Plums & Pollenation

Successful pollenation is all about TIMING and PROXIMITY.

There are a few different pollinators (some say 'pollenizers') for the Black Doris plum. They include the Billington, Sultan, Purple King or Elephant Heart varieties. When I originally planted my Black Doris plum I wasn’t too concerned about which pollenator to get so long as it did the job. I had a few to choose from at the Nursery at the time. Up until recently I couldn't remember which one I actually got. So after doing a bit of research here I've concluded that I must have the Billington variety.

The Billington's plum blossoms earlier than the Black Doris, you might say a little bit too early. As you can see below the Billington Tree (background) is almost finished blossoming before the Black Doris’ flowers (foreground) are ready to open.

There was a slight overlap between the two which this year only lasted a day or 2. Unfortunately, around that time it rained and all the pollen on the remaining blossoms got wet. Thankfully, before the rain arrived I’d plucked off a couple of nice looking blossoms and manually painted them onto the Black Doris blossoms that were open, of which there were only about 4 on the whole tree.

Needless to say, my hopes of having many fruit on the Black Doris this year look pretty slim. One thing I learned about the Billington and it may well be partly the reason why I chose it was that it itself is self-pollenating. The last 2 or 3 years it has fruited tremendously. 

According to one of my neighbors, whose husband planted a Black Doris tree some 30 odd years ago, the tree had never fruited until I planted my Billington. Perhaps because of the size of the neighbors Black Doris tree which is much bigger than mine, there is a sufficient overlap of blossoms to enable pollenation, even though they're about 15 metres apart. You can see where they are in relation to one another in this pic...

I’m hoping the blossom-overlap between my 2 plum trees will get longer as my Black Doris gets bigger. I’m just glad the bees know what they’re doing.

Potted Colour

Winter has a way of making things in the garden look they’ve been abandoned, like this garden planter which has been completely taken over by weeds.

When spring finally arrives it’s time to get out in the garden and get everything back into some kind of order. I started by emptying the planter and giving it a bit of a scrub to clean it up a bit.

Then came the fun bit... filling it with garden mix and a few flowering plants. I chose Pansies, Lobelias and Sweet Williams. I bought them before they’d started flowering as they were cheaper to buy that way, which meant I didn’t know what colours I was going to get until they started flowering.

I probably wouldn’t have chosen pinks and purples if I had the choice but I reckon I probably couldn’t have chosen the colours any better.

It’s amazing how a bit of colour can brighten up your day.

The way it turned out the colours tied in nicely with the orchids which I moved from their storage area, to brighten up the front of the house.

Is it Worth all the Effort?

When I first started growing my own vegetables, this was one of the main questions I kept asking myself.

Up until recently the answer in a monetary sense has mostly been “No”, especially if you factor in the cost of establishing the garden in the first place and of course I’ve only started gardening recently. So I decided to view those costs as an investment into the future viability of this whole endeavour. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that all my vegetables are organically grown (I don't use pesticides and sprays) and everything we eat from the garden is fresher than you could buy anywhere. I reason that there’s got to be some value in that.

I must confess I don’t even know how much vegetables cost these days, as my wife usually does all the shopping. But I went shopping with her recently and decided to take my camera with me. I decided to take note of the prices of some of the same vegetables that I’m growing in my garden...

To help get it all in perspective I also took a photo of some seedlings I got from the plant shop. In this case it was the new Bunnings store that just opened which has a gardening section. Keep in mind that the price shown is for 6 seedlings.

Now it doesn’t take much math to work out that a half dozen brocolli at 2.99 ea. comes to $17.94 less the price of the seedlings leaves $16.65. The cauliflower cost twice as much @ $2.99 for HALF a cauliflower resulting in a crop of a half dozen cauliflowers worth $34.59. The cabbages work out to $28.71 for 6 whole cabbages. 

You only have to grow a half dozen of each of these 3 kinds of vegies before you’ve saved yourself about $80 at the supermarket. Admittedly these are winter prices and it’s harder for most people to grow vegies in the winter as their gardens are too shady and wet. But under the right circumstances and conditions it’s definitely worth it growing your own.

