Moving on....
The apple trees have flowered, and again this year they have had some tiny little fruits on them. The tree on the shadier side of the gate had one, which today is now on the ground, in perfect condition, so whether it's been wind, or just that the tree knows it's too soon to bear fruit in only it's second year? The other one has three little apples still holding tight. This was the tree that had a couple of small fruit on it last year, so maybe there's hope yet. From my reading it seems that the trees don't normally produce in their first few years.
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| One of three little apples, about the size of a golf ball. |
The macadamia nut tree had flowered with the most flowers I've seen on it yet, and seemed to have lots of little nuts forming, but with the storms last week and all the wind, I noticed today that it seems like many of the higher stems are now bare and only the lower protected branches still have nuts on.
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| Lots of flowers on the macadamia looked promising. |
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| Hubby got this one! Little did I realise it would be the one & only! |
The peach tree that was so badly damaged last year when another big tree collapsed on it during a storm produced quite a lot of fruit, so too did the nectarine. However they both fell victim to fruit fly and we only got just that first single peach, the flys made short work of the rest. (Note to self, even if the fruit is looking fine and there are no signs of infestations still get a dac pot up and going early JUST IN CASE!!!) These little flies went from nothing to millions in just a couple of days, so there's no time to be unprepared. All the books said to have the dac pots up when the plants were flowering, but everything just looked so healthy and I kept forgetting and it hadn't seemed to be an issue (famous last words). So by my rough calculations I would think I'll need to have the lures on the trees by early to mid September next year, just to be sure.
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| Nectarines, just days before being completely wiped out by fruit fly. |
With Spring's arrival, the sweet peas I planted just after St Patricks day back in March finally started to grow and flower. Not as great a display as I'd originally hoped for, but I had thought they were done and failed months ago, so they'd not received any tender loving care for some time. I'm collecting some of the seeds so I can try to raise more for next year, rather than buying punnets like I did this year.
Oh, and I almost forgot the most exciting thing of all, one of my banana plants has had a bunch of bananas slowly growing ever larger and today, to my delight the other banana tree has put forward a great big flowering stem, so hopefully this too will be productive soon.
