2014 Fruit & Spring 2015

Haven't posted here in a while - most of the last few months of summer and autumn were full of changes in the garden, and I just gave up on posting about it until it all settled down a bit. I bought a lot more plants, put in some new beds, and have a bunch sitting around in pots waiting for further planting space.

Thinking about the garden meant I either went straight out and started weeding or digging or wandering around planning, or I was sad because I could do anything.

And then of course, there were the many foot problems, which didn't clear up until winter made it too dark and wet to go outside. And then I sprained an ankle again! So all in all, the last few months have been a bit patchy garden-wise.

But this year, I get to see what survived, what's looking sad, and what might actually start fruiting. I also have four rain barrels set up, to help avoid the nasty drought conditions I ran into last year, and cut down on the amount of water hauling I had to do.


Summary of 2014 Summer/Autumn Fruit:


Stonefruit

Apples

Golden Russet apple in organza
jewelry bag against bugs

I got to eat 3-4 apples last year; from one of the Columnar apples (the Polka), the Blush Babe and the Golden Russet. All were a bit sharp, and ripened very late, probably because I shouldn't have let them fruit (I picked most of them off, but I couldn't resist leaving the odd one... ). I chopped them up and popped them into the microwave for five minutes to get individual apple-sized bowls of stewed apple.


I now have five or six apple trees - two local red delicious type dwarf varieties (Blush Babe and Little Rascal), two columnars tucked in up the end, one semi-dwarf Golden Russet in a pot, and one Early Strawberry (to go in the ground). I bought the first four because they were columnar or convenient (sold locally), then realised they all ripened around the same time and were fairly similar apples, so I had to get a couple more. The Early Strawberry is, well, early, and the Golden Russet is supposed to be a very different flavour of apple (and not much of a fruiter, so it's sort of experimental). I'm not a fan of the sharp granny smith types.



Peaches

Honey Babe Blossom
 from 17th August

Bang on schedule, the Honey Babe burst into blossom a couple of weeks ago, and the Kotare Honey is just starting to follow.

I actually got fruit off these last year! The Kotare Honey peaches were prolific, tiny and sad, the Bonanza ones were few, huge and delicious and the Honey Babe were in the middle. I'll see how they go this year, but if the Kotare Honey doesn't improve, I'll get rid of it. The Honey Babe needed more water.

They all got a bit of leaf curl, but I picked the worst of it off, and then they were fine.


Other

The Cherry and the Almond are still in their first couple of years, so I might see flowers this spring. The Cherry is schedule for a transplant from pot to ground at some point; it dried out far too much last year.

The pears and quinces are holding on, and not doing much. They need time and/ repotting, mostly.

I actually found a dwarf plum! It's just poking out a few buds right now, and I just have to cross my fingers that it will be pollinated, but at least I have one.

I got a couple of feijoas off the Unique, but the Bambini didn't get fertilised at all. I've moved Unique's pot round the back next to the Bambini to try and improve that this year. I did get about five little Red Guavas, which were nice, and this year should be a lot better, as the plant is bushing out nicely.


Berries

White Alpine Strawberries

The Pepino bush and the little Blueberry Muffin have been devoured by slugs, and also not very happy in the winter cold. I'll see if they get their leaves back with spring, and try moving them.

The other blueberries have been sporadically flowering and fruiting since I planted them. Once mostly died, but has new growth from the base, the others just keep popping out random flowers. I didn't pull a lot off because I didn't expect them to keep flowering. I'm tempted to indulge in some rabbiteyes, but I know they'll probably go wild, and I still don't have acidic enough soil. And I just need to give my current plants enough time to settle in before I can judge properly.

The strawberries have been doing okay - some died off, others flourished, and some of the day neutrals actually fruited all winter. The Alpines did amazingly, and I was getting a few berries a day right into winter (then the taste declined, as the period between ripeness and mush shortened to about a day or less. The big plants are still fruiting).

The raspberries got the mould, so they were out.

The blackberry and currants are all still growing into things, so I'll see if they start doing anything this year.

I also splurged on four Haskap plants, as a less-acidic-soil alternative to my blueberries (my soil is a little too neutral for me to get my hopes up over those). I thought they all died off last autumn, which was depressing, but it appeared to be a combination of transplant shock from the heat of later summer (they all came from the far end of the New Zealand, as there aren't any local sellers yet), and the onset of autumn. They all have tiny leaves starting to bud out, showing that a plant can look dead for 5 months and still be okay.

