In December I wrote about some gardening I'd done in my local area - here's a bit of an update.
This morning I buzzed out to Heron Park on my bike. There's a surprisingly substantial wee orchard there:
I gave a decent dose of blood and bone fertiliser to all the trees that had set fruit - 4-5 apple trees, a pear tree and my key goal - the quince tree :-)
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| the quince is covered in fruit - click on the photo to see it better. |
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| so much fruit! Puts our quince tree to shame. It's not much smaller, but has only set 3 fruit on the entire tree :-( Most of our garden gets no light... |
I then biked on to Rosebank Road, along to Patiki Road and back home along the Northwestern cycle way. It was such a lovely day for a ride and it was such a happy thing to do :-) There was absolutely no debris on the path, which was nice - maybe the storm didn't deposit any there, but more likely someone's done a decent job cleaning it all up :-)
Back home, I took a few more photos. Firstly, the rose I transplanted back in December is doing so well - it's had near-continuous flowers for weeks now :-)
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| it's such a pretty rose! |
At the same time I'd also transplanted (and divided) a clump of what I think is a tufted granite lily - an Australian native. After transplanting, all the flowers died and lots of the leaves went black - but now all the plants are showing fresh green leaves, so hopefully they'll survive :-)
Hurrah!
We learnt with our feijoa tree how important it is to prune... when we pruned lightly for a year or two then failed to prune for a year, the fruit got really small, and the leaves were looking unhealthy. We then pruned it heavily and the new growth is beautiful and lush, and the fruit is big again. I know some types of fruit trees don't really need pruning (like orange trees), but if the ones in Heron Park don't provide a good crop it might just be that they need pruning.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Pruning feels beyond me, but the quince, in particular, badly needs it. I did put a note to that effect on the local Facebook page, but no one stepped up to say they were keen. It's a bit of an awkward location for pruning - it's on a moderately steep slope and the tree's quite tall - but hopefully someone else will step up! But, with the fertiliser, it's looking way healthier than this time last year, at least.
DeleteAnd I didn't notice I was 'anonymous', sorry - that was me :-)
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