USA Energy policy

OK I saw some stuff on telly about the new directions US energy policy is taking (in Australia, the national network "SBS" broadcasts many foreign language news shows, including the PBS NewsHour from the USA)

Well to borrow a quote from the movie "Die Hard" (#1)

.....you're not part of the solution, you're a part of the problem"

Currently US motorists grizzle that Gasoline prices ( aka petrol, or diesel) are too high

Let's make one thing clear for starters. US residents get some of the cheapest fuel in the world

Certain countries, mostly like Arab region oil producing countries have fuel prices of just a few cents a gallon but that is the exception

Here in Australia we pay somewhere between one and a half and 2 times what Americans pay.

In England and Europe most countries pay double or triple or more than what the US pay, whenever the fill their tanks.

Consequently most people, in countries outside the USA, choose to drive more fuel efficient vehicles.

Tradesmen and other workers who have agenuine need for a large vehicle, sure they'll have something v-8 etc. Likewise a 2-car family might have one large car and one smaller one. The larger vehicle being kept for only when a second car is needed, or for when towing a boat or caravan (aka 'trailer") on weekends and holidays etc

New US energy policy is apparently to allow minng for oil and gas resources in Alaskan National Parks. Mmm I dunno how good an idea this will turn out to be when looked at in the long term.

Their earlier idea of invading Iraq and taking the oil wells there, has turned out to be "problematical". Already history books will show that the excuse for the invasion "connections to Al Qaeda" and "Weapons of mass destruction" turned out to be totally bogus.

I reckon that the US govt should simply slap a one US dollar per US gallon tax on all petrol/gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil(kerosene) sales. This increase could be phased on over a one year period, a 10c/gal rise every 6 weeks or so.

The American public would STILL HAVE almost the cheapest fuel in the world, but it would encourage greater economies in future, say when folks buy a new car, they'd buy smaller more efficient vehicles. In dense city areas, public mass transport systems would benefit from increased patronage and roads would be less congested, reducing the percieved need to keep building more freeways.....

The absolutely massive revenue gained from such a tax could be divided up any number of ways, but say equal shares to

A.....funding improvements in mass transit, trains, subways, buses etc, plus improvements to security and cleaning so folks would CHOOSE to use these services

B.....some could go toward building up the future social security systems financial stability

C.....research and promotions for energy efficiency and alternative energy programs. EG free or discounted home insulation, solar hotwater systems etc. Free provision of those huge wind turbines, attached to the electric grid (currently they cost about a million dollars each) Obviously you need to consider the local climate and conditions, regarding where to put wind and solar devices

D.....I'm sure the US Govt could find other things to spend the money on, perhaps the old fallback of "schools and hospitals". Note "schools" could include adult education, aka community colleges etc, plus education programs for new foreign immigrants or people released from prison, to help re-integrate them into society better.

Yeah we grizzle about out petrol/diesel prices here, about 55 % of the price we pay at the pump being tax, but I reckon at least most of it does go to worthy causes

Recycling, aka "dumpster diving" aka "roadside pick-ups"

Hiya
I'm a great believer in recycling and re-using things as far as possible, fixing things up to use again, where practicable and economical. Every little bit, helps to save the planet, eh.

Most councils in the Perth metro area in addition to the weekly rubbish "wheely-bin" collections, have "bulk" rubbish collections 2 or 3 times a year

Sometimes it's just for garden prunings etc and other times for household goods and general junk, like old dead washing machines and fridges and bicycles etc

Several weeks in advance, residents in an area will be advised through letterbox flyers to leave extra bulk rubbish stacked neatly out front their homes (careful to avoid blocking the footpath or the road)

This time is an opportunity to pick up a few bargains, sort of like going to a "yard-sale" or a "car-boot sale" but everything's free

Often it's amazing what you can get just walking distance from your own home but Obviously it's good if your car is a ute, stationwaggon or if you have a small box-trailer, for any larger items. Especially if you are a poor person but live in an area where rich people live nearby........

