It’s been quite some time since my first blog post about my food garden, so I thought I’d put up an update post to show what’s new and how things have changed since that blog post. Way too much is going on to try to fit everything into one post, so I’m going to break it up into a few posts.

Fruiting trees and plants

Fruit trees

I thought it would be good to look back at the progression of the area where I’ve planted most of my fruit trees over the years. This covers a span of roughly eight years:

Fruit trees - Oct 2012 - Black Fig, Orange, Lemonade, Lime, Eureka Lemon
Fruit trees - Oct 2012 - Black Fig, Orange, Lemonade, Lime, Eureka Lemon
Fruit trees - Aug 2017 - Guava, Jaboticaba and Macadamias added
Fruit trees - Aug 2017 - Guava, Jaboticaba and Macadamias added
Fruit trees - Nov 2020 - Mandarin, White Fig, Apples and Mangos added.
Fruit trees - Nov 2020 - Mandarin, White Fig, Apples and Mangos added.

Apple

I have two apples growing, one a Tropic Sweet and the other a Dorsett Golden. Both are low chill varieties, which are more suited to Sydney’s warmer climate.

I only planted these last year, and they’re already bearing fruit! The apples need protection from birds and other creatures that also seem to enjoy biting into a crunchy apple. I commandeered all of the mesh laundry bags I could find in the house. They make fine fruit covers, and although we still have had some efforts by creatures to get at the fruit through the bag, it seems to have protected the majority of the best fruit on the tree… and as I found out later, created an interesting side-effect to the way the apples ripended.

Laundry bags over the apples to try to protect them from birds and/or other creatures
Laundry bags over the apples to try to protect them from birds and/or other creatures
Closer shot of the laundry bags covering the apples
Closer shot of the laundry bags covering the apples
The interesting side-effect of providing patterned shade over a ripening apple
The interesting side-effect of providing patterned shade over a ripening apple

The Dorsett Golden apples were delicious! Big, juicy, sweet, crunchy apples. Just the way an apple should be. The laundry bags didn’t do enough to protect all the apples though. Creatures still got in through the bags at a number of them, but we ended up with a few really good, unscathed apples.

Citrus

I have the following citrus growing:

  • Lemon - Dwarf Mayer
  • Lemon - Eureka
  • Lemon - Lemonade (sweet lemon)
  • Lime - Tahitian
  • Orange - Washington Navel
  • Mandarin - Imperial
  • Mandarin - Satsuma

The Eureka Lemon is a very vigorous tree, producing a lot of fruit and a lot of growth - and now needs a serious pruning. I’ve decided that I get more lemons than I need from that tree, and I’d like to get more fruit that I can simply pick off the tree and eat. I guess you can pick, peel and eat a lemon if you want, but not my thing. So, I tried my hand at grafting for the first time. I took some cuttings from my two, much smaller, mandarin trees, and have grafted them onto some new growth on the lemon tree.

Mandarin seems like the obvious choice to have more of growing in the garden, as it can be eaten immediately, you can easily peel it by hand, it breaks apart into segments easily, you can juice them if you have too many…. perfect.

I tried a couple of different grafting methods. First, a cleft graft, where you cut the bottom of the bud-wood into a V shape and cut a slit into the top of the stem you’re grafting onto. You slot the V in, wrap it in grafting tape, wait 3-4 weeks, and if you’ve done everything correctly, you have a different citrus variety growing on your tree. I managed to get one branch of the Imperial Mandarin growing quite well. This is the best performing graft I’ve done so far. There were around 4-5 buds on the bud wood, and each of these seems to be putting out new growth and even put out a single little flower early on (which it shed fairly quickly).

The other method I tried is bud grafting, where instead of grafting an entire piece of bud-wood, you are shaving off just the growing bud from the budwood. You then make a small cut into the green bark of the branch you’re grafting onto, and slot in the growing bud. You then cover the entire thing in grafting tape and wait for 3-4 weeks before removing the grafting tape. One of the advantages of bud grafting is that you can get a number of buds from a single piece of bud-wood. I took one cutting from the Satuma Mandarin which had five buds on it, each of which I grafted onto a separate growing stem of my lemon tree. One died off completely, but the other four seems to have survived. None have yet actually put out any new growth. They keep looking like they’re just about to, and then they don’t. These seem to be a lot slower to start growing than the cleft graft. I can see some swelling of the buds, but progress seems very slow. At least they haven’t died off completely, which is a good sign.

I am looking forward to the day when I can pick some mandarins from my lemon tree.

This is the first bud-graft I tried. You cut the branch part-way through above the graft to signal to the tree to put new growth out below the damage, sending more sap to the grafted bud. My bud-grafting technique needs a LOT of work, but you have to start somewhere.
This is the first bud-graft I tried. You cut the branch part-way through above the graft to signal to the tree to put new growth out below the damage, sending more sap to the grafted bud. My bud-grafting technique needs a LOT of work, but you have to start somewhere.
This is the cleft graft. Everything above the grafting tape is Imperial Mandarin. You can see some little new shoots from the growing buds.
This is the cleft graft. Everything above the grafting tape is Imperial Mandarin. You can see some little new shoots from the growing buds.
This is the cleft graft three months after the previous picture where you can see how much new growth has sprouted (all the ligther green growth). It actually lost a couple of shoots due to stink bugs, one of which you can see shrivelled up in this photo, but it's doing amazingly well overall.
This is the cleft graft three months after the previous picture where you can see how much new growth has sprouted (all the ligther green growth). It actually lost a couple of shoots due to stink bugs, one of which you can see shrivelled up in this photo, but it's doing amazingly well overall.

Jaboticaba

Sigh. Still no fruit from this one. Waiting patiently for it to flower and fruit for the first time. It’s grown quite a lot since it went in… and each year I keep saying “Maybe this year” - but alas, looking more like “Maybe next year” again this year.

The jaboticaba is now a reasonable sized shrub, with the top branches reaching near my chest height
The jaboticaba is now a reasonable sized shrub, with the top branches reaching near my chest height
If there were any flowers (which there aren't!), they would be directly on the inner branches of the tree, which is where the fruit forms too. It looks weird when it does fruit.
If there were any flowers (which there aren't!), they would be directly on the inner branches of the tree, which is where the fruit forms too. It looks weird when it does fruit.

Avocado

I know I already gave an update about the avocados in Food Garden Update - Part 01, but… I’m very excited and want to share a photo of the fruit growth. The Hass is looking amazing. So excited.

Some of the Hass avocados hanging from the upper branches of the tree
Some of the Hass avocados hanging from the upper branches of the tree

New additions: White Mulberry and Nectarine

We went to visit my parents recently and they have a white mulberry tree that had a huge crop that was just starting to ripen. Our kids loved the white mulberries, and I think I actually prefer the flavour to a black mulberry. It isn’t as tart, and has an almost ripe peach type of flavour. The fruit also has the other added benefit of not staining fingers, hands and anything else they touch, like the black mulberries.

So, we got one… and you know, shipping cost… makes sense to get a few more things on one order… so I also got a nectarine tree… and a pineapple plant. OK, I admit it, I have a problem.

This rather droopy looking tree, is the White 'Shahtoot' Mulberry
This rather droopy looking tree, is the White 'Shahtoot' Mulberry
Here is the Sunraycer Nectarine. Most of the light green growth near the top is new since planting it.
Here is the Sunraycer Nectarine. Most of the light green growth near the top is new since planting it.