last winter tasks

I've sowed seeds and put them in mini greenhouses to grow; the tomatoes (planted in July) are going great guns, haven't seen much of the others yet but they were only planted a week ago so...not surprising.

I really need to set up the proper greenhouse along the back of the carport, but that probably won't happen until at least the end of the month.

Kumquat, Avo, and Lychee are planted. The rose has been trimmed back with the assistance of a neighbour (thanks Bev), and the chooks have been moved to the back yard again.

I grafted a couple of the apple scions on to the multi-apple up the back. We'll see how they do going forward.

There was an exceedingly brief spell of rain yesterday evening (as in, ten minutes, max) and then it was gone.

This week, after work, I'll remove the fencing around the fruit trees in the front, smooth out the ground, fertilise at the dripline, then water the trees and shift around the woodchips for best effect.

I wonder if I could collect water in wall-to-wall buckets in the shower. Could get interesting.

Water management is going to be a big thing going forward. So much of what goes down the drain is lightly soiled at worst - has just run over human skin or washed vegetables clean, and could easily be reused on the garden. Need to call a plumber and talk about how difficult it would be to switch things around. Even using bathroom sink water to fill the toilet cistern.

That's not even counting the water tank that we have. Need a pump. Need to connect it up. Need to work out where the water is going to go on the garden...

I wonder if I could recruit the neighbours for scraps and lawn clippings and chook scraps this summer?

ETA: It’s now a couple of weeks later, and things have shifted – sometimes incrementally, sometimes rather more than that.

All the stonefruit is flowering: peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots. The exception is the cherry, which hasn’t even broken leaves yet. I’m not sure what it’s waiting for.

The multi-stone plum is flowering quite nicely as usual

One of the peaches already has significant-sized fruit on it. I’m going to have to net it this weekend or it’ll end up fruit fly fodder. That’s pretty much the call for this weekend’s work – netting the fruit trees and finishing off the composts. As projects go, they’re pretty big ones.

This is the multi-stone apricot, with teeny tiny fruit:

I have two more bare-root apricot trees. They arrived on Tuesday. *hangdog look* I couldn’t help it! They were on sale! My finger slipped! (They’ll be going into large pots with water wells for moving around the garden.)

The apricot tree in flower. It has gummosis, which is why I’m not sure it’s going to last very long. But even if it didn’t, I don’t think there can be too many apricots ever.

The broad beans are flowering (going to have to work out how to deal with the inevitable aphids), and the mustard is going pretty well in that bed. Need to start using those leaves instead of letting the bugs eat them.

Nasturtiums everywhere, which I don’t actually mind, they make good groundcover. I need more groundcover and more border plants.

I wonder if I could co-opt church kids to help me build garden beds. (I made a joke of it last night at bible study and some of the parents were ‘you might actually get some interest there’.) Except, you know, safety and stuff. And circular saws and toes. *shudder*

So this weekend the list of potential things to do are:
net fruit trees
building compost
potting bare-root apricot trees
re-potting mango or chocolate pudding tree

Next week (after work), the list of things to do is:
plant out the cabbage-eggplant box
seedbox all the seedlings that are starting to go beserk
set up potato bags (dirt and potatoes in the bottom, add sifted compost on top)

how do you like them apples?

Quite a lot, actually!

On Saturday I went to the garden of one of the women at my Permaculture Gardening Group who was going to take us through Pruning, Air-Layering, and Grafting.

The part I was really interested in was the part where she offered scions of her apple trees. She has FOURTEEN kinds of apples in a suburban garden, most of them grafted on individuals trees. It was AMAZING and I came away quite inspired in several dimensions.

I did have about six apple types before I got a bunch of her scions. Four arrived already grafted on a single rootstock: Anna, Granny Smith, Golden Dorset, and a mystery apple (I lost the tag that indicated what type it was, but it might have been a Jonathan?). And two were individual trees from my mother: a Golden Delicious and a Gala.

I got about nine apple scions from her: Akane, Adre Sauvage, Blenheim Oragne, Tropic Sweet, Tropic Dorsett, Tropic Anna, Egremont Russelt, Kid's Orange Red, and Yates.

I have two more apples coming: a Pink Lady with a Braeburn grafted to it. The Braeburn is because my sister loves them, but they don't grow them commercially this far north because the climate doesn't support it - Braeburns are cold-weather trees.

So, yes, we should be covered for apples through the season. Assuming I can get a harvest from them.

And, more importantly, that I can successfully get the grafts to take...

