Tuesday 7th September

We finally had some rain last night, it has been getting steadily hotter all the last week and no rain. Even the water supply at Hasting Deering ran out, so everything has been suffering. We were going to water through town last night, all the tubs and a couple of the roundabouts, but as we were going home the sky opened up and the rain fell out.

Which pleased me no end.

Had an interesting discussion at work today. I’ve been after all the Delonix regia seed pods along the road at Ranadi, but the crew always seems to forget to collect them. I’ve finally got a promise that they will get them tomorrow, but why did I want them? When I said to plant and grow on, the look I got was priceless. Why do that, we can just go into the bush and cut them out of there instead of waiting for them to grow?

I had another try at explaining that by growing from seed we add a bit of genetic diversity to the pool, but I don’t think it sunk in. I think all the trees we have planted through Honiara all come from very few trees to start with, all of them have been cuttings from a very small group, so the chances of losing them all if something decides to get in and decimate the population, we won’t have enough diversity to withstand a specific pest or disease. A bit like the potato famine in Ireland, all of the potato crop then came from a very small genetic pool of 8 plants I think, grown by Sir Walter Raleigh at his estate in Cork. And consequently, when the blight hit, it wiped out the entire potato population.

Anyway, what I want to do is start growing a lot more of the local plants from seed, I’ve had some success so far with the palms, the Hibiscus and Bouganvillea ok, we’ll keep using cuttings for those, to keep the varieties stable, although I’d like to try some seed raised Hibiscus as well.

The concept of planning and starting growing plants for a job a year out is still a difficult concept to get across. We’ve been asked to supply plants for the new Honiara Casino which won’t be starting till December, and planting wouldn’t be till June or July next year at the earliest. Which I’m more than happy to go along with, but the looks when I told the crew that we have to ear mark and keep, and propagate plants now, for next June, they couldn’t understand why we can’t just keep going into the bush and cutting stuff out.

I’m only running a day behind in my work plan so far this week. Ok, it’s only 2 days into the week, still another 3 days to go, but I figure the week will end with only 2 days behind schedule. All the post holes for the shade cloth are dug, the posts are ordered, we have the builders mix and cement for the concrete. Which leaves me with marking out the propagation house tomorrow, post holes to be dug for that, and a concrete pad marked out, dug and boxed up. I can’t see the posts going in though, so there is the day we’ve lost, but next week was a fairly open schedule with a couple of days to juggle with.

We’ve got another 300 or so Archontophoenix palms bagged up, a few palms outside Pacific Casino dropped seed earlier this year, so I asked the girls to collect the seedlings when they did the gardens this week. Along with the 15 we put into 75 litre bags last week to grow on for City Centre when I redo the planter boxes there in March. They also bought back a seed head off one of the palms, so I’ve spent the evening here soaking them and washing the pulp off. Another 500 or more seeds to be tubed up tomorrow.

Did a quick estimate this afternoon, we now have 650 Archontophoenix growing, ok, a year at least till planting out, but once I get the routine going, we’ll have a steady supply of mature or ready to plant palms in a couple of years. Now to get the same thing happening with the trees, hibiscus and bouganvillea.

I need about 40 bouganvillea as 3’ standards for the Memorial gardens, I may go to 6’ standards, we have the bamboo stakes for that height, it is a matter of getting cuttings growing suitable for training. I only need single leader plants, everytime I separate some out, and tell the girls to keep them aside, they get cut back to bush growth. Patience I guess. Or perseverance. Or just be bloody minded and have a tantrum.