Spring is in the Air

 

As I look out my back window at the quince and the peach beginning to bloom I am reminded of the wonders of fruit trees.

The weather is always a little unpredictable around this time of year, when the wind whips and the petals beak and swirl in whirlpools in the air. Poor weather conditions, during flowering are just one of the things that leads to poor fruit production. Excessive rainfall or over watering will produce weak sappy growth and little fruit, whilst a shortage of water will result in flower and/or fruit drop. Stress from high temperatures will lower flower development where as cool temperatures lowers the viability of the pollen. Cold, wet and windy conditions during bloom can reduce insect activity in the area.

Most fruiting plants have specific temperature ranges in which pollen viability and fertilization success are at a peak. Changes from these temperatures often results in low fruit yields. In temperate climates many fruit varieties require a certain amount of cold weather of the Upper Mountains in order to fruit normally. This requirement which varies with the cultivar is referred to as chill hours being accumulated cold-season hours below 7°C. For more on chill hours check out our previous post The Chilling Facts of Life

You may notice trees in blossom buzzing with bees at the moment, that’s our glorious pollinators are getting busy as the weather warms up. Pollination is a key concept in fruit production and consequently must be understood in order to maximize productivity and yield. Only pollinated flowers can bear fruit. And in the case on dioecious species (6% of plants only) like kiwi fruit – then only female plants bear fruit. To further complicate things some fruit trees like apple trees are cross-pollinators, this means they are incompatible with their own pollen. So generally speaking they require pollen from another apple of a different variety (including crab apples) in order to produce fruit. In a cross-pollinated system, honeybees, wasps and other pollinators allow the transfer of pollen from one plant to another as they drop a little pollen collecting from plant to plant.

For two such plants to successfully pollinate each other not only does their pollen have to be compatible but they have to be producing the pollen at the same time, If there is no source of pollen within the optional distance and flowering at the same time, pollination will not take place and fruits will not form. Plums and pears are cross pollinators too. Talk to your neighbours about what fruit trees they have already or are thinking about  buying, if they’re within 500m you can cross pollinate your trees with theirs. If neither you nor your neighbours have any compatible trees nearby, it is possible for branches with blossoms to be brought in from a different area and placed in drums of water close to the tree requiring pollination.

Self-pollinating fruit trees include apricot, nectarine, peach, sour cherry as well as currant, gooseberry, blueberry, strawberry and raspberry plants. They do not require an outside pollen source, although they often seem to produce better if there is one. I find the term ‘self pollinating’ a bit misleading, we still need our insects friends to spread the pollen from flower to flower, and trees will often be more produce more prolifically if compatible cross pollinating plants are in the vicinity.

Pears are similar to apples, with the notable exception that pear blossoms are much less attractive to bees, due to lower sugar content than apple or contemporaneous wildflower  nectar. To make up for thiees hives are often introduced in commercial enterprises.

Don’t worry too much if you tree doesn’t produce fruit every single year. Talk to local fruit growers about any regular (or irregular) fruiting patterns they’ve observed, local knowledge can help demystify the variations in our production cycles, the links between weather and other environmental patterns are not always obvious.  Some trees only flower every other year, this is known as alternate flowering. It’s especially common in apple and crabapple trees. Some say that thinning excess fruits in an “on” (flowering) year will help to conserve the plant’s resources and reduce the occurrence of subsequent “off” years.

While there are reports of 200 year old apple trees still going strong, it’s not uncommon to find that older trees decline in fruit production. If you inherit a slightly sad or neglected old fruit tree, never fear, a good pruning & a little TLC  can make a big difference.

Make friends with the Heritage Apple trees at Blue Mountains Organic Community Gardens, which we’ll be visiting as part of our upcoming Spring PDC.

Thanks for jnyemb and daveeza on flickr for sumptuous Spring pix and info from:

Dan & Dan Forest Services Yass NSW- www.dananddan.com.au

EarthWood – Our Fruit -users.netconnect.com.au

(I recommend a good old wassail around any fruit trees,  all that good cheer certainly can’t do any harm)

Sue’s September Planting Guide

Carrots (Photo credit: briannaorg)

The sun is shining, the days are lengthening, my hormones are stirring and its that time of year that K-Mart has its Spring Plant Sale on… so should I succumb to buying a few seedling? Well the answer is no, but the truth is I probably will, just because of those maternal urges…but experience has taught me to keep them inside for a little while longer.