Once a friend was unsure if the cutlery set and kitchen chairs, both in as new condition, were actually intended for throwing out that she went and knocked on the door of the house and asked to make sure. Yep it's a amazing what some people will throw away.

A year or so back I's visiting a friend on Perth's outer suburbs and as soon as I arrived we went off in her ute to get a lovely dresssing table she'd seen dumped up the road just walking distance away, but too big for her alone to carry, lift or load-up (she later gave it onto a poor family she knows, getting by on social welfare payments and without enough furniture for the kid's rooms)

I also grabbed for myself an electrical extension lead, a heavy duty outdoor type, with the plug off one end missing (soon had that replaced) and a nice shoulder-bag style satchell in new condition

Earlier she'd got a microwave oven from the same house's junkpile

Well I've been without a microwave over for some 13 years since mine broke down with a minor fault.

She's given a newer better oven recently and last Tuesday when I saw her she gave me her old microwave oven

After getting home Tuesday 14th I went to a nearby town on Wed to install a digital set top box at a near neighbour's house so he could get an extra channel not normally avaialble in this area. I had bought this box for him as a gift, as a thankyou in advance for looking after my chooks and potplants when I'll be away, but he insisted on paying me for it.

His neighbours saw and were so impressed that on Thursday, one of them drove to Perth and bought 3 DSTBoxes (price now down to $ 79 each at Woolworths supermarkets) for several other townsfolks.....note it is only a very small town, something like 15 houses and some of which are empty or just used as weekender holiday homes)

Then Friday I got a phonecall asking me to install and tune in one of the guy's new DSTBoxes

On Saturday I stopped by his house and while there I's told that both the other guys wanted me to do theirs too

Anyway I's at the first guy's house for an hour as the 10 minute job was complicated by a dodgy aerial connection

I took 2 hours at the second guy's house, because he had an ancient tv and video machine, both basically "rubbish dump" material, but in the end I got it all sorted....remarkable given the age and condition of his tv and vcr.

The third guy's house also took the better part of an hour but he has major aerial problems at the best of times. Eventually I got the DSTB tuned in, but the signal strength was just 50 % and the reception therefore not satisfactory.....he'll need to get his aerial fixed to view digital comfortably without signal breakups

However he'd just bought a new 2nd hand microwave over and gave me his old one, which is still much newer and more compact than the roadside rubbish one I had just been given days before.

Yep so 13 years without a m-wave then I get given 2 within less than a week

I now have the m-wave oven installed in the spare area in my laundry (conveniently next door to the kitchen anyway).. I didn't have a suitable table to sit it on then I remembered that I'd found an old but strongly made small table at a local town rubbish dumpsome months back

This table had been sitting outside in my backyard, in the weather, not normally a problem but we have had an uncharacteristic amount of rain recently and it's degrading

Good enough to sit a small mwave over on though. Later I may remove it's very damaged scummy looking top, and replace it, as the legs and frame are very sound. I guess I'll have to keep an eye out at the dump for a good piece of table-top, that can be cut down to fit !

Dr Who vs Iraq invasion

Hi folks, the last few times I tried to update my 'blog the computer was having a bad day

ABC TV here in Australia just screened the 5th ep in the new DR WHO tv series.

Scripted and filmed in 2004, last night's ep had several excellent barbs aimed at the UK Government's policy of lying to it's citizens to justify the invasion of Iraq and the theft of their oilwells by US vice-prisent's company Halliburton

In the Dr Who story, an alien impersonating the British Prime Minister claimed on tv broadcasts that there were "MASSIVE WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION" aimed at England, clearly a play on the fabled "weapons of mass destruction" that Iraq supposedly had>

It was also said that those weapons could be depoyed in 45 seconds, clearly a stab at the "deployable with 45 minutes" which highly paid UK politicians and senior civil servants claimed at the time.

I didn't notice any direct reference to that scientist, sorry I dunno his name, but he was warning that the govt was peddling lies, then just before the truth came out publically, he turns up dead "an apparent suicide" yeah maybe, or maybe he was killed off by a special govt "black ops" hit squad assassination team !

