Jaboticaba or Brazilian Tree Grape

I stumbled across the Jaboticaba by chance. I automatically research any new species I come across to see if they are something I can grow (and actually buy in New Zealand!), and this is one of those weird long shot plants than I figured would be fun to try.

It has a lot of different names. The species name is Plinia cauliflora (or Myrciaria cauliflora or Eugenia cauliflora)

It's an interesting plant and rather picky about its conditions - it will grow slowly and happily for years, doesn't really care about the soil type, but won't fruit unless it's consistently watered. But it seems hard to kill outright!

Because it grows so slowly, it makes a good container plant. It also looks rather lovely. 

The trees can get pretty huge in their native Brazil, and apparently there are a lot of different varieties there. We only really get one or two in New Zealand (and only one that I was actually able to find), and they generally only grow to about 3-5m here (because it's colder and less humid. It should stay even smaller in a pot - the idea is that you just grow it up then plant it out later).

They fruit and flower directly on the trunk itself, large purplish grapelike fruit that look really impressive. They're very prolific; you get a lot of fruit off each one and they keep flowering and fruiting up to three times a year (a month and a half between flower and fruit) in the NZ climate. Four times if you're somewhere warmer. The fruit is good to just eat, or to make wine or jam out of.

I bought two seedlings off TradeMe - the only place they were for sale in New Zealand (a couple of specialised nurseries mention them, but don't really sell to the public). It seems like it's impossible to buy them any larger!

They're much easier to buy in the USA though, by the looks of things: Jabuticaba plants and seeds on Amazon

I figured that they'll be low maintenance plants that look nice around the deck, and maybe in five years I can try getting them to fruit. (...And by "nice around the deck" I meant that I may eventually repot them into nicer pots. The plants are really lovely in person, and I say this as someone who generally doesn't care for so called ornamentals).

Because I bought two, I can experiment with the best pot type. They like it moist, so one is in a normal plastic pot, but I also think that air pruning pots seem to be a good idea, so the other is in a DIY pot (wire basket and weed mat lining).

Both are sitting in a plastic bowl to catch the water - the basket pot absorbs it back in a lot more readily! (Same rainwater, same amount of time, half the amount of water in the bowl).

The reason the water is so dark is because of all the soil that washed out with the rain! (Now there's incentive to put a bowl under pots).

More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabuticaba

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/jaboticaba.html

Also a quick update on two of the natives:

The Red Kaka Beak is growing really well.

(Compared to when it first arrived!)

This little manuka Huia is somewhat smothered, but absolutely covered in flowers. 

In my defence, that ground was bare earth in summer - the winter rains (and me disturbing it) have been a massive boon for the weeds!

99 Bottles In The Ground

One buried milk bottle under the borage, and practically
on top of a dwarf manuka plant.

Behind it is an alpine strawberry and the curled parsley.
Behind that you can just see the chives around the Blush Babe apple.

The bottom right corner is a
wool mulching blanket from Country Trading.co
around the columnar Ballerina Polka. The rest of the mulch is
 pea strawand needles from the Norfolk Pine.

I've been looking for a better way to water everything that didn't involve lots of money or digging up my entire garden (because summer is coming, and I have twice as many plants now!).

The best quick DIY method I've found is just burying a bottle with a few tiny holes or slits in. This both acts as a slow distribution water storage tank that won't evaporate and delivers the water deeper under the ground directly to the roots.

I haven't needed to actually test them yet, because it's still winter and rainy, but I've started adding them to bare ground, or when I plant stuff.


Problems:

- finding enough bottles! We generate very little recycling which is really holding up my plans for a recycled garden empire (I've been trying to do a bottle tower for ages and never have enough bottles! Also see: the incremental rate of mulching for new beds... I'm almost ready to go raid recycling piles on recycling day).

- burying the bottles. They have to be quite deep, so it's tricky to add them around existing plants. The best time to add them is when planting something new.

- difficult to judge the right bottle size or slit size (it always comes out much faster than expected!). I've got some much smaller ones in the containers and the bigger 2 litre bottles in the garden.

Considerations

- may be worth adding a filter over the opening to stop things falling in

- may need to add sand or something similar to slow the rate of water seepage

- could be an interesting way to disperse fertiliser directly to the plant roots (e.g. something that will dissolve like Blood and Bone or compost teas)

- they look a bit ugly, but should be covered up by plants over time if you put them in the right place.

