We were lucky to inherit some established plants with our shack when we bought it. However we've slowly been building up a collection of fruit trees over the last year in order to have our own good supply of fruit in the future. It's hard being patient, knowing that these little seedlings in some cases won't provide fruit for up to five years. Looking back at pictures of the Jaboticaba & the Lychee, these don't seem to have grown at all! But to my surprise, my nectarine, which has only been in a year has blessed us with our first fruits (a grand total of 3!) And one of our little apple seedlings is trying valiantly for it's first apple after only a year in the ground as well. Some have given us small rewards, the mulberry has managed a few berries, even though it's barely more than an upright stick with a couple of leaves, the raspberry did the same & then died off, only to shoot up again this year. Others like the Cape gooseberry has provided us with lots of berries & is covered in fruit again already. Of the vines, the kiwi fruit started off strong, but went into hibernation for winter & have only just started to show leaves again. According to the info I read on them, we may not see fruit on this for a few years yet. The grape cuttings given to me by a local friend failed miserably, with me only succeeding in keeping just one alive, and just recently planted out in to the garden. The grape we bought got off to a great start & then disappeared into the belly of the most amazing grubs and didn't really recover again last season, but this year it's been reborn & has lovely green leaves promising hope. The purple passionfruit gave us a dozen or so fruits last year while the red panama one barely grew. We've also put in the shrubby type fruits like blueberries and pepinos, which have given me a one off harvest. Recently we've added a collection of citrus trees, which for the time being are in pots while we decide where they'll live best for the long term. When asked recently what we have now I found it hard to remember them all so here's the list of what's permanent in the garden now;

Lemonade tree (existing when we moved in)

2 x Mango trees (existing when we moved in)

Macadamia tree (existing when we moved in)

2 x subtropical suitable Apple trees

2 x subtropical suitable Pear trees

Lychee

Jaboticaba

Black Mulberry

Brown Turkey Fig

Black Fig

Peach

Nectarine

2 x Cherry trees

Kiwi vines

Banana passionfruit

Red passionfruit

Mandarine

Tangerine

Navel Orange

Cape Gooseberry

2 x Banana trees

3 x Pepinos

3 x Blueberries

1 x Meyer Lemon

1 x Lime

1 x Cherry Guava

1 x Loquat

1 x Tamarillo

2 x Grapes

18 x Strawberries

Many great fruit salads ahead I hope!

A busy little day

Today was another quick day, with just a limited time spent in the garden. Most of the time was spent putting in another couple of posts for our new fence. A fence to keep the vegies in & the chickens out, without all the mess of mismatched odd bits of chook fence, an entire collection of assorted shapes & types of stakes holding it up all attached by bits of wire, cable ties & left over bits of string. I really would like to think I can have a vegetable garden & a neat back yard as well, and I'm hoping this fencing will form a great frame work for making that happen.
There was a lot of thought that went into the design of the new fence. It needed to be fairly cheap as money to spend on it was limited. It needed to be able to be adapted to allow the chook pen to still move in & out as we rotate it around the finished garden beds. It needed to look good as the finished product occupies a fair bit of our land space. And it needs to last a while. After a bit of of compromise we came up with the finished concept, and I'm really happy with it.

At first I wasn't keen on using treated wood for the framework and posts, but hardwood was going to be too expensive, quite heavy & not readily available nearby to purchase, and we couldn't really spare the extra to do a metal fence this time around. The design was based on our external fence, which is a Bunning's DIY job. It was great for giving us the feeling that the yard remained open, but kept the visiting children in, safe & sound. The new fence consists of panels in the same way, which can be bolted on or taken off fairly simply to allow easy access to bring the chook pen in. It's been fairly inexpensive with each panel being made up of just 3 180cm fence palings, one cut in half to form the sides & the other two used as the top & bottom railing. We then stapled the existing chook wire to the frame work. These panels are then attached to posts. The panels were aligned with the existing garden beds, and are just wide enough to allow the chook pen to fit through the gap when removed. Between the garden beds where there were existing trees instead of garden beds we've made a couple of fixed panels & also a couple of gates for easy access daily.

In addition to this I started to sort out all my old seedling and plant pots. To date I haven't used them for a while as I started to find it just as productive to plant most of the seeds directly into the gardens, but I may have another little project coming up & if all goes well I might just need these again.