The cost of pumpkins blew me away. If you read my post here about growing pumpkins last summer you may have seen my comment on the price at the time at $1.50 each. Come mid-winter and the price has rocketed up to almost $9 each. Of the 10 pumpkins we grew last summer we still have 2 left. They keep well and will last all year. On this basis, even if you didn’t grow your own, you should almost buy them in bulk in the summer and store them ‘til the winter.

Tony’s Special PRIZE!

I have decided to award my number one supporter (a.k.a. Tony) with a special hand crafted prize.

As some of you may know, I am a Graphic Designer. I run my own Graphic Design business – which is one of the things I do when I’m not in the garden. Gardening for me is just a hobby, albeit: a hobby with huge benefits.

Anyway, Tony is a budding Comic Strip artist. He was the first person to ever comment on my blog when I first started about a year ago and has faithfully supported me ever since. If you haven’t already done so, you might like to check out his blog here. 

So, the special hand crafted prize I created for him was a logo and some fan art for his comic strip "Ratbags"...

I hope you like it Tony, and thanks again for all your support!

I’m thinking of starting a new Blog featuring some of my other artwork. Let me know if you think this is a good idea.

Check out my Zazzle shop where you can buy a button/badge featuring this artwork.
Or if you prefer a t-shirt click here.

Update:
I finally got around to getting my creative blog off the ground – See it here

Blog Marks ONE YEAR!

My Blog has just turned a year old this month.
I didn’t want that milestone to pass without acknowledging and thanking all those who’ve visited my blog, especially those who’ve taken the trouble to make a comment.

As you can see from the stats shown left people are visiting from all over the world. I have been amazed at the interest shown in my posts regarding the sleepout I built earlier this year.

It’s taken me a while to figure out a few things but I’ve noticed that when I make the effort to keep it up to date, readership increases. So I’ll try to post more regularly and keep it as fresh as possible.

Some posts take a bit of time and require a bit of forward planning, but hopefully the effort is worth it so that what I post is of interest and it actually makes sense to you the reader.

Anyway, thanks again for visiting my blog! Come back again soon.

New Winter Garden

Over the last couple of years since I got serious about gardening I started taking more notice of how the suns daily path changes throughout the seasons. This is quite important in my garden as it's surrounded by trees and during the winter when the sun's lower there's only 1 or 2 spots in the garden that gets any sun and even then for only part of the day.

I often escape to this part of the garden where I built a simple macrocarpa bench to sit on and take in the rays. I decided this would be the perfect spot to build yet another garden (a small one) where I might be able to grow a few vegetables over the winter. 

Using a few lengths of macrocarpa I still had lying around I worked out where the garden was going to go, then started digging up the soil to about a spades depth. As expected there were a few tree roots from the ti-tree right next to the garden but I wasn't too bothered about digging them up and getting rid of them. Ti-trees are pretty tough and can handle it.

I mixed in  some home made compost, plus a few bags of the bought stuff and then planted my seedlings. I made sure to add some all-purpose fertiliser. I put in a half dozen each of lettuces, brocollis and cauliflowers. I planted them a week or so before the shortest day, which fell this year on June 22.

Within a month they were doing really well – much better than the vegetables I tried growing elsewhere in the garden.

About a month after that and we had already eaten 5 out of 6 of the lettuces and I was starting again with more. By then the brocolli was beginning to flower.

About 10 days following this and I was picking the biggest brocolli I've ever grown. 

Look at that thing – it's almost as big as my head!

That was a proud moment, and it tasted great. Izumi steamed it. I smothered mine with cheese sauce.

Plum Blossoms... nearly!

Spring has sprung! Right on time. 

In NZ we expect spring to arrive on September 1st. Our plum tree's a pretty good indicator regarding the arrival of Spring. These photos taken today (Sept 2nd) show the blossoms forming and almost ready to open. A half dozen or so have already opened but I'm looking forward to seeing the whole tree covered in blossoms. 

I'm expecting this to take place within the next few days.

I'll post more photos later.