April 2011

The Daley News

John Picone's Exclusion Orchard

At the end of March we were fortunate to have the opportunity to visit John Picone's exclusion orchard to see what he is growing inside the netting and how succussful this approach is.  It was an inspiring day for us to see and taste all of his delicious produce. John has one hectare under total exclusion which keeps out the birds, bats and bugs, as it also keeps out the good bugs he has an inbuilt hive for native bees that pollinate his fruit trees and a flock of resident guinea fowl  pick up any pests that do make it into the orchard as well as fertilizing as they go.  The guinea fowls do not scratch around the roots of the trees like chickens do which makes them easier to manage in a closed orchard system.

Amazing Picture Gallery @ Facebook

The orchard is about two years old, yet is already producing bumper crops of pitaya's, passionfruit, figs and mixed sub tropical fruits. We struggled to pick our favourite fruits of the day but in the end the clear winners were the Pandora Panama Red Passionfruit and all of the different figs, in particular, Picone's Pink Fig and the Catalogna Black.  Because Johns fruits are allowed to ripen fully on the tree the flavour is unsupassable. John's pitayas are an impressive site, they hang off their posts like multi armed octupus and are covered in eye catching bright red fruits, see my blog - Growing Pitaya's for more information on John's fabulous pitaya's.  John obviously has a natural talent for gardening and he is stretching the limits of the plants natural range with many of the trees that he grows, he has the very tropical marang, rambutans and cacao looking vibrant, however they are yet to mature to fruiting stage and his beautiful star apples look very happy in the deep red soil.  The rollinias are fruiting but will not be ready until winter and the pummelo's are enormous as are his abiu.  He has hand pollinated vanilla flowers and has pods ripening on the vine, scrambling up other posts are pepper vines, yams and jicama's.  Jakfruits and dwarf coconuts are grown outside the netting as these are not effected by fruit fly.

At the end of our tour through the exclusion orchard John treated us to a fruit platter of guavas, jujubes, pitaya, figs and the sweetest pineapples we have ever tasted.  If you are local you will find John at the New Brighton Farmers Market on Tuesdays and the Byron Bay Farmers Market on Thursdays.  If you would like to see more photos from the day you may view them here.

Videos

Video: Strangler Figs

Video: Rainforest Trees - How to Buy them to suit your needs

Video Dragon Fruit - Growing, Picking, Cutting and Eating.

Click to view previous Fruit Tree Newsletters