Blueberry Hill?

I am thinking of renaming my place Blueberry Hill after the number of blueberry bushes that I now have producing fruit! The only problem being that I am at the bottom of the hill, not up the top?

How it started?

It all started with one little blueberry bush that I found on the ‘take me home and love me’ tray at the Big Green Shed! The poor thing was soo close to dead! It didn’t even have a label and was reduced to $1.00. This bush has become so productive that I wrote a separate blog about it. As a result I was given another 2 blueberry bushes that people had not been able to get to produce fruit. Since then, these blueberries have flowered and produced a couple of great crops of blueberries!

Since then I have found more blueberry plants on the ‘take me home and love me’ tray at the Big Green shed. Of course I just can’t resist these temptations?

Grow and thrive

As they grow and thrive in part shade at my place, they have become a great filler plant. I have them in pots as well as in the ground. They are great for under larger fruit trees and deciduous flowering trees.

I cannot believe how different the fruit taste straight from the bush! They are sooo sweet. Absolutely none of the tartness or blandness you can get from store bought blueberries. And the size! They can be double the size of the store bought fruit!

And what’s even better is that they are good for your health, with research showing that the anthocyanins that cause the bright blue colour are helpful in combating several human diseases and may even prevent some cancers!

So, why not grow some yourself?

Happy gardening from your edible garden guru ?

The post Are Blueberry’s Easy to Grow? appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Now before anyone goes into a frenzy about how it is not good to feed our native birds, I will start by saying this posts is not about leaving our “human” foods like breads or seeds for our native birds.

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

It is about planting fruits and vegetables that our native birds and other wildlife want to eat! And one particularly cheeky Cockatoo who has moved into my garden!

I had noticed recently that when I ventured into my fruit garden I was finding at least one empty passionfruit rind each morning.

At first I was worried about fruit bats. But only one passionfruit was missing at a time. And it had been completely cleaned of seeds and pulp.

Then I worried that the rats had returned. But NO. When the rats invaded they didn’t just eat one piece of fruit at a time. They ate all the fruit, plus the leaves, stem, in fact the whole damn plant! They leave a scorched earth in their wake! But I digress.

So, I figured I was possibly feeding a possum. In my experience the possums are pretty polite. They normally only take one or two pieces of fruit, so I figured I had enough to share.

Anyway, I happened to be watering the garden the other morning when I came upon the sneaky passionfruit eater. It was a very happy, sulphur crested cockatoo. I just had to take a short video of him 🙂

I hope that you enjoy it!

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, your Personal Gardening Expert

The post Sharing the love: Feeding our Native Birds appeared first on Delectable Garden.

I was giving a presentation to a Horticultural group the other day about Edible Gardening, and mentioned that my Tropical Apricot fruit tree has finally deigned to flower!

The group were very interested in an Apricot tree that would grow in the sub-tropics! Most Apricot trees need a certain amount of chill to flower and produce fruit. I had to explain that it wasn’t a traditional apricot, but a fruit tree named a tropical apricot because the fruit have a strong apricot taste!

The discussion got me thinking about what fruit trees grow easily in the sub-tropics. Which ones are productive and easy to grow.

So here is my list of the Top 10 Fruit trees you can grow in the sub-tropics.

The following list of fruit trees is in no particular order, and all of them are currently flourishing in my garden.

Number 1: Mango

Ripe mango

Mango is one of those fruits that just instantly say “tropical”. There was a time when nearly every backyard in Queensland had a mango tree, but with the suburban backyard shrinking this is no longer the case. However, if you have the space this is definitely a fruit tree to grow. There are now many dwarf varieties that give great value for the space they take up.

I currently have a Kensington Pride or Bowen Mango which I think have the best flavour. I also have a Nam Doc Mai which is the Thai or Asian mango. It is fantastic in Green Mango salad.

Mangoes are easy to grow in the tropics and sub-tropics. Just make sure they have plenty of sunlight, well drained soil, food and water.

