State of the espalier, finger lime

As you can see from the weeds, there has been zero maintenance. Not even weeding.

Luckily for me, neither of the espalier limes have died. Indeed, they are actually flowering and little limes are appearing. None of the fruit has ever ripened, but then, none of the trees have ever been watered and they are on a slope of pretty much pure clay.

Finger lime gets ever larger and happier.

A little bit of maintenance

Better late than never, right? A couple days ago, I noticed one of the espalier limes was heavily infested with red scale and swarming with ants. Seemed like the ants were farming the scale from their nest around the roots of the lime tree, waterproofing the rootball in the process (I HATE ANTS!). So I knew the lime trees were stressed, what with the heatwave and the poor soil, but this infestation is an indicator of really bad, stress, I guess, and if the lime dies I will be sad, but I am firm in my committment not to prop up the enchanted orchard with frequent watering. I pruned some of the worst affected branches. Maybe that will stress it more and push it over the edge, but those branches were so heavily encrusted I just couldn't picture them being healthy again. I gave both limes a seasol watering. Then, today I petroleum-oiled what was left and spread ant sand around the base. Good luck, little lime trees. ($30 for the ant sand and pestoil).

State of the Citrus, Spring 2010

So I haven't done anything for my citrus in about 6 months. No fertiliser. No watering.

The answer from the Australian finger lime: I am doing quite well, thank you very much. Here it is covered in flowers:



The espalier lime is also quite content. I did find a single bronze shield-bug on it last week and crushed the stinky thing to its death. I hope more don't show up.



Finally, the mandarin is also flourishing:



Here's hoping for more than one finger lime this fruiting season! And no pests!

The Harvest That Almost Was

So the end of summer is approaching. Time to tally the harvest of the Orchard in its very first year.

Total yield:

Blueberries: 24 berries
Finger Limes: 1 almost-ripe lime

Yep. That's it.

Grand savings: The cost of 1 punnet blueberries = $3.99

There could have been more, perhaps, if I had watered the garden every day. Here's evidence of the harvest that almost was:




The Small One polished these off as they arrived. It was all I could do to stop her from eating the green ones.




Watching the finger limes grow was exciting! Four of them made it to this size.




Plus there were half a dozen budding Tahitian limes...





...and the same number of little mandarins.





But a hot, dry wind thrashed the trees for three days in a row (yes, we are safe from flood here on the Heights, but it does get windy), and I found all the mandarins, all the Tahitian limes, and all but one of my finger limes knocked prematurely off their stems. Here's what it looked like inside.

A month later, a similar wind knocked the last finger lime down. At least this one was edible. Yum!

So the lesson was perhaps to water every day (like I set out to do in the first place, but life interferes) and/or be patient enough for the baby trees to get some size on them before I start wanting to eat the fruit.

The War on Lawn continues...

Planting

If you check the date of the last post, you'll see it was made five minutes ago, but in actual fact the logs were put in by the end of August, and the plants were put in shortly after that.

For each little tree, I dug out as much clay soil as my back could take and filled the gap with potting mix. There was one type for the citrus and another type for the maple trees.

I watered each one with seasol at day 1 and day 14.

The trees that I planted:

Tahitian Lime x 2
Honey Murcott Mandarin x 1
Tropical Apple (2 each of Dwarf Anna, Dwarf Dorsett Golden) x 4
Liquidambar x 1
Japanese maple x 1
The remaining Australian Finger Lime
Weeping Crab Apple x 1
Blueberry x 2

I'll be interested to see if there really is a difference in the healthiness of trees purchased from a nursery (for twice the price) and those purchased by mail order.

One of the Anna apple trees is from a nursery (where they told me mail order trees were dodgy) and one is from Daleys. Admittedly, the nursery-bought one has a straighter trunk, but they both seem quite vigorous.