Jackie French writes of an old bit of folklore about not planting tomatoes into the ground (and all sorts of other summer crops) till you can “sit on it with bare buttocks’ or perhaps more wisely she suggests “In suburban areas use the back of your wrist”. I’ve been told this is about 16 °C, I have a soil thermometer and even in areas of my garden with full sunlight it has not yet reached that magical number. Those of you in the lower Blue Mountains will get there about a fortnight earlier than those of us who live above the frost line of Wentworth Falls.

Down in those Temperate lower mountain areas I would be planting root vegetables like potatoes, New Zealand Yams, Peruvian apples and Jerusalem artichoke. These are all long season crops that won’t really be ready to harvest till autumn, so they are best planted in Permaculture Zone 2, further from the house and Zone I where you will want to have access to vegetables that you will harvest more. The best placement of Zones in a property design is one of the first things you learn during a PDC….Start tomatoes and cucumbers off in pots, until the soil gets warmer. Towards the end of the month when you are sure you don’t get frost I would be planting pumpkin, zucchini and squash; they don’t like being disturbed being transplanted from pots seems to knock them back when compared to those grown straight from seeds in the ground.

Up higher in the Cool Mountainous areas I will be a little more circumspect and I will be planting more lettuce, endives, peas and rocket with the root vegetables (as above). By the end of the month or later I’ll plant loads of herbs like chives, coriander, parsley and dill.  Also carrots and radish seeds mixed well in sand and then broadcast widely.  Carrots seeds are very small and if saved from seed are a lot hairier than packet bought seeds. Either way they tend to cling together in clumps and then don’t have room to expand to their optimum size when growing together. The radish seeds and the sand get in between and separate them when sowing. The radishes mature quickly and will be long picked and eaten before the carrots are ready, giving the carrots space to grow into.

(find organic open pollinated seeds on the rack at the co-op in Ha’penny Lane, Katoomba)

12 Principles of Chickweed

We define weeds as a plant growing out of the place where you want it or growing at the wrong time. Sometimes these are plants that grow easily in a place, from ‘garden escapees’ with parts breaking off and being carried by birds, or downstream through the catchment, sometimes seeds even hitch a ride on travellers’ shoes or in the folds of their clothes.

Common Chickweed (Stellaria media) in Nashville, Tennessee. Each flower is approximately 5 mm across. Public Domain Image via Wikipedia

Does this lovely little flower deserve to be cast aside as ‘merely a weed’, a plant ‘in the wong place’? its only fate to be removed where ever it has the misfortune to grow? Well not in my garden. Chickweed are edible tasty and nutritious, and better still they grow during winter when a continuous homegrown supply of greens isn’t always available in my cool climate garden. The Japanese celebrate this little plant as one of the Seven Herbs of Winter and its used in a traditional dish welcoming the return of Spring (or wishing for it!) There are a couple of plants that have over the years been locally known as chickweed in the Blue Mountains, Stellaria media – Common Chickweed and Cerastium sp – Mouse-ear Chickweed.  Worldwide there are literally 100s of plants known as chickweed. Why? Could it be that the chooks like them? Mine certainly do, and they know when they’re onto a good thing. (Same goes for Duckweed etc….

Our ‘Common Chickweed’ then is described as a low, inconspicuous, annual groundcover 8 to 20 cm tall. It forms mats around 40 cm across, with tiny delicate oval, smooth-edged leaves (1 to 2.5 cm long) that end in a small tip. These grow in pairs and lie opposite each other across the stem. The stem has a fine line of hairs that extend along one side of its length. Super small white star like flowers are a distinguishing feature. They are 3 mm across, with 5 petals so deeply divided they seem to be twice that number. Mouse-eared Chickweed is even smaller and is hairier to the extent of being considered sticky. People with skin allergies to the daisy plant family can sometimes react to chickweed.  Once you know these plants they are quiet distinctive, but if in doubt get someone who knows to show you. If you snap the stem it does NOT produce a white latex sap. If you see a milky sap, then that’s probably ‘Petty Spurge’ aka Euphorbia peplus, which like all the Euphorbia family is definitely not edible (but still useful).