Number 2: Davidson Plum

Davidson plum fruit

I had not even heard of the Davidson plum until a few years ago when I went to a native foods workshop. I was so taken with Davidson plums that I now have two fruit trees growing in my garden.

The Davidson plum fruit is very sour. Too sour to eat raw in my opinion, but it makes a delightful jam and chutney.

Davidson plum trees are easy to grow. However it can take a few years to bear fruits.

Number 3: Tropical Peach

Tropical peaches

Most peaches need winter chill to produce fruit. However the tropical peach is a low chill variety that grows really well in the sub-tropics.

This is a great fruit tree as it will grow and produce fruit even in a large pot.

My tropical peach is growing in a large pot and this year the tree is covered in bright pink blossoms which have all set to fruit. I am hoping for a bumper crop of peaches.

The fruit have a lovely flavour and easily rival any of the traditional peaches in taste.

Number 4: Pawpaw

Male Pawpaw fruit

I did not used to be a fan of Pawpaw until I tried the fruit when it was home-grown, straight from the tree. It’s like being introduced to a totally different fruit! Thanks to my cousin Neil for the introduction else I would still turn up my nose at Pawpaws!

I have two Pawpaw fruit trees. The largest is actually a male Pawpaw tree, that I planted for the beautiful perfume that the flowers have. However, my male Pawpaw has transgender issues and regularly produces fruit.

Pawpaw trees can easily be grown in large pots, so are suitable for courtyard gardens or small backyards. I often use the fruit green in a Thai Green Pawpaw salad.

Number 5: Citrus

Lemon tree

There are soo many different varieties of citrus that you could almost make a list just of the top 10 citrus fruit trees. You can choose between traditional lemon trees, lime trees, grapefruit, mandarine and lemonade trees. All these citrus grow well in the subtropics.

Once established a citrus tree will just keep on providing fruit, as long as you meet its requirements of plenty of food, some compost and water!

Citrus trees grow well in large pots, so are suitable for small gardens and courtyards.

Number 6: Tropical Nectarine

Tropical Nectarine

Most nectarines need winter chill to produce fruit. However there are several tropical nectarine varieties available. These are low chill varieties that grow really well in the sub-tropics.

I have both the White Satin tropical nectarine and the dwarf red sunset fruit trees. The Dwarf sunset has rich deep crimson leaves.

Both my tropical nectarines are growing in the garden, but they will grow and produce fruit in a large pot. The dwarf red sunset only grows to around a metre high so it great for the small courtyard garden. The fruit have a lovely flavour, but you do need to be vigilant for fruit fly as it is a big attractant.

Number 7: Blueberry

Blueberries

Although not strictly a fruit tree, Blueberries are a great shrub to have in your edible garden. They are so easy to grow in the subtropics that I have about 7 different Blueberry plants.

They grow well both in pots and in the ground and will provide fruit all year round, although most fruit is provided in spring.

Blueberry plants are pretty hardy and very little attacks the fruit, although one client has complained that she has to fight her chickens for the fruit as they have developed a love of blueberries!

Number 8: Tropical Apricot

Tropical apricot in flower

The tropical apricot is not a traditional apricot as all true apricots need a winter chill to produce fruit. Rather the tropical apricot is a berry that was developed in Florida.

I have had a tropical apricot growing in a large pot for about 4 years now. However it has yet to give me any fruit.

Apparently the fruit has a strong apricot taste, hence the name, but is very sour and needs to be cooked to make it edible. My tropical apricot has been covered in blossom this year so I am hoping for my first crop!

Number 9: Pomegranate

Pomegranate

If more people knew how easy Pomegrante fruit trees were to grow I think there would be a lot more backyards growing pomegranates.

The tree is deciduous even in the sub-tropics, so you have bare branches over winter but this is more than made up for with the flush of spring growth and the vivid orange flowers.

Almost all the flowers seem to get pollinated and result in fruit. After the first year I decided that I needed to reduce the number of fruit on the tree as it nearly toppled under the weight! However, I regularly get a lovely crop of pomegranates.

