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).