is it spring? my garden tells me so!

[tielan]

MILLIONS OF PEACHES, PEACHES FOR ME!
MILLIONS OF PEACHES, PEACHES FOR FREE!

\

All right, so they're peaches and nectarines.

We got two weeks of steady rain at the start of October, and EVERYTHING GREW. Including my fruit trees. The ones up the front have gone great guns, and I'm just about to finish harvesting the last of the four stonefruit there (2 white nectarines, 1 white peach - pictured, 1 yellow peach), and then it's a five month wait until April when the Fuyu persimmons ripen.

My backyard went from this at the end of August:


To this by the middle of October:


To this by the end of November:


There's still a plum and two peaches to go in the backyard, and possibly an apricot. Yes, I planted a lot of stonefruit trees, but apparently the whole area was stonefruit orchards back 100 years ago, so, you know, the climate's already good for that.

I've worked out a system for the chooks and we're going to be implementing it in the next week: a summer run out the front under the trees, and they'll winter in the backyard (and in the front orchard).

Other than eggs from the chooks and fruit from the orchard, harvests so far have included:

1. the kale (which went beserk in early spring)


2. Mustard greens and broad beans


3. Peas
4. Zucchini
5. Asparagus (YES, ASPARAGUS!)

Currently growing are:
- tomatoes
- eggplants
- corn
- fennel
- tomatillos

I had an avocado that put out the little branch of flowers, prepatory to setting fruit. Then it set three fruit. Then we had a few days of crazy heat and two of them dropped off. And then, one day, while trying to reach past it, I brushed the last baby avocado fruit off the tree. *unashamed sobbing*

The passionfruit and grape vines are a bust.

I think the passionfruit are just a dodgy kind: apparently other people have had trouble with this type - lots of flowers but not a lick of fruit - and so next winter it's going to get completely pulled out and I'll set something else there. Or, if my local gardening group does the unit on grafting, I might get a scion of a producing passionfruit and graft it to the rootstock I've got. No point in wasting good rootstock.

The grape vine is up against a wooden fence and it's growing mould on its leaves and vine. I'll cut it back in autumn and replant it elsewhere (maybe along the driveway to grow up a frame and shade the big cement expanse in summer). Possibly do another graft on it? Or get another vine - possibly a kiwifruit?

Anyway, I have a big garden bee happening on Sunday with my local gardening group, and many longer-term things will be getting done...

Comments

[zesty_pinto]

So jealous! I was getting some fancy gardening going on with a bean trellis-turned gateway and some nice placement of my tomato cages, but the yield was nowhere near as almighty as yours (this year I got five grape tomatoes, wooo).

To be fair, I live in Vermont but still, your yield is downright sexy good.

[tielan]

So, fair cop, I've been living here for four years and each year has seen me learn something new about my garden and how to effectively garden. This is the first year I've had a really good crop of anything, and it's taken every bit of the three previous years making mistakes to work out how to get a really good crop. And then next year, something will probably happen to set me back to square one.

(And yes, being in Sydney's temperate climate definitely helps, although we're getting more burning summers and colder winters thanks to climate change, so we're going to have to learn how to live with that...)

I've had the "five grape tomatoes off a tomato bush" situation before! Is there anything more dispiriting? Actually just about all my previous years have been like that, so I've really been working on soil fertility this year using my chickens and waste composts and mulches rather than bought fertilisers (which are great for the NPK ratio, but can be expensive over time) and I guess it's seeing results! So stick in there and good luck finding out what works for your soil and climate.

[zesty_pinto]

Ha ha, in my case it was five grave tomatoes for the entire yield of six, but yes, some seasons are worse than others; last year's was much better and my fellow gardeners agreed with me, the weather just didn't cooperate. Still, I'll take your advice to heart since this is still not something I've completely figured out, either.

[tielan]

I've had a several years' run of bad luck with tomatoes. And even my first year produced many tomatoes but they were a small grape variety that developed a lot of mould and also fruit fly. :(

This year, I bought a couple of plants from a local gardening group and they seem to be doing nicely - oxhearts (indeterminate) and Florida baskets (determinate/bush types) - and I'm going to try a paste-making tomato for winter sauces and suchlike. (No idea where we're going to store it; I guess we'll work something out...

[3rdragon]

The eastern US has had a couple of weird years for tomatoes recently. It's not just you.

[zesty_pinto]

Glad(?) to know it wasn't just a Vermont thing. Really was hoping to can some sauce for friends, too.

[robby]

Ha, I'm picking tomatoes in California. I've also got almost ripe lemons and squash.

[tielan]

I just planted cherry tomato seeds last week and they're already sprouting! This is a great time of year for sprouting things; my trick is getting them from sprout to seedling and from seedling to fruiting plant. The part "to fruiting plant' is particularly tricky for me!

And ooh, ripe lemons! Other people have fantastic citrus trees around here (lots of Italian and Greek immigrants who brought their backyard garden concepts over, along with their espresso coffee machines), but I have always managed to FAIL at lemons. I'm hoping to break the cycle with a lemon tree that is COVERED in teeny tiny little lemons. Just have to make sure it gets enough water!

Mmm...squash. I just remembered that I have a couple of different squash/pumpkins growing right now.

What are your favourite squash recipes, btw? Got any you'd recommend?

[robby]

I save seed and grow a weird butternut squash hybid, and make "pumpkin pies".

Lots of my butternut squash actually look like watermelons. They seem to still taste like conventional butternut squash.

[3rdragon]

If you're an omnivore, we really like Liberian Pumpkin from the Simply in Season cookbook. (I'm lazy, though, and usually bake the squash whole. The finished product is more mushy, but just as tasty and way less work.)

I'm also a fan of this butternut squash risotto, and squash in fresh spring rolls is really good, as is white lasagne with squash.

[earthspirits]

Wow! That's quite impressive (and yummy looking too).

And what a huge difference in the growth of your garden!

[tielan]

I did several things differently this year:

1. Ran chickens in the garden beds, feeding them scraps and waste from our kitchen, and letting them poop in and scratch up the soil to make mulch.

2. Made composts in garden beds that I didn't dig out for some 3-4 months; they just sat there to decompose.

I think between those two (and with the winter break from growing) the soil fertility really regenerated, resulting in the current flush of crops. Now to do it all over again in the coming seasons!

[cesy]

That's amazing.

[tielan]

Thank you!

I feel this urge to say "I chucked all this stuff in the ground and it's just grown" but that's downplaying the work. And I have been spending a lot of time in the garden...

[3rdragon]

Thanks for sharing! It's really encouraging to see your garden green and growing while everything here is getting dark and cold. (Someday I will have enough space to grow fruit trees...)

[tielan]

Oh, trust me, when our winter comes around and Northern Hemispherites are posting their bounteous gardens, I'm gnawing my own liver. :)

There are some dwarf varieties now - well, grafted onto dwarf rootstock - which can be kept small (as in 1.5m tall) but they do need a bucket that's about a metre across, and you do have to prune them well.

I'm going to have to prune my fruit trees next year - the back garden is really only about 6m x 8m and everything is packed in there - fruit trees, garden beds, chickens....