Howdy folks!

This is the first newsletter I have sent since December 2020 which has been making a few folks cranky, as has the huge wait times on a heap of our cool species.

Been getting a lot of understandably cranky emails so I figured I should give everyone a bit of context.

I do everything with a manic obsessive passion and this is why my collection is so cool. It's also why you can't get a lot of my species from anyone else.

I bloody hate writing, emails, visitors, going to town, pretty much everything that distracts me from my latest plant obsession (today it's edible cacti, I'll come back to that).

Two and half years ago we kinda stopped getting enough rain. That meant I slipped behind in restocking, as I was wasting time replanting crops that had unexpectedly failed or were eaten by the critters. That meant my water availability halved at the same time my water use was doubling.

Money was suuuper tight as it's always the rare expensive stuff that gets eaten by the roos etc. For us the Covid panic buying was a real lifesaver as the common stuff I don't normally sell much of was suddenly selling better than ever before.

I sold 6months of stock in a month, which meant I was back in the black despite barely making ends meet in the previous months. Awesome little bump, but a side effect of that was than now not only am I sold out of the rare stuff, but now the common fruit and veggies too.

It was still super dry, predicted rain failed to happen again and again and again after that meaning all the bush tucker stuff I should have been collecting by now wasn't even cropping at all. It was so dry that a lot of the wattles died back to their roots and even mature gum trees died all over the property.
Never seen that here, pretty grim.

So now I had no local bush tucker, Covid meant no seed collecting road-trips were possible, no rare stuff due to crop failure, no common fruit and veggies as sold out, and LOTS of angry customers that see everyone north and south having awesome rains and can't understand what the bloody hold up is.

While our bills were paid I'm was/am still a full year behind the growing schedule and it was only getting worse as the rain we did get just wasn't enough to recharge the system. Wet the leaves (just causing more heat stress on the plant) but not the ground sort of stuff.

I couldn't send a newsletter early on as we didn't need more sales and didn't have a spare second to do so anyway. Later when I did find a few minutes to sit down to write one I just didn't have anything positive or hopeful to say. "Everything sucks and me and the Mrs are really struggling" isn't a great message to put out there.

No-one wants that sob story for a newsletter, especially with all the Covid dramas going on...

In all honesty we were kinda screwed as what we were doing just wasn't looking long-term big picture viable anymore.

That is when I decided to stop everything and re-evaluate. I looked around at what was cropping despite the dry and that has been my sole focus for the last 12months. Edible cacti! Plants I can truly rely on when things inevitably get grim.

I have spent the last year collecting every permitted species I can get my hands on and this is a major long term project of mine now. If you have anything cool that isn't yet in my collection and is super drought tolerant please let me know. I'd love to buy or swap seeds, fruit, cuttings, plants, whatever really.

If you have Opuntia ficus indica with a tasty white or purple fruit, or Apple cactus~Cereus species that has a fruit flesh colour other than white (red, pink, orange or purple when cut in half) I would love to hear from you.

Same deal with Dragon fruit. If it isn't any of these varieties I already have, and its cool, then I no doubt want it!

Asunta, Black, Bruni, Champagne, Columbian supreme red, Commercial purple, Commercial red, Connie Mayer, Cosmic Charlie, Dark star, Frankies red, Golden dragon, Haleys comet, Hylocereus Ocamponis, Hylocereus purpusii, ISIS Gold, Jade red, Kathy Van Arum, Lemonade, Makisupa, Neon, Palora, Peniocereus serpentius, Purple haze, Rick rack~Zig Zag, Rixford, Selenicereus grandiflorus, Selenicereus hamptus, Selenicereus macdonaldae, Selenicereus spinulosus, Sin Espinas, Spiky Red megalanthus, Spiky Yellow megalanthus, Sugar dragon, White sapphire.

The very long term goal is to make better plants.
I am cross breeding and selecting for spineless, productive, tasty and good looking, and for me this is kind of a 20year project to hopefully bring us income heading into retirement when we can't do the heavy manual labour anymore. With that goal in mind I am very excited to add anything that is a permitted species in Queensland Australia and is productive and drought tolerant.

I have been growing out and grafting 1000's of cacti this year, and next year the aim is do the same x10 (+ all the normal day to day stuff).

I want to find the one in a million plants and to do that I need as many genetically different varieties and species as I can get my hands on. At the same time anything that doesn't make the cut goes through the wood chipper to become chook and duck food so there is no waste in the project which is awesome I reckon.

