Thread: Paulownia

Hi
Tomato plants..........................yeah sure.
Cheers, Allan

:confused: Sorry Allan, can't understand if:
a) You don't believe that tomato plants will grow here in the middle of winter, or
b) You think that Paulownia is of the same quality as a tomato plant, or
c)something else entirely.
Please elucidate

Mick

Mick,
I don't know what Pauwlonia is like to work with, although I remember reading that it can be used as a furniture timber. However, it does grow very quickly in Tumut, southern NSW - almost alpine - about 4 years to useable size. I don't know how it would go in your neck of the woods - guess it would either jump out of the ground or not handle the heat at all.

Pauliwania or Kiri grows like wild fire here in sunny Mandurah West Aus... plantations poppin up all over... well okay not quite but its pretty fast growing

As for boatbuilding its been used in canoes that I know of and in one proa that is called "Harrigami" built by a fella in Fremantle who swears by the stuff... "as he says its cheep fast and easy to work colors bland as buggary but with a few slaps of paint it does the job as well as many other timbers"...

Theres also a fella down south who was going to use it on his rather large cat {50fter} but decided to splurge and get some fancy timber instead so I wasnt gonna say anything about him it just sorta slipped out

From what I gather yarnin to the fella over here who grows the stuff you shouldnt have a worry in the world... go for it!!

And always remember to give a nice discount to the poor misguided and much maligned and taken advantage of boatbuilders in your area

Hi Mick
I was trying to be funny, but it must of come out wrong.
We have some "tomato" plants that grow that quick down here.
But the police object to them being grown.:eek:
Cheers, Allan

Ok, got you now Allan, never heard it called that around here. This used to be the hippy capital of Qld back in the 70s and when my brother & I were farming in the early 80s we had spotter planes flying overhead every week. We had, amongst other things a 20 acre market garden paddock and at one stage we had it full of tomato plants, so maybe that's why they were so interested. .

Mick

Apparently this pauwlonia is class one durability which with soft light and easy to work makes it sound pretty good... I just hope that you've already planted ample supplies of scented rosewood...blackbean...beefwood...red and yellow carrabeen...red cedar...etc. If you plant the really good stuff close enough then you can thin it in ten years. I read somwhere that growing rainforest timber is the highest value agricultural enterprise in Aus (nonsmokeable that is). Maybe you could mix pauwlonia with cabinet timbers to force them straight up then thin it from six years on.

Have to agree with Len there. If I had land on the Tablelands I'd be looking to grow something a lot more valuable then Pauwlonia - or at least as well as Pauwlonia. Is anyone experimenting in Australia with growing the very high-priced exotic stuff? Cocobolo or purpleheart perhaps?

Arron

I saw this recently, got me thinking:
http://tropicalhardwoods.com/index.html

I wish I had more land but we're only on half an acre. Take away room for the house, workshop, watertank, chookshed, pumphouse and vegie patch and there's not a lot of room left. I've got some Black Bean, Kauri pine and a huge Red Stringy and a whole heap of fruit trees. Realistically there's not much in the way of valuable cabinet species timber that I can plant which will be harvestable before I'm too decrepit to do anything with it. I can buy a lot of them in log form for not too much on occasions and have got half a dozen large Brown Salwoods standing at someone's place, waiting for me to get enough money together so I can drop them and pay a mobile miller. I figure by the time the Paulownias are ready to harvest I may have gotten round to building my own mill as I've got most of the bits lying around the place. Same story as everyone else, only short of two things: time & money .

Mick