Shara™ Lomandra fluviatilis ‘ABU7’ PBR continues to prove its toughness and versatility.
As you might already know our primary focus here at Ozbreed is breeding and research, aiming to produce the toughest and most tolerate plants on the market. We carry out many trials and tests prior to plants becoming available and even continue to test their tolerances once they are released.
There are times however when mother nature produces a trial for our plants we had not anticipated, this was the case for our small in-ground production area of Shara™ Lomandra.
Our in-ground production area at Ozbreed is situated in a low-lying area of the farm. Over the past 7 months the Shara plants in this area have been subjected to the extremes that our Australian climate has to offer. These Shara™ plants were put into production in September 2019, and over the first 4 months suffered through the harshness of drought, we received 0mm of rainfall in December 2019. Even our dams we use for watering were struggling, one of which had completely dried up, and although we had permits to water the reality of Australian drought was very real for us at Ozbreed.
Fast forward to February 2020. They call Australia the country of drought and flooding rain, well that is exactly what came our way. On the 9th of February 2020 the bottom paddocks of the Ozbreed farm flooded, the flood waters rose very quickly and were high enough to cover the bottom few rows of our in-ground Shara™ production. After 4 days the flood waters finally started to recede, and we waited to assess the condition of the plants. These extremes are a lot to expect any plant to survive, yet Shara™ had done it, although not looking their best they had survived!
Now April 2020, the plants are starting to get back to looking good again, unfortunately the flood waters did bring with them a large amount of weeds, but Shara is handling that well too and working to out compete these weeds.
Shara™ Lomandra has proven once again that it is an amazingly tough plant!
Shara™ Lomandra underwater February 2020
Above: Shara™ Lomandra performing well 1 month after flood – March 2020
Above: Ozbreed March 2020, still some flooding present, dams that were empty December 2019 now full
Shara™ Lomandra April 2020 thriving 2 months after flooding
Shara™ Lomandra April 2020 in-ground soil still very wet, 2 months after flooding and more consistent rain since flood