- you probably need at least one per large plant or tree, so that can add up to a lot of buried bottles.

- can just not bury them and have them slowly drip down from the surface but I like the idea of getting the water in as deeply as possible.




More info
http://www.providentliving.org.nz/bottle-drip-irrigation/
http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-garden/2009/06/pop-bottle-drip-irrigation/
http://gardenandhome.co.za/article_t2.aspx?id=50568

Weeds and Peas

Just a quick picture update.

I held off on eating all the peas for a week or two and managed to harvest a pile of them last week. The dwarf peas are definitely better than the Easy Peasy ones (I think they must be a snow pea variety, maybe) at this point in the season (I've found that the Easy Peasies just aren't as sweet now, even the new ones).

I did promptly eat most of them after carefully shelling them.

White Moth Vine

Aaaand the awful moth vine that was climbing over the fence from the neighbours has been removed! It's a terrible weed, and I kept chopping it back but it just regrew. It looks like the edible choko vine, but isn't anything like it.

http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/threats-and-impacts/weeds/common-weeds-in-new-zealand/moth-plant/

Pictured: The vine shortly after being viciously cut back.

I pulled all the pods off a few months back, when I realised what it was. They're full of fluffy seed masses that disperse widely given the chance.

They all went into a plastic sack to rot. Once I was convinced that they were thoroughly dead, I added them to the Drowning Bin.

One reason it's nasty is that the sap drips like milk and can cause skin irritation. It's supposed to be poisonous as well and kill things that eat it (including butterflies).

Tradescantia

The other main garden weed is the Tradescantia (locally known as Wandering Jew). If there is a plant that I would love never to see again, it's this one.

http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/threats-and-impacts/weeds/common-weeds-in-new-zealand/tradescantia/

It grows everywhere, sneaking through the roots and amongst the other plants, then builds up in a thick mass and smothers everything.

But you can't just get rid of it. No. It's resistant or immune to most normal herbicides, and it grows back from practically nothing. I have found random stalks with a single leaf on still growing happily a month after I dropped it on the deck. It survives being smothered and drowned, and just starts growing on top of the bits that died. I have only managed to kill it completely after four months in the drowning bin, and I had to push down the floating mass a few times, because it kept growing.

Luckily there isn't a lot of it, but it keeps sneaking in under the fences.

Onion Weed

This darned thing is taking over my lawn (especially where the ground has been disturbed). A close relative of onions, garlic and chives, it's very easy to identify by the smell. It's also edible, but as I hate the taste of the allium family, that doesn't really help.

Here you can see the onion weed after a recent lawn mower massacre. It grows back fast, and is darker and bigger than the grass. 

It's a bulb plant, and each bulb produces much smaller brown bulbs that get lost very easily in the soil when you dig them up. The only sure way to kill it is either very strong poisons (as it is resistant and keeps growing back), or to starve it. You starve it by repeatedly cutting it (while it tries to regrow and new bulbs pop up leaves all the time), or by mulching over it. I'm currently attempting the latter in the worst spot - which actually, isn't where I was digging the most. It was where the ground was completely bare in summer, so there is no competition from the grass.

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).

Chilean Guavas and Dwarf Manukas

My dwarf manukas and Chilean guava cuttings arrived. All the Huia cuttings had lovely flowers all over them.


I potted all the Chilean guavas into larger pots (which they can grow into, and then I'll repot them into REALLY BIG POTS). The manuka plants are (mostly) going down the side of the drive, which is not really a great spot to grow things (the soil is both clay, pebble and pumice! Very weird). It's full of weeds, but I weeded and planted six of the manuka plants and mulched with bark, so I now have one tiny neat section.

 I'll probably need about 50 plants if I wanted to do the whole length the same way... I'll have to think about it. All of them being the same would be boring (though I am mixing species; still, they basically look the same, they just flower at different times and will grow to slightly different tiny sizes). I'm avoiding putting anything delicate or edible down there, because it's not a great spot (though gets lots of sun), it's a bit too far for easy watering (manukas are super tough and can be ignored forever once they start growing), and because there's a highish chance of random car/people damage.

I'm also going to be planting strawberries this week - lots of them.

More Chilean Guavas, Peas and Dwarf Manukas

The Huia I planted a couple of months ago is
still tiny, but flowering at last.

I've ordered five more chilean guava bushes and a bunch of dwarf manukas (found a nursery selling off all their little cuttings, so i got them all for about $2.50 each instead of $15). I will then have ten Chilean guava bushes!