I love pomegranates in a fresh dressing over summer salads.

Number 10: Jaboticaba

Jaboticaba

The Jaboticaba is probably the least known of the Fruit trees covered in this article.

It is a tropical plant and although it can grow as far south as the central coast.

The Jaboticaba is unusual in that the fruit are actually produced on the trunk of the tree. The fruit look like grapes so it is sometimes called the tropical grape tree.

It grows in full sun to semi to shade and has reasonable water water requirements.

These are my picks of the Top 10 Fruit trees to grow in the sub-tropics. Let us know in the comments area which fruits are your favourites to grow!

Happy Gardening from Rohanne, Your Personal Garden Expert 🙂

The post Top 10 Must Have Fruit Trees To Grow in the Sub-tropics appeared first on Delectable Garden.

And I am sure that I am not alone in my frustrations!

Jar with stubbornly affixed label

So why is this such a frustration?

Well, as regular readers of my blogs would know, I love turning excess produce into jams and preserves. And you need something to store the jams and preserves in! Which means that you get to recycle old jars.

If you have put a lot of effort into making your own jams and preserves, you really don’t want the credit going to some commercial company! Therefore, you need to be able to remove the old jar labels. This is not always easy!

I’ve tried the old Eucalyptus oil. I’ve tried soaking overnight in soapy water and various other solutions to remove the old jar labels.

And I’ve even tried contacting some of the manufacturers to ask them to use different glues, all to no avail.

Well all this is behind me now, as I have found a simple solution that I just had to share.

Forgive me if you already know this and I am the last to know!

Cleaned jar without label

To remove the old jar label all you have to do is spray the offending label with WD40 and wait half an hour. Really stubborn labels may need a second treatment, but it really works (see photo after treatment. This jar was donated to me)!!

It also works to remove any remaining glue residue off glass jars you have previously tried to clean. And, even better, it removes those pesky pricing labels off mirrors, photoframes and other glass pressies.

As more and more glass jars are replaced by plastic, the recycling of those old jars that are left is going to become more important! The replacement plastic jars just melt when you try pouring hot jam into them!

Now I am off to produce more bountiful crops to turn into future preserves.

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, your Personal Garden Expert
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I can’t believe that my vanilla bean orchid is out in flower again. I mean I shouldn’t be surprised as it is September, and it flowers every September. It’s just that it seems to have come around sooo quickly!

Vanilla bean flower

For those not in the know, the Vanilla Bean is produced by the Vanilla Bean orchid.

It is the only edible fruit produced by an orchid anywhere in the world. I have read a lot of blogs that say that it’s difficult to grow, but I have found Vanilla Beans easy to grow in Brisbane.

They are very easy to strike and generally a trouble-free, pest-free plant.

Vanilla bean vine in flower

The only work involved is if you want to produce vanilla beans. And why wouldn’t you? They retail for about $400 a kilo, making them the second most expensive spice in the world!

Most of the work arises because the flowers need to be hand pollinated.

In Mexico, where the Vanilla Bean is native there is a little bee, the melipona bee, that pollinates the flower. Everywhere else the flowers have to be hand pollinated.

This isn’t really difficult, but it is onerous as you have a really small window of opportunity to do the pollination. And it takes some practice. The best method I have found uses a matchstick or toothpick to collect the pollen, and insert it into the stamen. I have also read that you should cross pollinate the flowers, ie use pollen from one flower to pollinate another flower. I don’t do this, but still get lots of healthy beans.

Flowers need to be pollinated early morning. The flower opens at 6 am and if I haven’t pollinated it by 9am then forget it, even though the flower will still be open until about 1pm.

fresh green vanilla beans

I find those flowers pollinated after 9am don’t seem to be successful. Even though I am fairly sure I did the pollination right!

You know you have been successful when the flower stays on the vine and slowly develops into a bean. Un-pollinated flowers drop off the vine within 2 days.

I average around 80-90 beans per year, which is around a 15 percent success.

