LexRuth1's Edible Backyard

Joined:31/08/09 Updated:31/08/09 Frost:
Location: Jellat Jellat

About My Edible Backyard

Why LexRuth1 Love's Edible Plants

We have a 4 acre block on  a north facing hillside. Soil is full of shale & rocks but the soil is not bad. PH is around 6. Annual rainfall should be about 875mm but we've only had 320mm in the past year. Winter nights get cold but we're unlikely to get a frost because we're well up on the hillside. Summer days can get very hot - this year we had 43C - but, normally, we'd be classed as 'temperate". We're about 8km from the sea.

Because of birds and fruit bats we have to group all of our edible fruits together in an area that we can completely enclose with netting. Citrus and avocados are outside the orchard area.

We get strong winds - either north-east or south-west so trees like mangos and avocados get wind-burn.

We have lived here for less than a year and, in that time have planted about 40 fruit trees, 300 natives and a few exotics and established a reasonable sized vegetable garden - about 100 square metres. We've also set up a flower garden and planted about 20 roses and a couple of hundred flowering plants of one sort or another. We've already harvested around 30 pumpkins and about 50kg of potatoes and 60 or 70 sweet corn.

The vegetable garden currently has lettuce, peas, broad beans, string beans, radish, cabbage, cauliflower, strawberries, asparagus, carrots, beetroot, leeks, spring onions, brown onions, garlic, rhubarb and herbs.

The thin top soil needed building up so we've used our trailer to bring in many loads of compost, chicken manure and cow manure.

Comments

Fruit Tree Forum Contributions

LexRuth1 Forum Contributions
Striking pawpaw seeds - Thanks for all the useful info on this subject. I have a couple of questions. First, when is the ideal time to plant the seeds? Second, has anyone tried to grow them south of Sydney (but in a frost free climate zone)?..6173 days 1hrs
Very sick pawpaw - We recently purchased a dozen or so fruit trees from Daleys - and they all arrived in outstanding condition. We followed the planting instructions and tended the trees each day. For Mothers' Day we went away for a long weekend. When we arrived back al..6190 days 15hrs