Fruit Rebel

I am going to become a secret fruit rebel.

I’m going to plant apple and cherry trees.

At two different nurseries, they told me it wouldn’t be cold enough for traditional varieties such as Granny Smith and Jonathan, but that tropical varieties of apple were so far untested in the area.

At an online gardening forum, they told me that even if it WAS cold enough, I’d have to spray my darlings, once a week after fruit set, with Evil And Deadly Organophosphates.

An old lady who has been operating an orchard in the Valley for 60 years swore blind that I’d never get a single cherry – and as for apples, she reiterated the My Spray Or The Highway theme.

You’d think I would bow before all this accumulated wisdom.

You’d think I would accept that I am not in a suitable area for apples or cherries.

To quote Robert Frost:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference.”

NO BOWING TO WISDOM TODAY!

Besides, I have a bizarre, half-formed plan that involves hunting down tropical varieties of apple and cherry (less than 500 chill hours) which don’t get too big (so I can cover them with nets for flies and moths) and which fruit really early in the season (fruit fly numbers don’t become really established until the end of summer).

Pessimists, the Fruit Rebel has no time for your snide (or, more likely, your sincere efforts to persuade me to relinquish the madness) remarks! Begone!

Wanting What You Can't Have!

So I went to the local plant nursery to look at citrus plants.

They’re nice. They have gorgeous foliage and delicious fruit. Since I prefer thin-skinned lemons for ease of juicing, I’m leaving them off the list this time, but I’m thinking about planting Honey Murcott mandarin, Lemonade, Australian finger lime and Tahitian lime.

I couldn’t help but notice the rows and rows of Ballerina columnar trees loaded with plump, enticing apples.

Maybe it’s because I have fond memories of family road trips where the sighting of a roadside apple tree led to the squeal of brakes, the pitter patter of little feet, and bellyaches later from eating too many apples.

Maybe it’s Dad's childhood reminiscences of sneaking after dark into his neighbour's crab apple tree and feasting all night.

Perhaps because the act of pulling an apple off a tree reminds me of my honeymoon in New Zealand, where (it’s too cold for fruit flies!) the free fruit we scoffed was crisp and sweet and perfect.

And perhaps I just want what I can’t have.

Citrus City

Having considered which foods I DON'T want to eat, it's time to consider the growable foods that I DO want to eat.

And, having decided on the "Enchanted Orchard" theme, it seems I'll be sticking to food that is growable on TREES. For now, at least.

If only Terry's Chocolate Orange grew on trees.

*salivates for a while thinking about it*

Ahem. Where was I?

Right. The sorts of fresh produce that I buy every week. That would be lettuce, tomato, celery, cucumber, carrots, red capsicum, garlic, red and brown onions, bok choi, shallots, snake beans, apples, mandarins, lemons, and blueberries or raspberries. (Of that, only the apples and the citrus grow on trees. Blueberry bushes may be included. Raspberry canes have been Expressly Forbidden by Action Man.)

That's the list of purchases regardless of season.

That’s RIGHT, Environmentally Friendly Brother! (If you’re reading this.)

When there’s no Australian citrus, I buy Californian!

Just think of all that burning fossil fuel!

It makes me feel mildly evil, but I MUST have lemons all year round.

(In my defence, I’m planning on planting many trees in the near future. That should offset my Frequent Flyer Lemons.)

Back to the exercise. Non-useless food.

In summer, I buy as many cherries, guavas, pomegranates, quinces, loquats and nectarines as I can afford, and when new season apples come in, I become completely rapturous and dance around.

Now, out of that list, what’s expensive and what’s cheap? What’s easy to grow in my area due to the climate, and what’s difficult to grow without using poison? I should be able to disqualify some more.

Expensive: Cherries, guavas, pomegranates, quinces, loquats, lemons, limes, blueberries.
Cheap: Apples, mandarins, nectarines.

Suited to local climate: Citrus, pomegranates, guavas, loquats, blueberries
Unsuited to local climate: Apples, cherries, quinces (not cold enough)

Vulnerable to fruit fly: Thin-skinned citrus, guavas, loquats, some blueberries, cherries, apples, quinces.
Not vulnerable to fruit fly: Citrus, pomegranates

Overall, it seems like Citrus and pomegranate have the most points in their favour.

Citrus city, here we come!