That's all for now, we'll see if the blog works right this time eh.

Minor corrections Plant info. Mon 6 June

Yep, there is some incompatibility between the EDIT function and this comp. If I try to edit and correct errors, it just jambs up my computer for the day.

The correct growth rate for Canary Date palms in Qld plant nurseries is actually 400 mm 16 inches annual trunk height, once the crown has formed I remember more accurately now.

Note that in most "good" garden situations (with adequate water and fertiliser) in the ground you'd be lucky to get half that rate in Mediterranean and subtropical climates and a quarter of that growth rate in temperate zones, like the South Island of NZ

I checked several textbooks last night and one excellent NZ text I had actually has listed both the Chilean Monkey Puzzle Tree (Aracauria araucana) and the Qld BUNYA Pine (Aracauria bidwillii) as being cold tolerant to USDA Zone 8 (I had incorrectly remembered the Chilean tree as being zone 7 and the Bunya as zone 9 or 10 recommended Winter cold tolerance) Note that the Norfolk Island Pine is indeed zone 10. This would be why it can grow, but only in the most very coastal parts of Christchurch and area in Southern New Zealand right beside the sea, at the mildest edge of a zone 9 climate

Therefore you can grow the BUNYA pine in many more places than I thought and the Chilean tree in quite some less

I had thought the Chilean tree was grown widely throughout Scotland but it seems it's mostly the Southern parts of England, although it may extend up into Scotland along the Western Edge (where a zone of milder climate exists upto and including the Hebridian Islands) Scotland is considered zone 6 or 7 depending on what texts you read. The mildest areas being in a strip some 50 or 100 kms wide along the Western coast

Remember that trees can be grown in one zone colder than the books say, at the mildest edges of that zone (usually grow seedlings as large as possible first then plant out one late Spring) May need some protection the first Winter outdoors. Come on people (including avid gardeners plus those stick-in-the-mud traditionalist public parks and spaces supervisors) lets push the envelope here and start growing something a little different to commonplace ho-hum varieties

Therefore both the Bunya and the Chilean Pine trees could find a place in the mildest regions of Zone 7 climate too for example.

Note also that this posting correctly spells the pine's latin names which before where mis-spelled by a letter or so.

Re the 2 Phoenix dactyliferae palms I planted some days ago, I see that around the base of one a significant number of Lupins are sprouting already

I had some old farm Lupins seed of ten years age and stored under poor conditons so I expected a poor germination rate or none at all. I sowed the seed very thickly around the 2 young palms. By Summer when they die off their strong roots will have penetrated the hard clay subsoil to quite a depth, then as their old roots die away, they will leave opportunities for the young palm trees roots to more easily penetrate deeply in their first dry Summer season.

I have 2 young Canary Island dates to plant out over the next few days, now I know these Lupin seeds are ok, I'll just need 5 or 10 only to plant around each newly planted palm

This morning I dug out some more clay subsoil from the holes and hopefully tomorrow a "volunteer" from the nearby small town will turn up to help me extricate these palms from their tyre-pots and shift them into position

Canary Island Date Palms Phoenix canariensis Sun 5 June 2005

Note I did try to correct a few spelling and other minor errors in yesterday's entry but the EDIT function and my computer didn't get along, so I'll not worry.

The Palms refered to yesterday where The Canary Island Date Palm Phoenix canariensis

This is native to the Canary Islands off the West African coast, a province of Spain

These palms are widely planted around the world in temperate areas where sustained cold freezes DO NOT occur

They can certainly tolerate short lived frosts of something like -12 Degrees Celcius, if the air is not too damp.