Right now, I'm thinking of which ones I should graft together - cross-pollination requires multiple cultivars flowering around the same time.

Having looked up various apple types, I'm reasonably sure there are maybe 4 pollination groups:
P1: Anna & Golden Dorset
P2: Tropic Sweet, Tropic Dorsett, Tropic Anna, Egremenot Russet.
P3: Akane, Andre Sauvage, Blenheim Orange, Kidd's Orange Red, Yates, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious, Pink Lady
P4: Gala & Braeburn.

The strikeouts are already on the one tree, along with the mystery apple, which is most likely in a similar pollination group. I could add to the existing multi-apple, I suppose but more than four is probably pushing it, and there are other rootstocks available.

So, probably a mix of P2, P3, and P4 on the Golden Delicious and the Gala and the Pink Lady:
Golden Delicious: Tropic Sweet, Tropic Anna, Blenheim Orange
Gala: Akane, Andre Sauvage, Tropic Dorsett, Yates,
Pink Lady: Braeburn, Gala, Egremont Russet, Kidd's Orange Red

I think some of it will very much depend on what takes. It could be a bit of a hit and miss.

The pruning unit was educational too. I've been pruning my apples like my stone fruit and...that's not the way to do it apparently... But the multi-apple has a few blossoms - at least one of the branches appears to be a tip-bearer rather than a spur-bearer, which might explain why I haven't really had any fruit from it at all! I've been pruning it back and probably pruned off all the fruit-bearing shoots! and then there's nothing left to enable cross-pollination...

Ah well, we garden and learn. I just wish I'd learned a bit earlier.

a bunch of apple-growing links

University of Mass: Spindle Pruning Apple Trees (video)

Fruit Grower’s News: Tall Spindle Design for apples - I’m still trying to find a proper/definitive description of spindle systems and how to prune trees into that shape.

Kimmel Orchard: Tuesdays With Tyler high density orchard plantings - there’s a whole series about orchard care in here.

How to prune apple trees in winter: summer for fruiting and growth, winter for vigour.

I’m also going to need to read up on apricots soon. I’d like one really good harvest out of the backyard apricot before it gives way to probable gummosis. *sadface*

climate change and them apples

An interesting read about backyard fruit by Australian gardener Jackie French: how not to grow backyard fruit. Basically, climate change is wrecking the way that gardens seasonally work – as proven by her garden in 2019. Still productive, just not as much as usual.

Mind you, she lives south of me, in the Araluen Valley which is southern NSW and inland a little, where the soil is LEGENDARY fertile and the winters are much sharper than up here in Sydney. The summers are also less humid, and possibly not as hot. So she does a lot more pears and apples than we can do up here, where a more mediterranean climate calls for citrus, and sub-tropicals.

Weirdly, the last season worked beautifully for all my early-flowering stone fruit in Sydney. If we get the same rains in late September and early October, then my nectarines and peaches crop should be pretty spectacular, even though I trimmed all those trees down quite significantly this autumn.

I definitely need to manure the three apples and the dual plum – this weekend, I think. Maybe the cherries, too? I think last season’s dearth of crop was due to wrong weather conditions rather than a lack of nutrients but I’m not entirely sure about that. Hm. Definitely potassium for the cherries and plum, then manure on top – although debating whether to run it through the chook pen first.

1. scrape back woodchips (maybe chip them more finely into a bucket)
2. apply potassium
3. apply manures
4. reapply woodchips

I wonder if the south-west corner of the property would do okay for the apple tree I’ll get in September. Ground is probably rock hard there, but maybe if I wet it down, then manured it, then mulched it, then woodchipped it... It probably still wouldn’t be ready by the time the apple turned up (mid september) but... The main problem would be whether the apple would then be too sheltered by the giant Illawarra Flame. It’ll be a Pink Lady with a Braeburn graft – the Braeburn is the one that we really want, and the issue of the Braeburn’s fruitfulness is primarily to do with chill hours...

I’m wondering if the ridge of green lawn that marched along the run of the sewerage pipe is because the old (probably clay) pipe held some residual moisture in the midst of a drought season that kept that line of grass verdant when the grasses around it faded. Also wondering just how difficult it would be to rig a greywater pipe from the kitchen sink out to the fruit tree garden. Because there’s so much rinsing-off water that just goes down the drain to the sewers and it could be used just as well to water the fruit trees through the dry spells...

Still need to speak with a plumber about the runoff from the roof. And possibly a roofer about the gutters and eaves.