Speaking of bloody drought, ours is finally over!!!

It's been raining heavy all week, the dam is overflowing, the tanks are full, there is grass and weeds everywhere and everything that can flower is doing it's very best to do so at the moment which is a massive weight off my mind.

It is a super exciting time and because of this I am replanting a dozen species every single day, and we will be doing a seed collecting road trip in the coming months.

All of that means I am restocking as crops come to harvest and as always if you are on the waiting list(just below price) then you will be auto-emailed the second I restock along with everyone else.

Emailing me all aggro doesn't make the plants grow faster and I really do want to sell you that plant you have been patiently waiting ages for as I need your $. Trust me, I want to sell you stuff and it being out of stock isn't some personal attack on you.

I just can't sell what I don't have, but by the look of things that is all about to change!

Woohoooo!!!!
:)


P.S.
If you have any of these I would love to do buy or swap some seeds, fruit, cuttings, whatever if it means adding them to my collection.

I'm after all high quality fruiting Opuntia ficus indica, Cereus with coloured fruit, Epiphyllum with large fruit, and especially the Dragonfruit varieties Desert king, Red Jaina, Orange flower, Godzilla, Costarican sunset, Zamorano, or any species of cacti know as Acanthocereus canoensis, Acanthocereus castellae, Acanthocereus chiapensis, Acanthocereus cuixmalensis, Acanthocereus fosterianus, Acanthocereus haackeanus, Acanthocereus hesperius, Acanthocereus hirschtianus, Acanthocereus macdougallii, Acanthocereus maculatus, Acanthocereus oaxacensis, Acanthocereus paradoxus, Acanthocereus pentagonus, Acanthocereus pitajaya, Acanthocereus rosei, Acanthocereus tepalcatepecanus, Acanthocereus tetragonus, Cactus hexagonus, Cactus octogonus, Cactus pitajaya, Cereus bicolor, Cereus bicolour, Cereus hexagonus, Cereus kroehnleinii, Cereus kroenleinii, Cereus phatnospermus, Cereus spegazzinii, Deamia chontalensis, Deamia testudo, Hylocereus calcaratus, Hylocereus escuintlensis, Hylocereus minutiflorus, Hylocereus setaceus, Hylocereus stenopterus, Hylocereus triangularis, Hylocereus trigonus, Monvillea kroenleinii, Neoraimondia herzogiana, Nyctocereus chontalensis, Peniocereus castellae, Peniocereus cuixmalensis, Piptanthocereus, Pseudoacanthocereus, Pseudoacanthocereus brasiliensis, Pseudoacanthocereus sicariguensis, Selenicereus alliodorus, Selenicereus anthonyanus, Selenicereus atropilosus, Selenicereus boeckmannii, Selenicereus brasiliensis, Selenicereus brevispinus, Selenicereus calcaratus, Selenicereus chontalensis, Selenicereus coniflorus, Selenicereus donkelaarii, Selenicereus dorschianus, Selenicereus escuintlensis, Selenicereus extensus, Selenicereus glaber, Selenicereus grandiflorus ssp. donkelaarii, Selenicereus grandiflorus ssp.hondurensis, Selenicereus hondurensis, Selenicereus inermis, Selenicereus minutiflorus, Selenicereus murrillii, Selenicereus nelsonii, Selenicereus pteranthus, Selenicereus rubineus, Selenicereus setaceus, Selenicereus sicariguensis, Selenicereus stenopterus, Selenicereus tonduzii, Selenicereus triangularis, Selenicereus tricae, Selenicereus trigonus, Selenicereus vagans, Selenicereus wercklei, Selenicereus witti, Selenicereus wittii, Selinicereus wittii, Strophocactus brasiliensis, Strophocactus chontalensis, Strophocactus sensu, Strophocactus sicariguensis, Strophocactus testudo, Strophocactus wittii, Weberocereus alliodorus, Weberocereus biolleyi, Weberocereus bradei, Weberocereus frohningiorum, Weberocereus glaber, Weberocereus imitans, Weberocereus panamensis, Weberocereus rosei, Weberocereus tonduzii, Weberocereus trichophorus, Weberocereus tunilla or Weberocereus tunilla subsp. biolleyi.

P.P.S.
Oh yeah, please buy our seeds, share our links, and tell your friends and neighbours we are cool so they do too!

Have a rocking day folks!!!

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