Twelve Months of Fruit from our Garden
One of the attractions of this place was that it had some old established fruit trees. Two Oranges, two mandarins, a lemon, two pears, a fig, a mulberry and a passionfruit vine. The basis of our orchard. I have planted additional trees and vines to try and see if we can be self sufficient in fruit for a whole year. At the moment I feel this is within our reach. We have been eating mulberries from the three trees for about six weeks now, there are two very small new trees and one older trees that has been quite neglected. All of them provided loads of berries for eating fresh and preserving. I have put a lot in the freezer and made a small amount of jam. The Mulberries have been supplemented by strawberries, a few raspberries, some passssionfruit and rhubarb. If you look really hard you can still find a few mulberries on the trees although the little turkeys discovered they could fly up into the tree that is outside the yard and cleaned most of those up.
Just as they are finishing the first of the plums are ripe. We ate the first two yesterday and they are delicious, juicy and bursting with flavour.
I think the peaches will be next, then apricots, nectarines and the dark plums. We should also continue to get some berries through the summer. I expect the passionfruits will be ready from about mid January followed by grapes into February.I have also planted rock melons and watermelons that I hope will do quite well this year.The old fig trees up the back have fruit on them this year so maybe we will get some of them and the new trees also look like they will have a crop.
March and April should see the apples,pears and quinces ripen and by late May we should have the first of the citrus which will take us right through until Mulberry time again. Our lemon tree fruits for most of the year and there is generally some rhubarb to pick as well. Hopefully we will get a lot of summer fruit preserved and that will add variety throughout the year.
In line wuth our intentions of eating local food if we don't have enough from our garden there are a lot of melons grown around here and some stone fruit.
Just as they are finishing the first of the plums are ripe. We ate the first two yesterday and they are delicious, juicy and bursting with flavour.
I think the peaches will be next, then apricots, nectarines and the dark plums. We should also continue to get some berries through the summer. I expect the passionfruits will be ready from about mid January followed by grapes into February.I have also planted rock melons and watermelons that I hope will do quite well this year.The old fig trees up the back have fruit on them this year so maybe we will get some of them and the new trees also look like they will have a crop.
March and April should see the apples,pears and quinces ripen and by late May we should have the first of the citrus which will take us right through until Mulberry time again. Our lemon tree fruits for most of the year and there is generally some rhubarb to pick as well. Hopefully we will get a lot of summer fruit preserved and that will add variety throughout the year.
In line wuth our intentions of eating local food if we don't have enough from our garden there are a lot of melons grown around here and some stone fruit.
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