My grapes are both alive too - the one in the ground (Niagara) always looked pretty happy, but the Canadice Seedless Grape in the pot was a bit more delicate and got nasty sunburn (or a fungus) towards the end of summer and all its leaves went brown and dropped off. I left it in the hope that it would magically come back to life, and I just noticed some new leaf buds, so that's wonderful.

The Myrtus ugni were... random. They clearly hate wind and getting too dry, and the various bushes around my garden are all reacting differently. One's died off entirely, others are incredibly healthy (some practically next to the dead one). I noticed a sort of greyish pallor to the leaves in summer, which seems to be a sign that they're too hot or dry. I didn't get many berries, which may just be because they were settling in.

Citrus

These are doing... variously. Most look pretty healthy, but aren't really fruiting yet, and a few are clearly not enjoying winter. I got a handful of delicious tiny mandarins off the one round the back, and three lemons off the Meyer, as well as one absolutely fantastic and very tiny orange. The Lime has taken off and is actually growing now, it's double the size, so I won't be removing any fruit this year. I also have a few new dwarf citrus to round out the harvest seasons, a Buddha's hand because I can (it's covered in buds right now) and a Kumquat Meiwa.

Peach Flowers and Spring Growth

I planted out a lot of my seedlings and the results have been mixed; either the slugs ate them instantly, or they took off. I'm waiting to see how many survive...

But in the meantime, spring is officially here! I've been noticing new growth all around the garden, a couple of weeks before I noticed the weather warming up myself. There's been quite a bit of change in the garden over the last few weeks, and I may address more of them in a future update (I certainly got plenty of photographs!).

About a month ago, at the start of August, the bees discovered the Borage. I've since seen on other plants, but at the end of winter it was the only plant they went near.

I saw three different species within five minutes; a large bumblebee, the smaller honeybee and an intermediate bumble of some kind (Which I managed to take a photo of).





So far we have:

New leaves on the feijoa

New growth on the feijoa sellowiana out the front. It's an unnamed variety, which probably means it was a seedling rather than a graft (it was a birthday present).

It hadn't moved a bit since I planted it, which I think means that it was establishing its roots during autumn, then it went dormant for the winter. The other young trees that I planted around the same time mostly managed to start growing just before winter arrived.

My alpine strawberries and Yakon root arrived from Koanga Gardens. They will look very healthy, and it will be nice to see what happens with them. I'm hoping that the Yakon might become a good potato substitute, as I don't get on very well with potato. Either way, it's apparently easy to grow and I can stick in some horrible ground in the corner of the garden.

The alpine strawberries (three of each kind, red and white), all look very healthy and I've left them sitting in a container of water to perk up before I decide where to plant them. Some of them have flowers already. Interestingly the flowers seem to be a lot smaller than the ones I have on other plants.

This was the original Colander strawberry.As you can see,
it's doing very well and has a nice handful of fruit on it.

Nearly ready to eat I hope!

Most of my of alpine strawberries are doing really well, both in the ground and in pots. The big ones in the colanders are doing fantastically well and seem to have doubled in size. They all have at least a dozen flowers or fruit on. I tucked a few little plants in around the garden as well, and it will be nice to see how they do.

I had one small plant that I kept inside for awhile, and I managed to eat a couple of strawberries off it as they ripened over the winter.

It was one of the yellow/white strawberries, and I can confirm the pineapple taste. They were actually quite sharp - I'm going to try leaving others to ripen a bit longer once I have the patience! Although I'm pretty sensitive to sharp tastes, so I'm sure somebody else wouldn't even have noticed. From what I remember of the original fruit that were on the plants that arrived first, I think I prefer the red ones.

I've since moved it outside, because my room was so dry that I was having to constantly water it. The other plants all started flowering over the last few weeks, so I'm looking forward having more than one strawberry at a time!

Flowers and the delicate spiderweb on my Bonanza Peach

My peach trees also arrived about two months ago. They are all dwarf varieties as usual, one Bonanza, one Kotare Honey, and one Honey Babe.

The Bonanza went straight into the ground, at the end of the Apple row. It looked pretty dead when it arrived, but it started to put out flower buds about a month ago. The other two went into pots, with chamomile and alpine strawberries around the base. The poor Honey Babe, which was covered in leaves when it arrived, had all stripped off in a big storm.