Unfortunately, Citrus and pomegranate trees/bushes don't really form the classic "gnarled trunk" that I'm looking for in my themed garden. That would be the province of apple and cherry trees (and the maples, of course).

Action Man has given me permission to plant a big old oak tree, but not in the front yard because they are ginormous and take up all the room.

What to do?

pH problem

May have to grab a soil test kit.

Maples prefer pH range 3.7 to 6.5 (acidic)

Blueberries also prefer acidic soils, 4.0 to 5.0

Citrus prefer closer to neutral, 6.0 to 7.0, and cherry/apples also like 6.5 to 7.0.

Finger Limes? This guy: http://tiliaris.wordpress.com/ is growing finger limes in the Hunter and they mention that their target pH range is 5.5 to 6.5.

Mmmm, the scent of soil science on the horizon...

Existing Trees

Before I start thinking about fruit trees, I have to make sure I set aside some room for my existing trees.

That's right, the cheerful pot specimens I've been lugging around with me since my University days, when they wouldn't let me have my cat in the rental apartment...so I brought trees.

While this was a gift from a Canadian, I have a sneaking suspicion that my "Sugar maple" is in fact a liquidambar. I don't want it to be, because the liquidambar doesn't have the romantic appeal - nor the Canadian connection! - of the maple.

Nevertheless, I've enjoyed having it as my little companion; it turns yellow in Autumn when I'm living near the coast, and turns red when I'm further inland.

We had a week of Ludicrously Scorching Weather about six weeks ago which burnt all its leaves off, but to my relief it's come back from the Twiggy Dead, and hopefully I can get it into the ground soon and give it the reward it deserves for ten years of potplant service.

I'm pretty sure these two are real maples. On the far left, though you can't really tell from the photo, the coral maple has the most attractive pink bark and pale, frost-green leaves. I wish I had a dozen of these.

Next to it is the Japanese maple, which was a spectacular weeping specimen before the LSW burned all its leaves off, and killed everything above the graft.

Oh well. I'm not exactly horrified by the interesting regrowth that's happening below the graft. And I'm sort of from the "if it dies then it's not tough enough" gardening school, so I'll make the best of what's left and see if I can't train a new trunk out of that tangled mess.

The tree on the right is a lilly-pilly which I begged Action Man to buy me for Christmas one year (it was trimmed into a perfect cone, and worked wonders as an indoor Christmas Tree covered in fairy lights and blue baubles).

My argument at the time was that I'd use it as a Christmas Tree every year, and we'd save money by not buying pine trees.

HA HA, save money HA HA.

I've had to repot the thing ten times because nasty green ants keep taking up residence in its pot, and when the baby came along I totally neglected the topiary aspect, so it's not really conical any more.

Can't wait to put it in the ground. The little magenta fruits are yummy, and neglecting to prune seemed to encourage heavy fruiting.

Finally, my trusty blueberry. Also took a beating in the hot weather. Also has made something of a comeback. I can't remember what kind it is, which is a shame because it's always been a good provider and I'd like to get more. Unlike the strawberries, which were always getting devastated by slugs no matter how many pellets I put down, a meagre scattering in the base of the pot was always enough to keep the pests off my blueberries.

Wacky Wood

When I was seven or eight years old, my father worked as a supervisor for the state railway, and he got tickets for the whole family to cross the Nullarbor Plain on the Indian Pacific.



To a seven year old, an overnight train journey is a magical adventure. Especially when it involves a dining car, and a view out the window of the sleeping car of kangaroos lolling in shrub-spotted ochre expanses and wildflowers peeking out the cracks in the desert floor.

The whole of Western Australia turned out to be a magical adventure, thanks to the efforts of my mother - crystal caves, rock formations like breaking waves and pick-your-own strawberry farms.

But the one thing that gave me a shiver of fear and delight was some place called Wacky Wood.

Is it still there? What was it? My recollections are dream-like and the place, if it ever existed, no longer appears to be Googleable.

I remember a carved wooden sign in the shape of a gnarled, pointed finger. Were there crazed sculptures? Glowing owl eyes? Tree men frozen in the act of yanking their roots out of the earth and menacing passing travellers?

It reminded me of the Wicked Witch's forest in the Wizard of Oz. Or the Enchanted Orchard where the apple trees get cranky with Dorothy.