I currently have four in the garden around the place, and one in a retaining wall/rockery bed.  (The three decently sized ones which will produce maybe half a bowl of fruit this year, the other two - from Bunnings - are tiny). I'll keep most of the new ones in pots. BIG pots.

They're awesome plants; they don't need full sunlight, and grow in pretty much any soil, and have no real diseases or pests. They're like blueberry bushes that you don't have to worry about. They're also self fertile, and after 3-4 years will be producing 1-2 kg of fruit (and escalating with size). I can prune them, plant them out, keep them in pots... you can even topiary them!

Manuka Wiri Kerry, complete with some flowers

I've got three already, two tiny little Huias that just sit in corners being bee attractants (hopefully), and a larger one (Wiri Kerry, I think) with crimson flowers. I've planted that one as a backdrop to the apple/herb/broccoli bed, as it is large enough to be seen, looks rather striking in contrast and should be flowering around the same time as the apples.

And best of all, the fruit is lovely, and can be cooked or eaten raw, and easily given away if I have too much of it. It's super reliable, and the birds apparently ignore the berries until they are overripe. By which point I will have eaten them all anyway.The dwarf manukas are a mix of Huia and Kiwi (slightly different sizes and flowers). I intend to plant them down the edge of the driveway, as they won't get to big, will look really nice, and will be very low maintenance. Manukas are tough plants! Plus, the more natives and flowers around, the better.



The peas are still coming! The Easy Peasy ones are my favourite, because you can eat the whole pod, but the dwarf bush ones were more likely to survive. Some plants are starting to die off now, but there are plenty still coming into flower.

Unripe dwarf peas

Easy Peasy pea pod ready to eat!

The Meyer lemon is covered in buds. Far too many for it to bear, so I'm sure plenty will drop off, but it's nice to see. It seems pretty happy in its makeshift laundry basket lined with weed mat - as is the banana, which now has seven leaves, and the new leaves are three times the size of the ones it had one arrival.

Meyer lemon flower buds

Happy banana tree!

I also have to remember to go hunt for the dwarf beans, as they are always hidden under the leaves.
I should have two peaches and another columnar apple arriving next month. I want to plant one peach, and pot the other (the apple is easy to stick anywhere - fantastic for small gardens, though apparently not the best tasting apples). 

Dwarf bean lurking under the greenery

The Heritage raspberry (autumn bearing) has run out of ripe fruit, but flowered and is producing more. The summer bearing Nootka variety is also putting out new growth around the base.

Heritage raspberry fruit

My broccoli plants are rather fascinating. I had all my seeds come up (which I didn't plan on), and had at least a dozen plants (after giving some away). Broccoli needs a lot of space, so I've semi-accidentally staggered all of mine by staggering the transplants into larger pots (and eventually the ground - any seedlings that went straight in the ground were chomped almost instantly by slugs).

So I now have some very tiny ones that I only just potted (I was growing them in the little peat pots), some twice the size from the week before, and six or seven larger ones in big pots. And then two huge ones in the ground, that used to be the same size as the other large potted plants. Once they hit the limits of their container, they just stop dead. I'm looking forward to being able to harvest broccoli over several weeks now.

 These broccoli are all the same age and were photographed at the same time!

The last seedling in their peat pots (not doing too well - right before I transplanted them)

Seedlings I potted out a week before - twice the size!

Broccoli I planted about a month ago, that has reached its limits

Broccoli that I planted out in the garden (one each side of the tiny dwarf apple tree) a week ago - already significantly bigger than the potted plants.

And I've bought a Hungry Bin (flow through worm farm/composting system). I could have made one myself (for a lot less money), but this one is:

a) compact (and my garden space is small, so that's important)
b) really well designed (easy to use, no vermin can get in, looks nice)
c) easy to 'harvest' soil and worm tea from so that I can just add it to the garden over time (rather than a big 'dig up the whole thing and use it and pick all the worms out' effort).
d) combines composting and worm farming really well, so I get the worm farm benefits for the garden, and the food waste disposal benefits for the house. It's also more efficient than a standard worm farm.
e) supports a local small ecobusiness

The borage plant is huge, flowering profusely, and attracting bees.

Fruit!

Easy Peasy variety all over the quince sapling.

I've planted plenty more things since the first post, and have a lot of photos to do something with at some point.

But I just wanted to note that all my pea plants started flowering (except the ones that are too small) over the last couple of weeks, and peas have been appearing this week.