I figured that the alpine strawberries might make good ground cover around the base and it would keep them contained, while also providing something similar to their normal woodland environment. The little plant poking out of the mulch on the right is actually a pea plant, growing out of the pea straw.

The Bonanza Peachtree starting to show flower buds at the beginning of August.

The Bonanza is the smallest one by far, and it's also the first to flower. It's currently covered in pink blossoms, where as the Kotare Honey has just put out its first. The Honey Babe hasn't flowered at all yet. I know that the Bonanza is supposed to be one of the earliest, but I'm not sure whether it's because it's also in a more sheltered spot.

The Bonanza a couple weeks later. The lovely flowers has been joined by the first few leaves.

It is notable that all the peach trees are flowering before they put leaves out.

The Kotare Honey starting to flower.

The Bonanza flowers after the petals dropped.

I also now own a Whitecurrant, and an additional redcurrant and blackcurrant. The blackcurrants are both in pots because they tend to spread. The redcurrants and whitecurrant started leafing out with new growth for spring.


I also ordered some blueberries, which were being sold off in the South Island where they didn't really belong (they Southern Highbush; as they're from the northern hemisphere, Southern means warmer). The varieties I got were O'Neil and Petite Blue (which I think is also known as Summer Blue).

Flowers on my Petite Blue Blueberry in the pot.

 I've planted one of each in a big pot each, and the other pair will go in the ground next to each other where they can pollinate each other. This way I should be covered against issues with soil pH in either location, as well as being able to fit more bushes in!

It was interesting to see the "two zones colder" effect of putting something in pots, as the potted bushes leaves promptly turned reddish from the cold, while the ones still sitting in a bucket of water stayed bright and green.

We've also eaten pretty much all the broccoli there was a moment, although we've got some more coming along. I have been planting out some of the potted plants, as they hit the limits of their containers and stopped growing again.

Alpine Strawberry Arrivals

My second delivery of alpine strawberries arrived. This time it was a mixture of varieties from The Fragrant Garden.

They were a mixture of healthy and yellowing, some with fruit, and some without. None were named (of course), but were apparently yellow and red creeping and clumping types. And one 'cream' colour (that was just listed as yellow on the label, so who knows what it will be?).

A red alpine strawberry. WITH ACTUAL STRAWBERRIES.

Why yes, it is possible that I did eat the berries
 right after. Why do you ask?

It was very windy and rainy today (we had a strong easterly which is quite unusual - it blew my borage entirely the wrong way and the main stalk is now damaged. There's now an impressive patch of bare earth standing testimony to its mulching abilities). So I only planted out a couple of the strawberries, the rest are waiting in their pots.

 One went in with the Honey Babe peach, another went round the bag under the annoying shady tree that nothing much grows under, and a third joined the previous ones in the apple tree bed (the one with the fruit - one berry fell off as I planted it, so I ate it. And then I ate the other one. Despite the white on the berry they were definitely ripe and absolutely delicious).

Yellow Alpine in Colander

By far the happiest of the plants were the three yellow alpines I bought via TradeMe. They were big, happy, healthy plants and two have gone into the garden, with the third in a nice, big colander. This one also has a flower! 

The flower seems to be bigger than the remains on the smaller ones that arrived today. I'm not sure if this is due to the variety, the size of the plant, or the fact that it's difficult to compare them at different stages in the flower fruit cycle. I guess I'll be finding out!

One lovely strawberry flower...

So sometimes TradeMe gardeners are actually better than nurseries. They cost slightly more, but they were worth it.

But what do they taste like?

Fantastic. I'm trying to find non-cliche adjectives, but 'sweet', 'intense' and 'flavourful' keep springing back up into my descriptions like weeds.

They are like concentrated strawberries. The berry is gone in an instant, but the strength of the taste left behind seems like you just ate an entire larger strawberry. They're slightly sharp and sweet and perfect.

Delicious strawberries...

The yellow and white varieties are supposed to be mellower, or pineapple flavoured, but that may just be the colour affecting people's perceptions (nobody seems entirely certain on the difference). I look forward to blind taste tests. You know, FOR SCIENCE.

Yep. I am extremely pleased with my decision to go alpine-strawberry-mad. I am now going to start collecting them and seeing how many I can raise from seed. This will be difficult, as it involves not eating all the berries.

