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!

Hidden Gifts

Well, I got the fertilising done. What do you mean, march isn't "late summer"? It is, too!

Anyway, I discovered a couple of late surprises. Like this crab apple. Not edible, but very cute. I think it's been stung by fruit flies. A reminder that next year, if I get apples of the larger variety, I had better get the fly nets up quick smart.


I also discovered a Secret Actual Last Finger Lime. I'm pretty sure, it, too, met with a wind accident, and could have ripened more, but it's kinda going red on the outside...and pink on the inside!





Here's the espalier progress.





And the apple trees...the (taller, happier) tree on the right is the one from the nursery. The others are mail-order. Maybe there's a gradient of improved soil nutrients, though. Difficult to judge.

Logs

As promised, I have used logs as a main future of the one-day-enchanted-orchard. They arrived on a truck.

First, the layout had to be marked out in lawn paint. At which point we discovered the house does not lie parallel to the kerb. More's the pity.

I planned a paved walkway with a well (or other feature) in the centre, running from the street to the front door. The gateposts were the two taller logs; the fences are to be living fences of tahitian lime (they will go where the two piles of clay soil are in the photo).




Action Man dedicated a whole day to digging holes. Hooray!





Yes, there's still LOTS of lawn, but it's still early days!

Espalier and Logs

Inspired by this post at Jamie's Amateur Gardener blog:

http://gardenamateur.blogspot.com/2008/11/squeezing-lime.html

...I've decided to espalier the tahitian lime trees and apple trees in my Enchanted Orchard. It will make the best use of the north-facing aspect and look tidy to boot. For supports, I could use just any old timber, but to complement the theme, I'm going to use logs.

HEEEEERE LOGGY LOGGY LOGGY...

Ideally, they would be gnarly old logs with the bark still on, but in light of the Evil Termite Threat, it has to be treated pine. Which is cool. They come in 20cm diameter thicknesses and a range of lengths. Hopefully they will weather nicely and add to the atmosphere of haunty goodness. I'll even put some ent-like faces on them.

The Wizard of Oz meets Lord of the Rings.

Cost: To have the logs delivered ($70 delivery charge) from the big landscape supplier in the next town 50km away, it will be close to $480. Additionally, we took a trip to Bunnings on Thursday night and purched such items as a new stainless steel shovel ($40), more gypsum clay-breaker ($10), wire and turnbuckles to connect the logs ($80), yellow grass marking paint ($12) and a 200mm diameter auger (hole-diggy thingie) ($65).

That gives a whopping $687 spent on the garden this weekend. Yikes! I budgeted two grand overall for the setup, and at $809 already, we're getting perilously close to half way.