Whats happening on the fruit front

One of the first things we wanted to get cracking on when we finally moved out here was to start the orchard, given we knew it would take a couple of seasons before the trees were to start producing fruit. As we get strong NW/W winds here, we also planted a wind break of local wattle trees to help protect our fruit trees in their infancy. We dug all the holes (OK well my hubby dug them all as I was pregnant with the twins then. It was convenient I'll give you that!) and planted our first row of fruit trees, starting off with apples, pear, almond, mulberry, nectarine, apricot and cherry. How exciting!

We have expanded on this each year until this year where we have now three rows of fruit and nut trees (can't see the third row in the pic above), which in addition to the above mentioned, we have added hazelnuts, pistachios, another cherry, peaches, more apples, plums, oranges, mandarin, lemon, lime, and some olives as well (but they are in a different spot).

We have also added four trellis' which include a LOT more raspberries (I was sick of not getting any raspberries last year as the kids would fleece the vines!), grapes (although it appears I have lost one), kiwi fruit, and this year I have also added a thornless blackberry, blackcurrant, and a boysenberry as well (with the sole ambition of making boysenberry ice cream! Is there any better reason for having one of these vines?).

OK You might have to squint and look pretty close, but there are raspberry canes there somewhere. And I obviously haven't finished the irrigation system yet. But its a good pic of the wattle wind break in the background.

Here is the said boysenberry bush in flower - yay!

This is our little blueberry patch. It has been moved around a bit as the last place was a bit too hot in the afternoon summer sun. I have also mulched them with pine needles as I have read it increases the acidity of the soil which they like. Anyway they seem  pretty happy here nestled between our garden shed and soon to be photinia hedge on the other side, and they have heaps of blueberries coming on!

Here are some other pics of what is currently happening in the garden:

This is the strawberry patch I have going on underneath the rose bushes just outside the house. My goal is to have the strawberry bushes as a thick carpet underneath the roses. The netting is so my lovely chooky girls are kept out while the plants are getting established. The strawberries are just coming into season - yum!

And check out the almonds on our tree! They are massive this year!

We have two young orange trees - a Washington navel and a Valencia - can't remember which one this is but I noticed that we now have buds! I have companion planted them with lavender. All my citrus (lime, lemon, mandarin and two oranges) were looking a little sick over the last month so I mulched them with compost (hence the netting as the chooks thought it was great to scratch in it!), fertilised with dynamic lifter (special fruit and citrus one) and gave a couple of hits of seaweed solution. They were a bit slow on the uptake but I have finally started to see some new growth on all the trees.

And the good news is we had 20mls rain on Saturday which was brilliant as I didn't have to water all of these fruit trees!

MM xox