It is amazing what you can grow successfully in a suburban garden in Melbourne.
We have a rare fruit expert that works at the nursery on Saturdays. His name is Dennis and here are a few snaps of his spring garden following on from the winter blog.
The first stop is the tamarillo which was the featured in the winter blog. The final crop was over 200 fruits from the one tree and boy were they large, juicy, sweet with no sign of tartness!. So many that the ones that were a bit over ripe were stewed and eaten with vanilla ice cream – yum. The photo shows the tree in spring starting to flower again.
The espaliered ‘Fuyu’ persimmon tree is so lush and full of flowers. Many will fall off when about the size of a five cent piece but there will be plenty to give a crop of large delicious fruit to enjoy.
The Chinese date or Jujube trees are now in full leaf and flower. No temperature is too hot for these trees. I love them as they are so drought resistant and the pale green leaves dance delightfully in the breeze. They produce red fruit with lime green flesh that are crisp and taste like apples or can be dried when the flesh turns brown and soft when they taste like dried dates.
The macadamias have just finished flowering and there is a good set of nuts this year. Four different varieties and bees provide the essential cross pollination that results in each tree producing a bucket full of nuts. Each nut is the size of those in Queensland and the kernel so fresh is yummy and sweet!
The White Sapotes have flowered and there appears to be a good fruit set this year. This one has required a lot of patience and the most difficult problem appears to be pollination. The fruit vary in size from a golf ball to apple and taste like yummy custard.
The young Avocado tree ‘A type’ produced a profusion of blossom in spring which is surprising as it is only two years old. I panicked when the leaves started to fall in spring for no reason but very soon the new leaves appeared. No crop this year but the tree is looking good even after a few hot days. I have purchased another tree a ‘B type’ for pollination next year.
The prize possession of all is the Jaboticaba or Brazilian Tree Grape which is flowering now and will be ripe for Christmas. This beauty produces several crops a year of grape sized black fruit on the trunk and they have white flesh which tastes like a combination of Grape, Lychee and Mangosteen.
The Multi-Level Planter has been replanted for summer salads and now contains lettuces in the bottom, bush cucumbers in the middle and mixed sweet capsicums on the top. Of course tomatoes requiring more space are in separate 300 and 400 mm pots where they can be staked.
Gardenworld has good stocks of many of the above rarer and exotic fruit trees in the warmer months so come in and see what is available or speak to Dennis on Saturday’s for further information on which may be suitable for your garden.