Hi Guys,

My name is Ben Carr, I currently work in a small native tree propagation nursery in south east queensland. The nursery is quite a small set-up and it has failed to produce a stable crop of healthy seedlings for a while due to a number of staff issues, and a few environmental problems we are facing out here.

Just to let you in on a bit of the background of what is going on here. I personally have no horticultural background. I was hired because out here in the rural areas workers can be hard to come across, and the management of the site here needed someone with some organisational skills to come in and try to straighten things out a bit. I was looking for work at the time, having just arrived in Australia from England. I began work here in March, and put into place a number of systems and practices that have seen the nursery produce its largest crop of seedlings since it was opened in 2008. The numbers however are still not high enough.

Now that the weather has started to change out here we are also facing some new problems. The propagation house on site has no heating system and we cannot afford to install one at the current time. This has led to a serious drop in germination rates of most of the species that I am trying to grow. On top of that the slowed growth rates seem to have made the seedlings much more seceptable to fungal attack and water related issues.

I use proven consumable products within the nursery, i.e. high grade potting media, specifically created for native trees, the correct fertalizers, rotations of various fungacides of different modes of operation etc and yet I am still seeing large numbers of failures which seem to be either due to the cold weather or damping off.

My first question would be does this make sense? Would you expect it to be difficult to propagate seedlings under these conditions?

My second question is slightly more specific. I was having some success germinating C. Citriodora (spotted gum) the process was slow but I have good seeds of the right provenance and sub species (var. Variagata) and excellent viability. They progressed slowly through to the true leaf stage, and responded well to their first exposure to sunlight under shade cloth. This past week howerer the vast majority of them are starting to show sight of necrosis and general brown discolouration of the cotyledons. Is this a sign that they to are starting to be effected by the dreaded damping off? In their initial stages of germination and growth they didn't show any signs of fungal infection, remaining a healthy colour and growing, all be it rather slowly, when other species, particularly E. Cloeziana were damping off all over the place.

Any info you could supply to help me resolve these issues would be greatly appreciated. It seems that I have come to a point working here where my lack of specific knowledge is holding me back!

Thanks Guys,

I look forward to reading your replies and I would like to thank you in...