Spot the difference: Euphorbia vs Stellaria below

The act of using this simple little ground cover plant wonderfully illustrates our 12 permaculture design principles

• Think before you pull the weed out, as there’s a lot a weed can tell you about your patch of ground. Chickweed tends to grow in cultivated improved and more fertile soil, so if you were looking for a spot for your cabbages, which thrive in poor soil, best pop them somewhere else. You can use the chickweed as a companion for another plant.  Observe and interact

• All that sunlight going into photosynthesis and making the chickweed grow – I could think of this plant as an unwanted weed, or valuable crop. Added fresh into a salad or creating a pesto or a salad dressing By freezing any leftovers it can last for over a year.  Principle Number 2 is Catch and store energy.

• This often under appreciated plant can be made into other resources like poultices, salves, tinctures which you might trade with your friends and neighbours who are not sensible enough to- Obtain a yield

• Considered a weed in the lawns and horticultural enterprises, many people would not think twice about using chemicals to manage this plant. Reason tells me this is overkill, with its shallow roots it is so easy to pull up by hand. Keep pulling them though, and you’ll soon discover that there’s a seed bank of thousands of seeds down there, so if you really don’t want to grow chickweed, change the soil conditions so that you’re not favoring this plant. It’s important if you really don’t want chickweed coming up on your patch to Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

• Chickweed is available in you garden during winter months so why import basil to make pesto, from some other climate zone which will use all those food miles’ petrochemicals when you’ve a resource literally at your feet. The Japanese even honour this little herb in the spring-time festival, Nanakusa-no-sekku – Use and value renewable resources and services

• At the very least if I’m not inclined to use a bumper crop of chickweed as food or medicine I recycle it through the compost and not through landfill. That way I value and making use of all the resources so that nothing is throw away – Produce no waste

• One of the things that makes weed species so successful is often how long the seeds are viable and able to germinate, for common chickweed seed, this is up to 18 years. When you understand all sorts of natural models and cycles, that work you can manipulate such knowledge to your advantage – Design from patterns to details

• Weeds are often called pioneer species, because they build up nutrients and form pathways in disturbed soil. Chickweed contains lots of important minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium, manganese, phosphorus and potassium) which return to the top layer of soil when it dies off. If we are in a mindset to fight weeds, we pass up ac companion planting opportunity to along with our intentionally planted crops. In this case the addition of vitamins and minerals makes for stronger more vigorous veggies  So … Integrate rather than segregate

• When planning a garden, using examples from Nature that work means less work for gardeners like you and me.  Minor and leisurely adjustments like allowing  chickweed to coexist in your garden as an alternative mulch can make it easier to maintain than traditional cultivated gardens, you won’t discover your ideal companion planting gems unless you.. Use small and slow solutions

• Growing single crops in monocultures requires a lot of energy inputs both in work and petrochemicals in the form of fertilizers & pesticides.  A diverse garden confuses pests, and builds a healthy polyculture, which can actively resist insect attacks and other threats. So leaving some weeds in place is also a way of putting into practise  Use and value diversity

• The boundary between what is acceptable food or medicine has changed beyond all recognition over the centuries, and our diets have not necessarily improved for all these changes. Some of these older  herbal remedies are once again becoming valued and productive. Chickweed has long been included in winter herb salads in areas where it grows wild. It’s also one of the seven Winter herbs celebrated in Japan. Use edges and value the marginal

• Who know with the possible onslaught of climate change, information about all sorts of weeds may be useful for all the above reasons and more. In the mean time I’m happy to add it to add this my list of plants to grow, so when I really need them, they’ll be there so I can – Creatively use and respond to change

Learn more about Permaculture Principles and put them to use in a Permaculture Design Certificate Course near you – see courses

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickweed

http://www.myveggiegarden.com/companion_planting.htm

Recipes

http://grannyearth.com/weeds/chickweed-stellaria-media

www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/February09/grandmother.htm

http://berrybluetoes.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/chickweed-recipes

http://www.learningherbs.com/chickweed_pesto.html

Sue’s August Planting Guide

As the clock ticks over tonight July ends, and we’re looking forward to slightly longer and on average a slither slightly higher thermometer reading of ‘warmer’ days in our Cool Mountainous climate of Wentworth Falls and Upwards. It is just about the last chance for the year to buy bare rooted fruit trees, gooseberries, currants, grape vines. Or propagate a bagful of cool climate berry varieties at Mt Tomah this Sunday with the Fruit and Nut Tree Network (see upcoming events)

I’m moving some of my plants around, I want to create more layers under my fruit trees to create a food forest. And I’m incorporating one of Bill Mollison’s suggestions (one of the co-originators of Permaculture); that you plant a grape near a fig tree and “lead your grape into the fig and then stop pruning it for good, because the grape reaches the crown of the fig and is wind pruned, and you just forget pruning it anymore.” Entwined they help camouflage each other from the birds and possums as well. It had crossed my mind that a passionfruit might work the same but then I looked at some vines growing in an orchard at Mt Tomah. The passionfruit has total engulfed the fruit tree completely, no thanks!

