35 – 50 days with no excessive sweetness increase but up to 25% increase in weight. This may be a good way to get a high yield out of the second crop even if the plants get tired. Provided the plant nutrition can be adequately maintained, and the temperature kept within the plant’s comfort zone, continuous production is possible and feasible.
he had it 2 years previous, but had part of his liver removed, and did the chemo etc. he was considered cancer free after that, I got to know him during that period, he got it back, same place, in the Liver, he tried to do the juicing but every time he felt better , he would start eating meat and BBQs etc. I tried to convince him to eat healthier, but he continued, anyway, the Cancer spread all over within months, Lungs, pancreas etc.
I have a friend who was diagnosed with stomach cancer recently. He just started chemotherapy last week. Thanks for all the replies.