Tuesday 7 July 2015

Farewelling Our Garden

Fruit Trees Go In!

So, the folks at Woodbridge Fruit Trees were kind enough to  get my apple trees ready for pick-up late yesterday. They went in the ground this afternoon after it stopped raining. Using the KNNN method of espaliering, I've put them in at an angle and run the main stem along the bottom wire, being careful to gently bend the stem along the wire so as not to splinter it. Here's what they look like ...



From left to right, we've got a Cox's Orange Pippin, a Beauty of Bath and a Vista Bella. And in case you're wondering: no I didn't choose them because of their seductive-sounding names!
The folks at Woodbridge say that the Cox's "must be the world's most revered apple". I first encountered it when I was picking apples the year I arrived in Tasmania. Getting to eat Cox's straight off the tree was definitely the highlight of working on that orchard.
Beauty of Bath is "a very popular old apple from the southwest of England", with a "fairly sharp but sweet flavour and quite aromatic" Sounds perfect!. It is one of the earliest ripening apples and, if we're lucky, should be ready to pick  around Christmas.
Finally, Vista Bella. According to Nik and Steve down at Woodbridge it's "the best of the early apples ... smallish in size with a lovely perfumed crisp and juicy flesh".
All of these trees ripen early, which suits us as we like to escape to the big island to the north in the autumn and winter.

Garlic Update

A couple of weeks ago I posted that our garlic was starting to emerge from the ground. I think it's all up now, braving the cold rain that's been falling on and off the last week or so. Here's what our crop of about 45 little spears currently looks like ...


Although just small at the moment they look pretty robust and well established to us.

We're excited about our trip away, but also about how things we've planted will look in the garden when we get home. Although it's not quite halfway through winter, the cherry tree, blueberry bushes and  jostaberry bush have all started to push out buds. The fig tree we put in last year looks like it's also starting to move, so it will be great to get home when the days are getting longer and things are starting to blossom. And won't it be great to pull all the weeds and dig up those sections of the garden I've been neglecting!

This will be the last post on this blog for a couple of months. You can keep track of what we're up to on the Not Just the Nullarbor blog.

I've had a sneak peak at the forecast for Perth and it looks like we could be in luck for our first three days of riding ...


... so we're optimistic about the start of our trip.

Cheers for now!