I’m dreaming too of seedlings, of cauliflower, collards, kale, mustard greens, peas, salad greens like mizuna, mitsuba, spinach, and seed potatoes of all kinds. You might think about perennial underplantings too, like rhubarb and asparagus crowns, artichoke suckers, these will give you wonderful spring provisions the following year when other foods are still getting up and going.

Lower down the hill in the more Temperate climate of
 Hazelbrook and below, you  you still might get away with planting a fruit tree or vine either bare rooted or evergreen. Because of the warmer temperature for the veggie patch I would suggest seeds or seedlings of baby carrots, beetroot, lettuce, parsnip, peas, radish, swede, turnips, celery, celeriac, leek, lettuce, onions, mizuna, mitsuba, seed potatoes, rocket, silverbeet, spinach. You might even plant the seeds of early tomatoes, zucchini, melons and pumpkins in pots on a sunny windowsill to give them a head start. Head to the Food Co-op in Katoomba where a new batch of Greenpatch seeds has arrived just in time.

*My apologies to the town of Bullaburra; not only doesn’t it have shops but now I’ve wiped it off the map as far as this planting guide goes.

Never mind you’ve still got a few hours to book in at early bird prices for our upcoming Permaculture Design Certificate!

http://www.permaculture.net/~EPTA/Hemenway.htm

www.jackiefrench.com/cal.html

The Chilling Facts of Life

Oops! I’ve just put in an order to buy a couple more of these fruit trees, there’s barely space left but I just can’t help myself. If you’re considering buying any bare root fruit or nut tree this winter, it’s worth taking a good look at the needs of the tree first. Not only is it important for a fruit tree to get sunlight, air and water, many of the trees we rely on for fruit and nuts rely on a good deep winter dormancy to produce fruit the following Summer.

Both pome fruit trees (with a core and pips like apples & pears) and stone fruits (cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots plums etc) need cold hours to stimulate the massive phsyiological changes these trees undertake in the noble pursuit of fruit production. Pome fruit especially rely on a good long chill, and there are also berry plants which also need the cold including raspberries & blueberries. It’s amazing to think that the productivity is directly brought about by that winter chill. And this is one of those rare occasions when us cold climate dwellers get to be the envy of people living in the tropical, sub-tropical and even the warmer temperate areas. You’ll see in fruit tree suppliers’ catalogues like Woodbridge, Daleys or Diggers that different species and cultivars and their rootstocks are variously described as having Low, Medium or High Chill requirements which vary from species to species.  Traditional apple varieties have a minimum chill requirement of about 1000 hours, that’s a ‘high chill’ requirement for an apple tree. Use this ready reckoner to estimate the chill hours for your area, based on the average temperature of your coldest month of the year.

Using this method, Katoomba comes in with an average 1200 chill hours whilst Springwood’s milder climate gets around 1100 chill hours.

It’s important also to consider how variable the seasonal conditions are too, particularly if you’re aiming to provide for your fruit needs from your own trees. Too few or too many chill hours can interfere with a tree’s ability to fruit, so look at the maximum and minimum chill hours as well as the average to understand the range of winter your area has historically experienced.

Our climate is changing, and that’s another factor to take into account in a long term fruit production strategy. In this visualisation of Sydney’s seasonal temperatures, you can clearly see that the lower temperatures shown in dark blue decreasing over time, indicating milder winters, with less chill hours.

 The band of blue is also narrowing as it fades meaning winter is also getting shorter.  In the upper mountains its a familiar story, the snows don’t come down in big drifts like they used to. In Katoomba if the temperature rises as predicted, we’ll see an increase in temperature by 2 °C on average over the year, which will bring Katoomba chill hours down to about 1000. That will knock off very few varieties out of production. In Springwood, which is currently marginal for high chill requirement fruits, its a different story. That 2° C increase in Springwood would drop their chill hours well below into 900 , so they’ll either have to get a bit nifty with engineering cooler microclimates around their existing chill requiring trees or perhaps get more familiar with trees traditionally grown at latitudes nearer the tropics.

