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.