I love nothing more than to find an unexpected present in the garden and in the past couple of weeks I’ve found 3.
The first one is quite common and something that I am quite use to finding around this time of year. A random tomato plant. Every spring, for the past 4 years, the garden surprises me with a tomato seedling in the most peculiar of all places. The first time I noticed this, the tomato plant was growing out of a crack in the wall. The next year, cherry tomatoes appeared in a pile of garden rubbish right down the back of the yard. Last year, I was delighted to find a plant under our back steps. I even kept seeds from this plant and have since sown them into the garden this year with promising signs of good growth. And this year, not letting my expectations down, I have discovered a tomato plant growing next to the grevillea tree right in the front yard! This phenomenon seems to be the result of two things. Firstly, it occurs when birds and other wildlife eat tomatoes and poop out the seedlings in foreign places. The second occurrence takes place when tomato scraps which include seeds are deposited into the compost or get mixed up with the chook scraps and end up somewhere in the garden. The later I believe is what this year’s surprise is a result of. All I need to do now is convince someone that a tomato plant growing in the front yard can be normal once you stop worrying about what others might think of your produce site and accept that soon we will gorging ourselves on bountiful produce delivered free by nature.
The second surprise goes to the mango tree in our backyard which has produced flowers this year. I’m hopeful that the flowers will become fruit but I still have my reservations on whether it will. Mango, being a warm climate fruit, may have difficulty producing in our colder climate winters. The jury is still out but we should know if we have a winner by summer.
Finally, the most exciting discovery in our garden this season goes to an unexpected tree that was thought to be just an ugly deciduous stump with branches only worthy of being cut down. Funnily enough though, it was the cutting of branches that proved its real worth in our garden. Underneath that ugly duckling cover is a peach tree and it turns out that peach trees must be heavily pruned every year in order to re-produce fruit the following year as pruning encourages new growth. Growth will only harbour fruit once and therefore new growth is essential for healthy production. I came across this information while reading a magazine on fruit growing and the article on peaches showed a picture that was similar to what the tree looked like in early spring when it sprouts its flowers and leaves. I then recalled a conversation I had with our neighbour about the previous tenant who had apparently planted a miniature peach tree down the back but we both thought it had not survived its days. After reading the article, I decided to play detective and investigate further. The description matched and the new growth from the previous year was showing signs of promising fruit. Out came the bush saw and down came the old branches. This heavy prune seemed to do the tree a world of good and within weeks, those small fruit droplets are now the size of twenty cent pieces. To protect the fruit from possums, fruit flies and bats, I covered them up with enviro-friendly calico style bags. Still, I wasn’t 100% convinced that the tree was indeed bearing peaches. To satisfy my curiosity, I sacrificed one of the larger fruits and split it open. To my delight, not only did I find an immature stone in the centre, but the waft of peach fragrance filled my nose and confirmed my suspicions all along.
It’s looking like a juicy summer ahead and perhaps one of my best harvest years to date. Keep the rain coming and the sun shinning Gaia – Goddess of the Earth.
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