Hey everyone, as far as having a green grocer in your back garden goes this is literally as good as it gets and I am so blessed to have this privilege.
I have not really featured this trees extensively before so I decided to take some epic pics of many of the fruiting trees in the orchard as well as a few in my vegetable garden!
Before getting to the fruit dripping off the Trees though, here we have a huge Tahitian butternut, I am not the smallest chap around 6.3 tall so have biggish hands, this should give you a good idea as to how big this is.
I can't believe how fast these grow, from just appearing as a small Butternut after flowering to this size in about 2 weeks, incredible, I would highly recommend planting these in Summer as they truly are the plant that keeps on giving, so far we have had about 2 butternuts per plant and counting!
Pears, I never knew we have pears on this property, this is the first year they are fruiting and fruiting well they are. Nice thing (to date) about these is nothing seems to be eating or stinging them, touch wood, still very hard though. Our only defense at this point against the 'critters' are to pick fruit and vegetables just before they ripen, it seems to work for now!
Here we have elongated white Brinjals. I am quiet looking forward to these, my first time buying Brinjal seed and growing them too. I purchase all my heirloom seeds at www.livingseeds.co.za This year I planted the black more robust traditional as well as the white elongated variety. It will be rather interesting to see the taste difference. I can tell yo that these do take their sweet time to grow, I would have suspected by now we could harvest, but alas, hopefully soon!
We have three Apple trees on this property. Same story last year almost no Apples, this year they are dripping off the Tree's incredible. It may have something to do with what seems to be more rain later in the season than last year. I had my first taste of two of these a few days ago. It really doesn't get much better than eating fruit straight off the trees!
Freshly grown and picked organically and without pesticides what a bonus and free to boot! Sadly however the mousebirds love these and they get eaten way before they ripen. The only defense here would be to cover the entire tree in shadecloth, luckily however they are not prone to other critters eating them!
Peaches, we have quiet a few different species of these in the orchard, the white, flesh as well as red and yellow flesh peaches, everything eats these though as much as they trees are very prolific producers eaten by everything. Organic farming is certainly not for the faint of heart!
I did an interesting experiment recently. I planted a row of Mielies (Corn) every metre I planted a squash between the mielies. Watermelon, Butternuts and Rock Melon (spanspek) they are growing really well. I am growing them towards the nearest tree. The plan is to let them all creep up the tree and bear from from there as apposed to on the ground, should be interesting to see if that works I don't see why not?
Have a little look in the distance do you see what I see? ;)
There are quiet a few plum trees on this property too, a REAL favourite of the birds so we never get our hopes up in eating these that just never happens. LOL funny but not so much, at least they enjoy them I guess!
These Tomatoes are just about ready to be picked. They will probably only be ripe in around a week however if we do not pick these soon, the birds will totally decimate them!
What would a vegetable and fruit post be without Chilli's and Cannabis?
I currently have around 10 different chilli species including Ghost and Carolina Reapers which I noticed this week and to my utter joy started fruiting.
My 3 big cannabis bushes growing really nicely, I have literally not watered them in a week and they are thriving. Can't wait for them to start forming heads, that should be in a month or two!
Loyalty does not get better than this. Tinkie is the most gorgeous loyal dog ever. I gave her a nice big bone which she loves, I then decided to take a walk down to my vegetable garden. Years ago an experiment was done with Chimps, Food or Love, time and again the Chimps chose love. The same is true for this gorgeous dog, she loves her food but will never take that over love and if she has to choose, as she did in this case chose both. Where she to leave the bone behind on her return the other dogs would have 'hijacked' it from her! Lovely Animal!
One of the really cool things about living on a Nursery is this. They water the plants around the plot during the day and night, it is not normally considered preferential to water in the day in the hot sun but if not and only at night they would never get everything watered.
On this fine day the thermometre was tipping the scale at around 35 degrees celcius, no problem for me just to run through the sprinklers in the heat of the day. My clothes literally dry off in around half an hour running around in the sun on days this hot. Conversely I could always just take a quick dip in the pool.
Nature the Incredible!
I trust you have an amazing week.
Cheer$;)