There's a definite difference between the two varieties:

- the dwarf plants are bushy, have white flowers, more peas in the pod and taste more bitter.
- the climbers are more fragile and rambling, have purple and white flowers, inconsistent numbers of peas and taste much sweeter. They're similar to sugar snap peas.

Dwarf pea flower

I have also been getting a raspberry every day or two off my raspberry plant (I bought two and planted them together in a giant pot, so that they won't take over. One came with tiny green raspberries on it). As it's only a single stalk/branch, I'm quite impressed at how many I've been able to eat. Some of them were rotten, and one had a little worm in, but the others are lovely.

Delicious Heritage raspberries

The Meyer, as well as plenty of dwarf peas.

I have a second lemon, a Meyer, which is now planted in a DIY pot made out of a laundry basket lined with weed mat. I'm hoping for the same 'air pruning' effect. It seems pretty healthy, and has a single lemon on.


The lemon withered and dropped off the Yen Ben, which was good as I probably needed to pull it off anyway. It's in a horrible spot, and all the plants around it (marigolds and peas) are doing badly, but it looks pretty healthy. Lemons are tough, so once it is established, it should do well (it gets a lot of wind and the soil is dry and hard).

I've had to pull about fifteen flowers off the tiny lime bush. It finally got the hint and started growing instead.

Sometime in the last month, most of my first plantings seem to have finally gotten their roots established and started growing; the lime and guava have doubled in size - along with everything else in the garden! Weeds, compost, disturbance and watering are not a good combination. I almost lost some plants completely, but luckily I remembered their approximate location and was able to uncover them.

New growth around the Nootka and the
Heritage raspberries, as well as a
 few peas and a weed.

I have been steadily working on weeding and mulching around everything. It's half done. My chamomile seedlings are all ready to plant, and I planted out half my broccoli seedlings about three or fours weeks ago - which are now five times the size of the unplanted ones. I planted a lot of chamomile seedlings, because I had so many that I ran out of room for them. A lot of them got eaten by something, but it meant I could thin out the rest, so those are all really big now. I bought a few full size chamomile plants, just to get the lawn going a bit, but it's going to need a lot more work.

Oh, yes, fruit update; looking forward to the pea harvest. Noticed a tiny green blackcurrant on the blackcurrant bush, and saw a little green orange on the orange tree in a pot. And I got to eat the feijoa off my feijoa bambina. It was a really good one, with thin skin and a lovely flavour, so I'm looking forward to next year.

Even if only half my trees produce decent fruit, I'm going to be swimming in produce. I think I've managed to plan it out so I get a harvest distributed throughout the year, so it may not be too overwhelming. It's really nice to go outside and find something to eat off a bush.

Hebe "Heebie Jeebies"

I now have three apple trees, and another on its way. All of them are dwarf or columnar varieties, I'm just trying to decide where to plant the second dwarf (it's a teeny little thing in a pot). The best place for it is unfortunately the spot I'm saving for one of my peach trees (arriving in July).

I also bought some small native bushes to go along the exposed fence line with bad soil and too much pine tree. Natives are tough, and I can't plant fruit trees there. In order, I have a dwarf kowhai, a type of rata, a divaricating bush with a latin name (fantastic windbreak, apparently), and a lovely hebe with blue flowers all over it (most of them have pink flowers it seems). I'll look up the actual names for another post. But they should all attract birds, bees and miscellaneous insects, and three out of four have fantastic flowers. I'm also planning on getting some dwarf manukas and planting them around between things.

The weather has turned very rainy, but there is still a lot of sunshine - perfect growing weather, really, and plants are growing like crazy after the dead heat of summer. One mostly dead, dry patch (with weird powdery soil, probably from building waste) has been smothered in plants after I mixed in some decent compost, planted a satsuma and some herbs and actually watered it.

The banana tree is doing well in its makeshift pot, and is just putting out its seventh leaf (seems like one leaf a month). The nasty moth vine is regrowing over the fence, so I'll be cutting that back again, and the catnip has turned into a bush! The Italian parsley by the lime tree is bigger than the lime (I grab handfuls to eat when I go past), and the marigolds have all shown a lovely range of flowers. The tarragon is a bit smothered under the lime and the parsley and the marigolds, but it's still there. One dill plant has vanished, but the other is going strong. Overall, everything is healthy and alive, I just need to weed a lot more around some of the plants.