Colours

Here are some images of autumn.

The crab-apple changed very gradually. It also got some sort of brown scaly stuff on the undersides of the leaves, so I vigilantly bagged and binned them as they fell.



The liquidambar, on the other hand, put up a magnificent display. I think it's only going to get better as the tree grows bigger:

Ahhh, autumn.

Autumn, Winter, Spring

Time passes so quickly when you're too busy parenting to weed the garden.

I foolishly showed the Small One how to weed, and found myself short a few jonquils, SO I have to supervise her, now, which is fun but not very productive.

We grew pea and pumpkin seedlings from seeds and put in two mini tomato plants. No produce yet, as the cats have been industrious in lying down/ digging up the sugar cane mulch, and it's doubtful what will survive and what will be flattened.

Two small green tomatoes have NOT been pointed out to the Small One, out of fear that she will pick them the same way she picked a few dozen green blueberries once she realised what they were!

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.

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...

Spring

The enchanted orchard sees its first spring!

The Australian Finger Lime has unusual yet quite beautiful blossoms:



Petite native bees are constantly busy over it, tempted away from the tea trees (the only plants put in by the original owners that we left untouched).

One of the apple trees (the Daleys one, in case you wondered) flowered, but none of the others did, so my hopes of pollination are very slim:



And the weeping crab apple is just a font of joy. I can't wait til it gets bigger and even more gorgeous.

The cost of all these trees was fairly standard, I think. The Australian Finger Limes I've already added to the total. The other citrus (2 tahitian limes, 1 honey murcott mandarin) were $35 each. The maples and one of the blueberries, I already had. The weeping crab apple was $150 and the second blueberry bush was $12. Add another $150 worth of potting mix and clay breaker, plus a new shovel for $65 (the old one finally got too bent by me forcing it into clay), brings the grand running total to a scary $1291.

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.

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!