Male and Female are on separate trees, which can achieve a height of 10 metres or more over 100 years. The trunks are some 2 to 3 feet diameter, the fronds being some 4 metres long each, when full sized

In cooler temperate climates like the South Island of New Zealand and the South coast of England growth will be quite slow

In production plant nurseries in Brisbane Qld Australia, pushed along by constant watering and fertiliser, they get from seed to a full sized crown of fronds within 6 years and then 400 mm or 16 inches of trunk height growth every year thereafter......if I remember the details correctly. Note that this is under absolutely optimum plant nursery conditions

In cooler climates then can be grown as in indoor plant for many years, fertilised seldom they'll stay small and conveniently potplant sized, but need a brightly lit areas. Note that those leaflets closest to the base of the frond, become SHARP SPINES. On larger and full sized fronds, these spines are large, hard and potentially dangerous. On smaller potplant sized specimens they are no real worry.

In marginal areas they can be grown in a large tub the size you'd need a forklift to move. I have seen on tv Px cny palms in large tubs in a Paris, France park. They are apparently able to be shifted under cover at least, or perhaps a large un-heated glasshouse, for the coldest part of the mid-Winter period.

Fresh seed can be collected from around the base of female trees and sprouts easily within 3 to 6 weeks, expect 95 % + of seeds to sprout

Initially the palm sprouts look something like a blade of crinkled grass, only after 2 years or so do the single leaves commence to split into the conventional palm-frond shape

Good for climates to USDA zone 8 Winter cold, but in those cooler areas get them as big as posssible in a large pot/tub then plant out one Spring after danger of frost is past, allowing it a whole growing season to aclimatise itself to the conditions and get properly established

Note for the first years, in marginal areas, perhaps you could try covering the crown with a blanket and tarpaulin before heavy snowfalls are forecast

Note some fabulous photographs exist of Canary Palms along th French Mediterranean sea-coast, occasional once every tens-of-years heavy snowfalls, the palms foliage barely visible under a foot or more of snow collected atop the crown of leaves high in the air. Such cold weather fronts do not last for long and the palms live on un-injured

Also in desert and semi-desert areas, the vigourous roots of the Canary palm and it's close relative the "true" date palm can allow it to live where the climate is too dry for many other plants.

It has been my experience that even the American cotton palms WASHINGTONIA ROBUSTA and FILIFERA as native to Mexico and SW USA, are simply nowhere near as drought and salt tolerant as those 2 Phoenix species.

Note also that many palms are very fussy about having their roots damaged during repotting or the digging up and transplantingof large specimens. Many palms will be set back very much often to the point of death

However the Phoenix family of palms can tolerate far far more root disturbance than most.

Severe root disturbance will take a year (or more) to rehabilitate, but given the most shocking root-prunings etc, I have had very few phoenixes that failed to survive......although many took a long while to come good afterwards

Obviously try to pot onwards younger specimens regularly, unfortunatley my own fault I have often left seedlings together in a small pot for many years, when I should have separated them out into individual post at a much earlier stage

Note that unlike normal trees etc, the biggest diameter palm root will be only something like 15 mm diameter, there'll be a spaghetti-like mass of them originating from the base of an established palm

I do not know how deep is the limit for Phoenix palm roots, if anyone out there knows then please tell me, email xena at agn dot net au

I have one of the world's best books on (the true) Date palm cultivation "Palmier Dattier". This book is in French language and draws on France's long links with Northern African countries, unfortunately I can read French to only a most basic level, plus it has very little on other Phoenix varieties like the canariensis

I have heard that wild fig trees can root down to 400 ft/ 110 metres and this is the deepest rooting plant known

I have heard that grapevines can root down 90 feet 25 metres in Californian deep sands

I'm guessing that Px canariensis and dactilyfera would be somewhere approaching the grapevine......assuming deep sandy soils. Obviously it isn't going to bother rooting any deeper than a freshwater-table if it finds one.

BAD HOUSES, Cloudbursts and clay 4 June 2005

Yesterday I started digging 2 holes for 2 Px Cnary date palms I have. They are bursting out of their tyre-pots and will need cutting out of them with powertools.

