May 2019

At times fruit trees may lose the essential pollinating friend they need to produce fruit. You may have moved into a house with an old garden, or an existing fruit tree that usually bears well may suddenly stop producing fruit due to a neighbour removing their tree. Many fruiting trees bear biennially, but if a tree that previously fruited well stops completely, and seems otherwise healthy, then it may be missing a pollinator. Apples, pears and plums all need a cross pollinator to fruit, although there are some varieties that are semi self-fertile. If you know the name of your fruit tree, it’s easy to check with a nursery what varieties will pollinate the tree you have. However, if you have no idea what your tree is, there are a couple of things you can try. Note what time of year your tree flowers, as you will then have some idea as to whether it’s an early, mid or late season variety. If you can buy a variety that flowers at the same time as yours, you have some chance of producing fruit. You can also try cutting branches of blossom from friends’ trees, and putting them in a bucket of water at the base of your tree, and allowing the bees to do the rest.

Although there are fewer honeybees and other beneficial insects in our gardens in winter, it’s still important to provide flowering plants for those that are there. Long-flowering plants like perennial basil supply nectar for the useful insects that do the hard work behind the scenes in our gardens. Perennial basil is a hardy and fairly drought tolerant plant that will grow into a small bush, producing flowers year-round. These are popular with European honey bees, at a time when other food is scarce. Like other quick growing and long-flowering plants, it exhausts itself and dies young. Leave it flowering during winter, when few other flowers are available, and cut it back in spring, once other plants in the garden start flowering.

Companion planting can be used for a range of reasons, including to encourage better growth. Winter leafy green crops such as silverbeet and bok choy can be grown alongside nitrogen-fixing plants such as peas and snow peas to help feed them. Make sure to give each crop type enough space to grow, so the climbing plants don’t overwhelm the smaller leafy greens. Allow around 40–50 centimetres width for your pea-type plants, and plant your leafy greens around 20 centimetres from this.

Make sure to give your climbing peas, snow peas or sugar snap peas some support. If you have access to some deciduous tree branches, or some dead branches with no leaves, push them into the ground next to your young plants so they can climb up the branches as they grow. This method is not suitable for very tall varieties such as telephone peas, but there are many semi-dwarf varieties that grow well with such support. Look for branches with lots of smaller twigs, to give the best support.

If you have a wood fire, inside or outdoors, save some ash for reuse. Ash can be sprinkled around the floor of your chicken coop to absorb odours, and can also be added to your chickens’ dust baths, helping to suffocate pests such as mites, which prey on your chickens. Before using ash, make sure to let it cool completely. You may also need to sieve it to separate it from charcoal chunks, as well as removing any nails that may be in the bottom of your fireplace if you burn leftover building wood. Make sure never to burn any varnished, painted or treated wood, which are used in many pallets.

If your garden is lacking in fruitfulness at this time of year, consider planting a mandarin. ‘Emperor’ is a variety that will start fruiting in June, continuing to bear on mature trees for around three months. ‘Imperial’ is a variety that should be producing well throughout May and June, and can even start a little earlier. Like all citrus, mandarins need well-drained, fertile soil and don’t like competition from other plants in their root zone, as they are quite shallow-rooted. As they are warm climate plants, they should be planted in mid-spring, after the last risk of frost has passed in your area. They should have their flowers removed for the first two–three years after planting in the ground, to allow them to put their energies into a strong root system rather than fruit. If you are growing them in a pot, they can be allowed to flower and fruit from early on.

When you’re doing some autumn cutting back and tidying up, make sure to put those resources back into your garden. “Chop and drop” is a tried and tested permaculture term, but it can be time consuming to do this when you have a lot of plant material. For softer material, try using garden shears to make this quicker and easier. Comfrey leaves, yarrow and tansy top growth, feverfew and many other perennial plants being cut back now are easy to chop into compostable pieces with shears. Lay your prunings on the ground, and attack a low pile vigorously with your shears, and you’ll find you can process a large amount of plant material quite quickly. This can then either be spread around your garden or added to your compost bin or compost heap.

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