Life After Cyclone Yasi for El Arish Tropical Exotics

When I last left you we had just returned home from our evening with Cyclone Yasi to a chaotic mess. So much has happened in the last three weeks! Lots of devastation, lots of paperwork but I’d like to focus on the resilience I see in our garden and in our paddocks. But first we want to say a big thank you to everyone who has sent us emails to make sure we are O.K. and sent their kind thoughts and wishes. We are going to be fine but your kindness has surely steadied us on this rocky road. We hope our plants enrich your lives as much as your support has enriched ours.

So many sad trees :(

We have the dubious distinction of being thru two major cyclones within the last five years. Cyclone Larry had taught many people involved in tropical horticulture and agriculture in our area a thing or two about cyclones. Cyclone Yasi gave us the chance to see how changes in our farm/business practices had worked. Espalier work has been done with tropical fruits in the past but many local growers were encouraged to replant using this method. Incredibly even trees that were fruiting at the time of Yasi using this method suffered minimal damage. As we fled to our friend’s underground bunker we saw banana plantations that had cut back mature trees pre cyclone. This minimized damage to suckers and cleanup costs. Other plantations good stuck in and deleafed their paddocks. Offering little resistance to the wind, these plants reshot leaves quickly and continued to grow post cyclone.

One lone Hot Rio flower left

 After Cyclone Larry we had a lot of problems with starving scrub turkeys eating the base of our rhizomes. This time around we were determined to cleanup clumps quickly and mulch the base of the plants heavily with the leaf trash in the hope that this would deter them from eating the rhizomes. We also thought that being knocked around and loosing all of their foliage would be very stressful. If we had running water I would have strapped on the backpack and foliar sprayed everything with kelp. The best I could do was throw a handful of powdered kelp in the center of each plant and hope that it would be adequately dissolved with rain.

Kohei our wonderful Wwoofer busy cutting back

Curtispatha reshooting

Longa shooting

She Kong looking good!

The Longissima clump after Kohei worked his magic

New shoots everywhere!

We’re not sure if it was the kelp, all the organic matter we amend our soil with or the general vigour of our plants but two weeks on and our plants were looking fantastic with multiple new shoots on everyone and some hack backed leaves continuing to grow. With all this new growth happening it’s time to fertilize. But rather than opting for a slow release like nitrophoska we’ve decided to use Black Gold, a gentler more natural fertilizer. I was worried that if we used a conventional slow release that too much nitrogen uptake would result in sappy lush growth with thin cell walls that would leave the plants susceptible to insects and be more attractive to turkeys. Too much nitrogen could also create an bacteria imbalance in the soil resulting in fungal rots and burn thru organic matter in our soil.

We are very happy with the progress our clumps are making. The majority of our pot plants have also come thru in good condition. While there has been some shredding of leaves, our growing methods have meant they have the health and vigour to handle stressful conditions. It’s amazing looking down at our pot plants and the surrounding rainforest. Our little nursery is like a patch of potted green in the midst of utter devastation.

Next time, in our next instalment I’ll give you a peek of which plants came thru with flying colours and who is feeding all the birds around here.

Happy Gardening!!!      Ann

 

Potted plants in nursery area

An Evening with Cyclone Yasi

We decided that if Yasi was a cat 3 or less to stay but when she bumped up to a very large 5 we decided to bail. We built our own house and were pretty sure it would be fine but in the rainforest with so many flying branches and falling trees it's hard to know for sure.

Our friend had graciously offered to house us in his underground bunker in South Johnstone. Ross has a beautiful garden and we've become friendly with him via our mutual interest in tropical plants.

Our first order of business was to get as many plants inside the house as possible. Thank God for tile floors!

It didn't take long to fill the entire living area and kitchen.

Of Course all our precious baby cordylines went inside.

We had to reinforce the roller doors at our Mate Ross's place.

We spent the night with him in South Johnstone.

Sean

Our Willing Worker on Organic Farms.

A view of the bunker from the top. Ross had invited us to spend the night at his place as he had an underground watertank that had been converted into a bunker under his shed.

Scott and Ross pretty stressed but still smiling. The plan was to go into the bunker if it got hairy in the shed.

Too hard to get Bikki and Lucy down into the bunker 

The Heeler Hotel. The older girls were happy in our truck, Ginger, the youngest was a giant pain in the ass.

It howled for most of the night. It sounded like a large spacecraft had landed on the shed. I was terrified, luckily the kids and our Wwoofer slept thru. The guys stayed on top with our two fat dogs. Thankfully Ross had built a Really strong shed!
I wish I had taken photos of the ceiling of the bunker. All the concrete was hand poured and you could see the joins. It was really interesting but seriously scarey at the same time. At one point the shed slab was vibrating on top of the bunker roof. I also had the odd fantasy about the shed falling down on the bunker exit and six of us being locked together for a very long time with only a bottle of rum, a can of tunafish and a few apples.

KIds in the bunker

We came out to lots of this!

Get set for the price of bananas to soar.

We had problems getting home due to flooding.

We we arrived to El Arish we found Yasi had smashed it.Our Post Office/General Store has no roof.

We made it to our house and found we had been smashed far worse than Cyclone Larry had smashed us.

 So much clean up to do :(

We will be adding photos of the clean up in other articles. Remember
WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER!!!!!

Cyclone Yasi

To all our valued customers El Arish Tropical Exotics is still open for business. We have been severely hammered by Cyclone Yasi and would appreciate a little patience as we still don’t have power to our property. Our local Post Office was destroyed so please we will be unable to get mail. However we do have internet access and lots of plants ready to go.  Stay tuned for more updates and photos!