One proposed hole is in very compacted clay soil in an area of council owned land across the road (where I have planted hardy natives to give me a windbreak hedge when they mature)

I especially rigged it so that rainwater running off the road will water this palm. I barely started the hole and the compacted clay soil was rock-hard so I added a bucket of water and after half a day was able to dig out a little more. There was still some water standing in the hole first thing this morning

I went to nearby small town to collect my Saturday newspaper and just after getting home the skies opened up and we had a cloudburst, a great big dump of rain in just a few minutes. there was water overflowing everywhere. only a small fraction actually got into the rainwater storagetank

Will the water collection aspect worked fine for that hole with 50 or 100 litres of water in it, plus the water overflowed a little dyke of dirt I had created and spilled over further

However now it'll take a-g-e-s for all that water to soak in, so I can dig out the hole to the required size for planting that palm

Looking at the front page ot today's West Australian newspaper I see house builders grizzling that govt law changes will soon require new houses to achieve a 5 star energy rating instead of the 4 star rating demanded about 2 years ago.

They claim that this will add $2,000 to $3,000 to the price of a basic house, utter crap I say.

For years owner builders, often using alternative construction methods (including but not limited to, strawbale, mudbrick, rammed earth, recycled materials etc) have not only been building houses for less than $15,000 (approx one tenth what a "professional" charges) but these houses often achieve what SHOULD be and 8 star rating in energy efficiency

My whinge is that the govt made the star ratings system artificially low, so that poor quality professionally built homes wouldn't appear to be as bad as they, when compared to their cheaper owner built cousins.

Strawbale houses are renknowned for scoring 7 or 8 stars, in the 5 star maximum system.....so that's all they get officially accredited with

Look I've lived in both Australia and New Zealand and it really peeves me that the vast majority of houses are built so very poorly with respect to energy efficiency and comfort for their occupants (they're only made livable by consuming massive amounts of eletric lighting, and artificial heating and air conditioning)

Oh didums poor professional builders grizzling that in their $150,000 "basic" houses they have to now meet a 4 star energy rating standard and from next year will have to meet 5 star standard.

What about all the hippies and alternative greeny types out there. their $15,000 houses have been meeting 7 and 8 star standards for years

I really do wish that most professional house builders would just take a running jump into the nearest lake. I know of architects that specialise in energy and materials efficient housing and they are scratching to get enough work, because the poorest architects, tradesmen and designers have got a stranglehold on the marketplace. Unfortunately the public don't know enough to demand more from these "professional"

Perhaps every person buying a new house should tell the builder, "If my electricity and gas bills combined, come to more than $ 30 each month, then I'll be on your doorstep with a crowbar smashing you across the chops until *YOU* pay my bill, and you can expect that to occur EVERY month for the life of the house (100 years for a wood and corrugated iron house, 60 years for a brick-and-tile house)

Don't even get me started about how poorly the land plots are laid out. Wastage of 1/4 of the land is commonplace, simply by poor thought, or none at all more likely, in the location of the driveway area. Plus folks often manage to locate driveway entrances in such a way as to MAXIMISE THE DANGER when pulling out onto the road, well derr !

Oh well I could fill a book on these subjects but I'd better post this now before my computer runs out of steam for the day

BUNYA Pines further info, Thurs 2 June 2005

Note that when I bought my seeds in from EDEN some years ago I bought in the minimum order which for Bunya nuts was something like 300 grams (2/3 pound)

This came to just over 30 seeds of which I picked the smallest to eat. Yep, a tree-nut much like any other, eg almonds and pecans.

I gave away several to neighbours to try to sprout.

Note that of those I planted somewhere in excess of 90 % did eventually sprout and although 1 or 2 later died this was due to reasons of fault on my side.

Therefore other folks trying with this seed should expect results of the same or better. One near-neighbour, of 4 seeds planted into large pots, all 4 sprouted and developed into healthy plants

Note that mine were not planted in nice premium grade potting mix etc, it was just pots full of old dirt scraped up from around the backyard area surrounding my house.

Although they are still mostly in the same pots, some I'd guess 5 or 6 years later, they have all grown well, many a metre tall already. Occasionally they get some home-made "liquid-gold-organic-fertiliser" dilute solution with their watering.

