Update, next millenium, 9.10.2000.

It works!

Not an unqualified success, but this system definitely has uses. It is now about 20 months since any work was done, either on this website or on the floating nursery itself. The entire system has experienced total and utter neglect. The dam is spring-fed, so stayed up till three months ago, when the drought started and we commenced pumping to water the orchards and the on-shore nursery.

The floating plants have not grown well, but many have survived and are healthy, or will be shortly after landing and re-potting. The plants in pots onshore that were not watered, or were not watered enough, are almost all dead. This last winter was very cold and dry, and the last three months have been the driest on record for this district (SE Queensland, Australia)

This system hence allows someone with pot plants and a suitable dam, to go away for months at a stretch, without losing too many plants. The plants lost either sank, mostly off the marginal trial rafts and lids, or were choked by weeds, mostly water-edge grasses, with allies. Some sank because a huge root mass developed underwater below one or other plant, and tipped the box, raft or lid. Some were assisted to Davy Jones' locker by local white-tailed water rats, ducks, or cormorants. In the last two months, as we pumped, some got stranded ashore, but these were re-launched.

The plants in boxes moored in the shade have done best in general

The polystyrene boxes have lasted very well. They are all a little less buoyant than they were because some small beastie has been boring myriads of small holes in them. Perhaps ten to twenty percent buoyancy has been lost this way. Chickens eat these boxes on land with great enthusiasm, so there must be something nutritious in them. The numbers, written in texta pen on the sides, have all disappeared completely from the drifting boxes. Those on boxes moored in the shade are still legible. There has been almost no physical damage from bumping. The lids are not stable enough, though one lid raft of six in line is alive and well. The best flotation is probably two standard styrene vegie boxes tied together side by side.

The following plants have survived:

Guavas, Brazilian cherries (these two have grown well and are very healthy), macadamias, mulberries, pigeon pea (have eaten a few peas fro these), European figs, rose apple, canna, sandpaper figs, a marumi kumquat, several oranges, another citrus (tag lost), macadamias (including four on one box in six inch pots), black bean, blue quandong (these two are huge rainforest riverside trees), ice-cream beans, bunya pines (very yellow) and swamp gums. Several species of palms have also made it, but I can't identify them, the box numbers being lost.

The rafts were not a success. They have all no sides, so the stryrene boxes run up onto them and unbalance them. The plastic milk bottles used under the rafts slowly filled with water. On one raft held up by six milk bottles, two had fair-sized holes. Three rafts have survived, one with some plants lost over the side.

The website has also withstood it's total neglect test, thank you Freeservers.com, who are most patient. There have been several friendly and gracious comments in the guestbook, exactly --- visitors, and one new member, Enrrique Miralles, an engineer in Bolivia, has joined, bringing this exclusive international club up to three. Some search engines admit we exist, most don't. Be good to hear from more folk.

For another, quite different way to keep trees alive in droughts, see publicdomainscience.com, the applied science section. That describes a dew catcher that also works.

Regards,

Peter Ravenscroft.