yes mm,

a good place for the spreading about of exotic weeds.

on the banana issue unless it has changed you can grow lady finger bananas without any special permit but you can't grow cavendish as they can harbour the buchy top disease, not sure how that can get from a garden into a banana plantation but that is how it was. and if DPI knew you had a cav' in your yard they would come pay a visit chop the offending plant down and spray it with kero'.

tulip tree, cockscomb/coral tree, crucifix orchids, queen palms, down here the alexander palm, jacaranda, beauhinia, bougainvillia the cadigee gum (spelling?) and agave's and broms dumped along country roadsides. just to name but a few won't mention lantana, mother of millions and grounsel.

len

MM I think I was at the same markets yesterday (Woodridge?) and saw that banana tree. I must ask about the Tulip Tree though as I have just bought a 'Tulipwood' (Harpulia Pendula) tree and am sure that it's used a great deal by councils....I'm hoping this a totally different tree to the 'tulip' tree??
Lynnie

Yes thats it its Logan Central now so confusing, we have not been for a year and I was looking for a yellow frangipani and found one in K-Mart.

Lynnie your tree is not the African Tulip Tree but you will find this one planted everywhere too, only in peoples gardens beautiful red orange coloured flower. There was a yellow one on our block north of Townsville but they called that one the Hawaiian Tulip Tree and another pretty flower. .....Cheers...MM.

MM, Yes I live just up the road from that market place and they do sell some very strange stuff there sometime.

I live up near the Woodridge station and wander down there on a Sunday. Occasssionally pick up something decent, some of it I need and other stuff I do'nt lol.

Len , I think you are right with the Lady Finger bananas but then again they could have changed the rules in the last few years. The Cavendish are certainly a no no in the home garden.

Hi Len and gratlog about growing bananas in the back yard, sorry its not a permit its a Inspectors Approval and there are about seven or so banana suckers you can plant. Also the way I read it, it looks like you have to have a Inspectors Approval to remove your own banana sucker if you want to plant it somewhere else on your block then having to get another Inspectors Approval to plant it.

I have added the Link do have a read and let me know if Iam right......Cheers..MM.

Here is a link that might be useful: DPI ..QLD..Banana's in the Home Garden

ah mm,

tell 'em nuthin' 'n take 'em nowhere i say. what they don't know their tiny little minds won't yearn for. growing lady finger bananas in qld is almost a sacred right until recent times you wouldn't go too far not to find a back yard with a big stand of them. it's part of our culture.

we rented a place in graceville had 5 stands in the back yard at that time i was anti garden and plants just easy to mow lawn, so i dug all the bananas out and carted them to the dump shock horror.

anyway might get me a sucker from here to take to the new place.

yeh tulipwood is a good tree we have some very nice natural specimens on site.

len

Yes I would Len, but you are right about bananas they were always growing in back yards, up in Townsville when I was a very young one my Dad used to grow lots of them too everybody did, I agree too tell them nothing, its unreal that you have to get a guy to sign a piece of paper before you can plant a sucker, thats makes us suckers.... Cheers..MM.

sure does mm,

this sort of policy is control for controls sake.

len heading back to the big smoke closer now.

just to keep things moving along we gardeners need to keep our finger onthe pulse here, ok we need to stop the introduction of exotic plants that become weeds, that's just common sense.

but the banana issue is the tip of the iceberg, sooner than later we won't be able to grow any plant in our garden that is used for commercial reasons be it fruit. vegetable or flowers. growers are facing extra costs and rules just to produce to amke money so they fell that gardeners don't come under thei mantle but we can possibly cause problems to their crops. that may be so in the case of fruit fly but as for teh rest?

take citrus growers they themselves caused their problems in the emerald area of qld, buy trying to cut costs and importing unsafe plant grafts, now they have to pay for regular DPI inspections of their orchards, and when they pick their fruit has to be again inspected at the growers cost before it can be sold. from what i hear they want gardeners to come under those same regulations and that we can only grow for our own use not even be able to give it away.

it is happening on the cattle front people in rural would buy some calves from the regular cattle auctions grass graze them to a certain size use some for their own food and sell others to cover that cost, but now you almost can't do that there are regulations and you need an ABN to sell your calves at market as well as pay for DPI testing. and as well as tagging of stock and you being registration to simply move them off your property.

just how i see and hear it, we will be told what we can grow not waht we can't grow.

len

re bananas - the inspectors are monitoring this forum. got an unsolicited email from one of them about one of my posts about getting bananas.

had to reply and tell him that I had actually rung them to get an application and that there were two or three cells of a dwarf ducasse and blue jave currently growing in Nambour for shipment to me later this year. Oficially produced banana plantlets that is.