If they'd been planted into good soil in a good gardening area I'm sure that they would have "grown like stink" and by now have been very much bigger

BUNYA Pine further info, 1 June 2005

Folks may be well aware of the closely related Norfolk Island pine from the Norfolk Islands some few hundred miles East of Brisbane Australia

Now this is a zone 10 tree well suited to subtropical and some tropical conditons. In Christian societies in tropical areas it serves as a Christmas tree. Perhaps not as attractive as some of the far Northern European conifres, but the deep green foliage borne on attractive regular layered branches

In colder climates it's a popular potplant for a large pot/tub

Now according to the texbooks, the related BUNYA Pine is also a zone 10 requirement for mild winter climate. However there are several well established trees growing in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens. They have obviously been there at least 50 years or so and so no sign of damage in Winter

Note that Christchurch's zone 9 climate is somewhat similar to Vancouver Canada's although somewhat drier.

Norfolk Island pines by contrast WILL NOT grow in normal garden areas in Christchurch. I have seen them in coastal areas of Chch and surrounding areas only. and by "coastal" I mean RIGHT BY the coast, like 6 feet away from the Pacific Ocean's high tide mark

This would seem to prove that BUNYA Pines have very much more frost and cold tolerance than Norfolk Island Pines

Chch would get a small snowfall about every 10 years and about once every 25 years a heavy enough snowfall to block roads for a day, before it melts.

Lemon trees (Meyer variety only) are very slow to establish but will form a good sized shrub and bear fruits heavily, other citrus varieties (also all on TRIFOLIATA rootstock) like Oranges can be grown but the fruit will be mediocre at best and mostly a curiousity.

Note if you'd like a similar look to the Norfolk Island or Bunya pines but the climate where you are is just too cold, then you can try the again closely related southern hemisphere pine, the CHILEAN MONKEY PUZZLE tree. This is cold tolerant to about USDA zone 7 and these were widely planted even in Scotland, Britain a few hundred years ago, when they became a fashionable craze

Anyway until the recently discovered extremely rare and endangered "living dinosaur" of the NSW Wollemi Pine becomes available on the open world market for home gardeners, I would commend to folks to grow one of it's relatives/descendants the BUNYA Pine. Fresh seed is available from EDEN non-hybrid organic seed suppliers in Queensland Australia, in February and March only. Seed can be posted overseas subject to YOUR customs and plant quarantine regulations at your end (probably not NZ therefore)

Remember that fresh seed takes 8 to 11 months to sprout. It's actually a strange 2 stage process where the seed sprouts underground and forms a sort of underground bulb. Then the original seed dies. Then the newly formed underground bulb sends a sprout up above the ground. Note the seeds are a little larger than PECAN nuts. I planted mine about 75 mm / 3 inches deep in a 200 mm / 8 inch diameter pot, and actually some 6 years later most of them are still in the same pots...... must get out there and re-pot the poor things.

The sprouts look typically pine tree-sprout-like as the first break the soil surface.

The pots should be kept reasonably warm and out of full sun. Seedlings are susceptible to sunburn for the first year or 2 but can be gradually hardened off. My seedlings are under a MELIA "lilac tree" which is a native deciduous tree, native to Northern NSW and Southern QLD states. My BUNYA seedlings therefore get substantial shade in Summer and early Autumn but get full sun in Winter and early Spring when the MELIA tree is totally without leaves

Note that my oldest ones, planted in the garden, do suffer some sunburn and burnt foliage dying back every mid-Summer period, but keep in mind I'm at the hot dry edge of the Mediterranean climate area (close to the official designation as "desrt" but not quite) and just some 32 Degrees south of the Equator, so consider your particular climate accordingly

Southern Coastal Qld where they are native to has it's main wet season in Summer with many if not most days heavily overcast with cloud cover, warm and humid air. Whereas we here have clear blue skies with almost no cloud cover at all for months on end, just at the hottest driest time of year

Remember too that Australia and New Zealand have the "Pacific Light" phenomenom where the sun here is stronger and brighter (partly because of the mirror effects of the Pacific Ocean and Antarctic ice, and less air pollution than most other places on Earth.