Date Palms and water-tanks 31 May '05

This morning I busted the plastic pot off of datepalm seedling. The 200 mm dia pot could no longer contain the strong roots, the palm bearing fronds about 2 feet long. I had to cut off about 1/3 of the rootmass, but unlike most other palm varieties, Phoenix family of palms are not worried by major root disturbance, so it should settle in ok. I planted some lupin seeds around it, they help to break up hard soils down to a depth of upto 6 feet deep. These were old farm lupins I's given 10 years ago so dunno if they're any good, I'll just have to wait and see if they sprout

I picked an area well South of the house but near the chook's shed and dug about a 40 litre hole, replacing only about 20 litres of soil. The top few inches is nice loam but below that is clay.

I re-arranged the overflow system from the rainwater tank, so that excess now flows down some 80 metres of salavaged-from-local-rubbish-dump old irrigation-piping and automatically waters the 20=litres worth of depression around the newly planted palm seedling

Any water that can't get down *that* long length of plastic-pipe fast enough overflows via another short piece of plastic pipe, onto the smaller of my 2 establish-ing BUNYA pine trees. And it's a pretty smart piece of jigary-pokery if I do say so myself.

My watertank had been overflowing but I ran some off onto various plants so it is now down to about 3/4 full (900 gals / 4 kl max) However next time we get a decent rain, it'll be overflowing again

(Note Auracauria bidwillii, is an Australian native pine, of tropical rainforests in SouthEast Queensland. Cones are the size of basketballs, but only form on well established female and bisexual trees. Some trees are male and consequently bear no cones. Probably another 25 years to wait for cones from mine. I have 2 successfully establishing themselves here in my dry-Mediterranean area which gets only one fifth of their normal rainfall. After initial few years, these young trees now get almost zero supplemental watering during the hot dry Summer period. The best is about 2 metres tall and the smaller one about 1.5 metres tall, in about 10 years.

Incase the 2 I have turn out to both be males, then I have about another dozen smaller seedlings I've been growing myself for the last several years. Note something the books don't say.....the seed takes nearly a year to sprout, so I'm glad I didn't give up on them too early. Now all I need are some good locations, with extra water for the initial establishment years, for those dozen or so seedlings. Currently they're confined to 200 mm plastic pots but many are nearly a metre tall and really do need to be in the ground, or at least in a great big tub/planter of some type.

Note the seedling datepalm will hopefully grow well enough to provide an amusing area for the chickens to scratch around beneath it, when it's hot and dry.......although it'd take many years to get *that* well established. Obviously the first year is the most difficult time.