Well they must have just started doing it, as I put a wanted lady finger banana suckers on the exchange forum some time early 2004 and I did not get any emails from them, I had a few offers but they were too far away so didn't bother when I found out all the rigmarole you had to go through to plant one. Talk about big brother watching. Maybe they should police the Sunday Markets if they are so worried.

I was still living in Melb when I heard that there were some varieties of bananas that homegrowers could not plant. I too thought it was ridiculous (not that many Melburnians would be trying to grow bananas). But bananas are an interesting species and, because the commercial Cavendish is virtually genetically identical worldwide, it is almost an endangered species. The commercial species used worldwide before the Cavendish (can't remember its name) was pretty much wiped out--globally--by disease, and the Cavendish is itself under threat as increasing amounts of chemicals have to be used to protect it from disease. (This is both expensive and a health hazard to the workers who apply the chemicals.) Remember that while bananas are simply one fruit among many here, they are a staple (providing a major source of carbs) in some parts of the world. If it succumbed to disease, the consequences could be similar to those caused by potato blight in Ireland: widespread famine. So while the restrictions are merely an inconvenience for us, they are vitally necessary in some parts of the world. (Although I doubt that they could be effectively policed in those very places. And the great irony is that many of our pests, among them the cane toad, were introduced by the authorities, not by home gardeners.)

This is just part of the trend towards increased regulation in all facets of life--from prohibitions on taking photos of children (including your own) in public places, to the need to register cats. Hello brave new world, c.2006 ...

g'day paradisi,

if they are monitoring groups like this that is way over the top realy i think (maybe the e/mail mentioned was a scam??), more like someone has 'dobbed' as this is how these regulations are administerd they rely on neighbours and friend 'dobbing' on neighbours and friends. myself i think there are far too many banana species coming into the country let the farmers have their cav's and the gardener their lady-fingers and if they aren't good enough then grow mangoes or something else. seems to be a trend of gardeners wanting to bring in more and more exotic species as other ones become old fashioned.

what cestrum says is right on the button, worse thing most of the population has blinkers on, only interested in waht happens in the cricket or tennis or whatever.

len

MM, thanks for that DPI link.

The reason the DPI wants to know about bananas is the threat of disease which would wipe out both home-grown and commercial crops. I agree they go over the top sometimes (actually most of the time) but with all the imports, both legal and illegal, coming into Australia, we have to keep a watch on everything. Most of us are pretty good when it comes to looking after our plants but some people don't care what diseases they have in their plants.

I don't like Big Brother watching, but these days what can you do to stop it. Nearly everything you do, they know, even when they say information isn't kept, I bet some is.

g'day gardenlen - maybe one of the johnnie at DPI is actually a gardener?? stranger things have happened.

I did get anothr email from a different bloke today about bananas (I'd written to him first) - apparently you can make a special application to grow the seeded and ornamental varieties - but there's a lot of inspections of your property, frequent visits from the banana police etc. too much hassle for me and the boss so I'll stick to lady finger and a couple I've got on order from the tissue culture people in Nambour.

Perhaps when companies and government agencies say information is not kept, they mean it literally? perhaps it is sold to the highest bidder?

Yes you could be right there sparaxis
That kind of thing would be right up their alley ( lining their pockets )

agreed goldhills,

but ther is little chance of lady fingers causing any concern, i've certainly never heard of it but the legal and illigal imported exotics that's another story, only thing is then the regulator casts a big net over the whole subject. eg.,. if they find one citrus in one garden affected by that thingy in emerald then it's going to be goodbye homegrown citrus for us gardeners probably going to be that way anyway.

yes paradisi one could be a garden fan of this group, to me a pretty long shot but anything in life is possible it's whether it is probable? and there are those who maskeraide as something they aren't especially on the net as the net gurantees anonimity. still say as a responsible gardener do what you feel you want to do but tell no one hey. my lips are sealed. it's called bending the rules.

len