I don't want to divide them, as apparently the berries get bigger when the plants are bigger. Also, it's apparently easiest to grow them from seed if you just plant the entire berry (as there are multiple seeds, and obviously it's the best environment for them).

Buying the Strawberries

I have seen references in articles to being able to find them in the herb section of garden centres, but most of those articles are three or four years old. I certainly haven't seen any anywhere - though I don't exactly tour garden centres across the country. It's certainly something I'll be looking out for, though.

But so far, my options have been hunting down plants for sale online.

I've only found a couple of other sites that sell them (other than TradeMe), and they are small, difficult to contact businesses (one is a single person, the other has a defunct website and no response to my email). And Subtropica.co.nz, which has white strawberries, but only ships during summer. I wouldn't be surprised if these gardens mostly sell via TradeMe (or in person. But that doesn't help me much as they're often in Palmerston North or even further!).

They're also a lot more expensive than normal strawberries, around five times the price per plant. This is a pretty logical result of their rarity and the relative difficulty of propagating them (runners are much rarer and less vigorous. Seeds are an option, but slow. Most plants are created by dividing clumps after two or three years, which isn't particularly quick!).

Varieties are almost always described just as 'red', 'yellow' or 'white. There may be some confusion between the last two, as some of the product descriptions claim that the yellow variety turns white when ripe. It's possible that they are all "Yellow Wonder" and "White Pineapple" but I have found no authoritative source on that, or a way to tell them apart before you buy anything. They hybridise a lot once they're in the garden though, so they could be anything by now.

With luck, there will also be mention of whether it is clumping or runnering (although that's also dependent on the conditions - alpines can be induced to runner occasionally).




Sources:

Subtropica - Northland, white, ships in summer, $3 per plant

TradeMe.co.nz - variable range and prices. I've got some of my best and some of my worst plants here, but it's a good place to pick up really cheap plants, or unusual ones that are out of stock elsewhere. Or just to diversify your plant stock a bit.

The Fragrant Garden - Palmerston North, five unnamed varieties (yellow/red/creeping/non-runnering), $5.20

Koanga Heritage Gardens - Hawke's Bay, White Pineapple (an actual named variety!, runnering) and unnamed red (nonrunnering). Order by August to be shipped in spring. $12 (unclear whether seeds or plants, and how many of each). Update: I received my strawberries in the first week of September; three small, healthy plants of each type, so $4 each.

Nikau Hill - Palmerston North, problems with website and no response to email when I tried to order, but had yellow and red for $9.90 Update: New website online in Sept, '14

Heavenly Herbs - Wellington, private grower. Red. Contact by email for availability and payment, $5
Haven't tried.

More about alpine strawberries:
Strawberry Store: Alpine Strawberries (US based. Good for information, but can't be shipped into NZ)

Strawberries. Strawberries Everywhere.

I now have 40-50 strawberry plants in pots, hanging baskets and random containers. The varieties are Chandler, Camarosa and Red Gauntlet (though I've already started to lose track of which is which). They aren't going into the garden, because strawberries tend to take over and I haven't got the space for that. I should get a good couple of years of fruit, and then I can just repot a bunch of runners.

I've also got a handful of random ones that sadly turned up with some sort of scorch fungus disease on. I planted them anyway, away from the others (apparently it travels through splashing water).

WALL OF STRAWBERRIES
This is the northern end of the house which gets
the most sun. So that's where all the strawberries are.

Camarosa Strawberries in cheap planters from
nice TradeMe people
(A really nice lady gave me the wooden one
 along with a raised bed!)

I also started buying alpine strawberries (which are really hard to find! The odd seller on TradeMe and a couple of tiny nurseries around New Zealand). They're much less invasive, fruit all year round, and should do well tucked under the borage and the various bushes and trees, as they're much happier with shade than the bigger version. So far, I only have an unknown variety of yellow ones, but I have a mixed handful of colours on the way (nobody in NZ seems to know what variety they have!). They're also apparently easy to grow from seed, so I should be able to grow plenty more.

From left: The Kotare Honey peach waiting to be planted
Alpine strawberries in a colander container
Broccoli plants in a big pot
Chilean Guava and a spreading manuka spp. that are being grown up to a better size
The raspberry pot (I may need to separate the two varieties for easier pruning)
A grape and a fig (both tiny little stubs right now).