It occurred to me that I could have the Enchanted Orchard as the theme for my new front garden.

There's room for loads of trees there, and once established, they'd be more attractive and much less work than, say, rows of parsley, shallots and broad beans.

I got in touch with my archery coach and friend, woodcarver Peter Smith (here is an example of his superb work):

...and asked him to carve me a Green Man.

The last time I asked for a commission (the unicorn horn), he told me it was the last time!

But I couldn't help myself. I know he'll come up with something perfect for what I have in mind.

The Enchanted Orchard. Wickedly delicious. With sprites waiting to leap out at the unwary.

Newton's Third Law

Today, my beloved husband (a.k.a. Action Man) announced his intention to start up his own blog, entitled,

"Oh My God, I Just Got Home From Work And Look What My Wife Did To The Lawn!"

*snigger*

Growing a Food Garden Full of Useless Food

Now that I’ve decided to grow food, it’s time to be a bit more specific. After all, there’s no point in growing a garden full of food that nobody wants to eat.

Food No-one Wants That Everyone Always Grows (and is therefore always trying to palm off on me):

1. RADISHES

Yes, they are the easiest things to grow. Toddlers scatter seeds in gleeful abandon, dump half a watering-can over them, come back in a few weeks and voila! Radishes!

Who eats radishes? Besides old Italian men, who miraculously bite into them (and onions) without shedding a single tear? I may have flung them, in desperation, into a salad or two in my time, but I don’t recall ever deliberately purchasing any.

2. BEETS

Get away from me with the stinking beets already! If I want beetroot on my burger, I want it pickled, sterilised and canned. Not hairy and dirty and raw and crunchy!

3. PUMPKIN

I’ve got nothing against pumpkin. It’s yummy. It’s nutritious. I have been known to pay for half a butternut when I’m planning on making a roast.

But pumpkin vines don’t give you a specified number of pumpkins in accordance with roast dinner schedules. They give you TEN BILLION pumpkins all at once. Usually when it’s really hot and you wouldn’t cook a roast if someone paid you.

4. MACADAMIA NUTS

Any nuts that I have to a) pound open with a hammer and anvil OR b) roast before eating, I can’t be bothered with. Anyone who wants to give me shelled and chocolate-coated macadamias, however, be my guest.

5. OLIVES

So many people are planting olive trees, now, like the trendoids they truly are. But olives can’t be grazed from the tree like apricots or plums; salting and marinating all takes time, and if you do it wrong you end up with rotting buckets of olives. Erk.

To be on the safe side, I want my olives to come from the supermarket.

6. CHOKOS

The day I use these tasteless alien pods in my kitchen is the day the Japanese start lobbying the Danes to stop killing whales.

My War On Front Lawn

When I drive down a street looking at the houses, I always want to grab hold of them and drag them forwards seven or eight metres.

Why are houses always built so far back from the road?

What is the purpose of a front garden?

It offers no privacy. You can't relax there. It offers no protection. Your kids can't play unsupervised there. If you had all that space round the BACK of your house, you could have a swimming pool or a tennis court or a cherry orchard.

What does everyone have instead?

Lawn.

And what's a front lawn good for?

Why, judging your neighbours, of course!

An overgrown lawn could mean low socioeconomic group, a family on extended holidays or a broken lawnmower.

A lawn that's well-mown but weed infested, well, that spells harried tradesman or father of eight, both of which not only mow intermittently but set the mower at its lowest and most brutal in the vain hope of slowing summer growth.

Or perhaps it's a bunch of students in a share house who only pay for the mowing when an inspection is due.

There's the lawn that gets periodically poop-covered by the genius who thinks that rain is a sure thing and causes an inevitable eight week drought. That well-intentioned yet bumbling fool probably works for the council or behind a desk at Dell.

Meanwhile, a perfectly manicured lawn that's roped off to keep the local brats at bay almost certainly indicates a pensioner.

I hate front lawns.

I refuse to have one.

The problem is, I've just purchased this:














I plan for this lawn to be the very first casualty of my War.

Well, the second, actually.

The very first will be that noxious oleander. Ick!

If I have to have a front garden, It Shalt Not Be Lawn.

Instead, I will put it to a good use.

As I've already mentioned, front lawns are no good for relaxing, or for playing in. So I'm going to put my front garden to the only remaining obvious use.

Food, glorious food.

Stay tuned.