Those beans that do form then hang on the vine for about 8-9 months (see photo). After this they can be harvested and cured, which is where the real work is!

I have harvested and cured the beans with mixed success. However, as I am mainly producing for my own use, I find it just as easy to leave the beans to ripen on the vine.

The smell of vanilla as I come in my front entrance at the moment is intoxicating! It smells like a lovely vanilla cookie after you’ve been baking or a vanilla scented candle.

Fermented Vanilla beans

Vanilla is actually a spice. I use mine a lot in cooking, both in sweet and savoury foods.

You can also store a whole vanilla bean in a jar of caster sugar and use the vanilla sugar in cakes, puddings, pies and ice-creams. Whole vanilla beans can be bruised and infused in milk or cream for making ice-cream and sweet puddings.

Growing Vanilla Beans

If you want to try to grow your own vanilla beans, you will need a warm sheltered position. I have three vines. Two are growing in diffuse light under a covered pergola (laserlight). And one in about 50 percent sun, climbing an old palm stump.

As I said above, they require little more than a wall, stump or trellis to grow up. However, they are a very vigorous vine once they get established! That cute little vine you get from the nursery will quickly grow into a thick, heavy vine. The leaves are quite fleshy and will easily grow to around 20cm long, and the stem will easily reach 1cm thick a diameter. What this means is that they need sturdy support to grow. They are not going to be happy growing on a metre high coir grow-pole for very long!

Don’t get fussy about the soil. They mostly feed from air roots, and none of mine are still rooted in the pots they started in! In fact the adult plant is epiphytic and won’t produce flowers until it has severed its roots from the soil. This means to feed them you have to give them an occasional foliar feed and spritz with water.

The vanilla grows easily from cuttings, with an almost 100 percent strike rate. It will take a few years before they produce flowers. I’ve read that it takes up to 4 years before flowering, but mine produced at around two and a half years. I watch for when they are happily growing and have lost their connection with soil. Then I know to expect flowers next September.

I haven’t tried growing them in cool or temperate regions, but have read several success stories. If you want to try, I recommend a greenhouse.

Happy gardening

Rohanne, Your Edible Garden Guru

Comment

Hi Rohanne,

I just read your article about vanilla beans.

You said you left some pods ripen on the vine.  I have few pods ripening on the vine at the moment but I can’t find any info whether I can use them for cooking /baking as is or I still have to cure them.

Their smell is strong, few split and one of them oozing oily aromatic substance. Thank you for your time and help.
Kind regards,
Kris V

________________________________________________________

Hi Kris

Thank you for your enquiry regarding vanilla beans.

In answer to your question, Yes, you can use the vanilla beans that have ripened on the vine without any further curing. The beans that have ripened on the vine have been cured naturally.

The only difference between vine-cured beans and beans that have been picked and hand-cured is in the amount of vanilla essence in the bean. If you want a really high quality bean, for selling then it is best to pick and cure the beans.

However, for personal use, I find the vine ripened beans just as good. After all that is what used to happen before “man” intervened and wanted to improve on nature!

I have had a few beans split, but none of them have oozed any liquid. I would assume that the liquid that is oozing is just vanilla essence. To be on the safe side I probably would not use this bean, but the others should be fine.

I wipe mine with a damp cloth to remove any dust and contaminants and use them normally in sweets, custards, jams etc. Congratulations on producing some beans. I have had a lot of gardeners tell them how disappointed they are that they have not been successful in producing vanilla beans.

Regards Rohanne

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I was talking with a client the other day about some of the more unusual fruit trees you can grow in the subtropics.

Brazilian Cherry

One of the fruit trees growing successfully in my garden at the moment is the Brazilian cherry, also known as Pitanga or Surinam cherry.

This fruit tree is really attractive with pinky bronze new growth, which changes to glossy green as it matures.

Fruit of the Brazilian cherry are a brilliant scarlet, and are shaped a bit like a miniature pumpkin (see photo). The fruit has a large seed.