Find out more about trees, climates and resilient strategies for food production with Katoomba Street Permaculture’s permaculture design certificate course this Spring.

Words by Sue Girard & Kat Szuminska [CC-BY-SA 3.0]

Crabapple photo by Tatania12:flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Awesome Seasonal Temperature Visualisation by Hatchersan @markact

Illustration Resources graph courtesy of http://www.newcrops.uq.edu.au/acotanc/papers/campbel1

More information about growing fruit trees (especially apples)

South east Producers Association (SEPA) http://www.davewilson.com/homegrown/gardencompass/gc14_jan_07.html http://www.orangepippintrees.com/articles/fruit-tree-minimum-chill-requirement

http://hydrology1.nmsu.edu/nmcrops/Trees/apples/ http://www.aussieapples.com.au/ http://www.motherearthnews.com/blogs/blog.aspx?blogid=2147484355

Veggie gardening at 1000m plus, now you’re in the clouds!

Here we are in the middle of winter and my mind turns to plans for the coming years veggies. If, like me you’re gardening above the 1,000 m elevation Leura and beyond, you can expect a 80 to 90 day growing season. In general, this means root crops and cold-tolerant crops do well. I am learning to choose vegetables with a 90 day growing cycle and root vegetables that mature in about 120 days. Below 1000 m lucky you, your plants will not experience a lot of frost days.

Vegies I grow on a regular basis include radishes, beetroot, carrots, turnips, parsnips, kohlrabi, Jerusalem artichoke, Peruvian apple, New Zealand yams, onion, garlic, shallots, and purple congo potatoes produce exceptionally well up here. If some of these names are new to you, ask a local permie and/or foodie they are bound to know what they are and probably where you can get a plant or two.

Of all these, radishes are the earliest root crops and parsnips are the latest. If you pull up all your Jerusalem artichokes and the Peruvian apples and they soon go soft, but leave  in the ground as I do and they keep there until you want to use them, just fossick for as much as you need for dinner.

You can plant many vegetable varieties in the winter, but few will produce an edible crop until spring. Leafy green vegetables do well over winter outdoors, and those I grow at our high altitudes are lettuces, cabbage, chard, rhubarb, kale, endive, garden cress, spinach, radicchio and of course broccoli.

I use a lot of onions in cooking for my family, but I have never managed to get mine to bulb up very well. The majority of supermarket onions come from South Australia and Tasmania, and some from around Griffith and Wellington, and it turns out you really do need to know your onions to grow them successfully this far north.

Here’s why, most onion varieties will only begin to form a bulb when the temperature and the number of daylight hours reach pretty lengthy levels. Onions come in  short day, intermediate and long day varieties. Those listed as short-day onions bulb up when the day length gets to between 12 and 14 hours.. Whilst the long-day onions, will begin to form a bulb when the day length is between 14 and 16 hours, which is all well and good if you are in the southern States further from the equator. So, it turns out I’m just in the wrong area to grow many of them, and I’d be better off growing leeks, since they don’t need to bulb up and are in fact more expensive to buy than onions. To plant leek for free,  just save the bottom inch or so from one you buy and pop it in the ground where it will easily resprout.

Sue will be leading a fresh permaculture design certificate course this Spring.

Words by Katoomba Street Permie Sue Girard, images by Swanksalot (CC-BY-SA 2.0) and Blurdom (CC-NC-SA) on Flickr.

pruning heritage trees

This weekend join me and Sue, Brian and Wayne at the community gardens, and learn first hand from experienced orchardists how to prune, and help lick our heritage fruit trees into shape. Our heritage apple walk was planted out in the mid 90’s, soon accompanied by quinces cherries and plums, you wont find these varieties in the shops so help keep this precious resource of cool climate fruits healthy for future generations to enjoy.  Winter is a great time to take stock of trees, look at their shape and how the branches form and relate to one another. Being deciduous the branches are bereft of leaves clearly revealing their structure. Come along, learn a new skill, or flex your pruning muscles, and help these fabulous fruit trees be productive and bear fruit for the years to come.  Find out more at bmfruitandnuttreenetwork.blogspot.com

photo credit Pictoscribe on flickr