The borage, by the way, is doing fantastically. It's huge and producing ongoing flower stalks and has been a great groundcover between two of the apples (it's sheltering the curled parsley, and I have chamomile growing under it). The comfrey in the useless soil corner isn't growing much, but you're supposed to give them a year before seriously harvesting anyway. I did scavenge a leaf to make DIY rooting hormone for some of the cuttings (which appear to  be rooting - the Myrtus ugni and the Feijoa Bambina have tiny threads poking out the end now).

Bought three dwarf peach trees; Kotare Honey, Honey Babe and Bonanza. They should all fruit at slightly different times, but we'll see. The Bonanza is in the garden next to the apples, and the Honey Babe is in a big pot. I'm still deciding where to put the Kotare Honey.

Yellowing leaves on the orange. It is almost certainly
due to all the rain leaching out nitrogen from the soil or
cold temperatures "locking up" the magnesium.
It should bounce back again now the rains have moved on.
I gave it a heap of grass cuttings under the mulch, and some
blood and bone to help cheer it up.

I'm not sure how well they'll do, as peaches as notoriously disease and pest prone, but the steady breezes around the house should keep them well free of mildew.

My currant collection is now rather respectable: two blacks (Magnus and Sefton, I think), two reds (Gloria de Versailles and Myra Mckee) and an unknown white. I'm planting the blacks in pots (as they spread) and the others along the fenceline out the back, behind the guava and feijoas and in the shady bits.

One of the grapevines (the seedless Candice) has gone in behind the apples and the peach - it should grow up over the edge of the deck, where it can be easily pruned and kept at a manageable size.

I'm also eyeing blueberry and papaya seeds; both should be easy to grow in containers and produce decent amounts of fruit. I want a Southern highbush variety of blueberry, because they're smaller than the rabbiteye and do well in the Auckland region. I'm looking at seeds because it's a lot cheaper than buying actual plants and it means that I don't need to find space right away (I need to stock up on giant pots as it is!).

The peas are starting to go a  bit weird now. They're still producing, but the pods are usually a bit discoloured. The two weeks of rain probably doesn't help - it's also been pretty bad for the citrus. My Meyer lemon and the orange have been looking a bit yellow around the edges due to the constant watering.

On the citrus front, I also picked up a Sublime lime - a container sized variety of key lime that apparently does very well in pots. The Meyer lemon has started flowering properly.

The tiny Sublime lime in one of the makeshift
air pruning pots (i.e. a metal wastepaper bin and
weed matting liner)

The first Meyer lemon buds have opened
(also note the yellow tinge on the
leaves from the rain)

The heritage raspberries that were produced in late autumn withered away and died over the last month, so I pruned away the rest of the stalk. There's plenty of new growth showing around the roots.
The more sensitive deciduous trees, the pears and the cherry, have all dropped all their leaves now. The little almond has dropped most of them. The others are doing fine; a few yellow leaves on the apples, and nothing else. The banana has just unfolded its eighth big, beautiful leaf.

And the broccoli has started to flower! Tiny little broccoli heads are showing on the ones planted out first into the garden and the ones in the white container (I was a bit worried about them as they need a lot of space, but the three survivors are doing really well).

The first broccoli flower. 

Comparison with Cat for size (I never could quite tell how big the
plants were going to get from the internet)

Three big happy broccoli plants in another makeshift container.
One has a flowerbud. There used to be more, but they crowded out the weaker seedlings,
which is fine as I had too many from the start.

I've started a seedling collection indoors, trying to get some tomatoes, melons and cucumbers started. The beetroot and the stevia have actually sprouted, so I'm crossing my fingers for the rest. I also found some neat carrots - Paris Market carrots - which are basically like orange radishes. They're great for containers and bad soil because they just don't need to grow much.

And I've also torn out that darn spider plant that the previous owners left. It has a massive root mass of weird tubers! It's gone into the drowning bin, where all the invasive weeds go. The bin is now full of dark brown, stinking, liquid and half rotted vegetation, and should be pretty awesome fertiliser. I've been trying to dig out or smother the onion weed that has sprouted all around the garden as well. I'm throwing cardboard down and starting the slow process of creating a new bed in the worst patch (currently it's all being held down by pots. I have some plants to go there eventually, like lavender and thyme, but they're all so tiny right now that they'll be overrun by weeds as soon as I turn my back. I'm growing up a few things in pots and then will see what fits there).