They have a pleasant flavour similar to cherries but with a slight piney aftertaste. This is due to the high levels of resin in the fruit tree. This aftertaste disappears if the fruit is refrigerated or cooked.

Close-up of the Cherry fruit

The Brazilians use the fruit to make flavoured vinegars and liquours. I am hoping to get a big enough crop to try and make some jam this year.

The Brazilian cherry fruit tree is almost too easy to grow, and has the potential to become an environmental weed.

The seeds easily take root wherever they fall and grow into more fruit trees. To  stop this, ensure that you pick the fruit as it ripens so birds won’t carry the seeds away.

The Brazilian cherry grows quickly, and requires minimal care once established. It prefers full sun and well drained soil. And, it can make as attractive hedge if you are looking for a quick growing plant.

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, Your Personal Garden Expert

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Top 10 Must Have Fruit Trees To Grow in the Sub-tropics

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I have just picked another bag full of limes from my “Sublime” lime tree. This is the third bag full of limes that I have picked this week!

Well at least we won’t get Scurvy

Bag of limes

And there are still plenty more fruit on the tree and more flowers coming!

This is the biggest crop the lime tree has given me since it first went in the garden.

More limes on the tree

I thought that I was going to lose the tre,e as it got a decided lean on it after Cyclone Debbie made herself known to us. But, if anything, it is producing more fruit than ever!

I have read that it is not uncommon for fruit trees to produce unusual levels of fruit following a cyclone. The idea seems to be that the trees feel their life is threatened so they ramp up production to make sure they survive

I often send a little thank you to Sharon, Di, Wendy and Jill who gifted the Sublime to me.

The Sublime is a variety of the Tahitian lime, but with smaller fruit. The advantages are that it is seed free and has a very thin rind, so you get to use all the fantastic juice, which is slightly sweeter than Tahitian limes.

Sublime Lime

My only problem now is that I am running out of recipes to use all the limes. I may have to try my hand at lime marmalade. Not a big fan of marmalade, but it will make great Chrissy gifts and thank you gifts for clients

Happy gardening

Rohanne, Your Personal Garden Expert

Related Posts

Top 10 Must Have Fruit Trees To Grow in the Sub-tropics

The post Gardening: Grow Your Own Sublime Limes in the Subtropics appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Davidson Plums

I was soo excited the other morning to find that my Davidson plum tree has finally given me some fruit!

This tree has been in my garden for 6 years. While it has been happily growing skyward, up to this year, it has refused to give me any fruit.

Everyone else has been boasting about the fruit they have picked, often off younger trees. So last winter I gave my tree a severe talking to, and told it that unless it started to fruit we would be considering its future! I’m not sure if that is what worked, but it has given finally me some plums! Yay

So what is a Davidson Plum?

For those who haven’t heard of Davidson plums, or haven’t tried them, they are an Australian native rainforest tree. The tree a produces a very tart plum-like fruit. Davidson plums were an important part of bush-tucker that has found its way onto high class restaurant tables!

They look very similar to a blood plum in colour, with a beautiful dark purple skin and blood red flesh and soft juicy pulp when ripe. However the fruit is generally considered too tart to eat raw, although the aboriginals didn’t seem to mind the tartness!

Plum jam

It makes a fabulous jam that makes normal plum jam taste bland by comparison.

Possible Health benefits?

Most noteworthy though is the fact that the Davidson plum is being researched for its possible health benefits. It is high in antioxidants, being rich in both anthocyanins and lutein. These are two micronutrients which are believed to protect against age-related diseases such as dementia, deterioration of sight and heart disease as well as some cancers.

Davidson plums are an excellent source of potassium. They are also a significant non-dairy source of calcium. The plums are a good source of Vitamin E and zinc, which help improve skin health and reduce the signs of aging.  Finally, the Davidson plums are being researched for their potential ability to reduce high blood pressure and obesity.

If you should be lucky enough to stumble across a source of Davidson plums, whether fresh or as a jam or cordial then I recommend you try them out. Not only will your taste buds thank you, but so may your health.

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, your Personal Garden Expert

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