One of the marvelous things about the new house is the abundance of fruit trees. Here comes an abundance of photos. Excuse the weeds and piles of pruning. I haven’t finished yet, but there is already a lot more light getting into the ‘orchard’ than there was before. Light is important for getting a good harvest and helping to reduce disease; both light around the trees and light in the centre of the trees.
Grapefruit tree.Grapefruit – soon, soon.Lemon tree.Lemons.The ‘unknown citrus’.‘Unknown citrus’ fruit – what will it be?Tangelo tree.Tangelo fruit.Feijoa tree – a rather large specimen. Pruning has exposed its beautiful gnarled branches.Feijoa tree – this is the side that I’ve pruned, so I can actually walk under it now.Feijoa tree – this is the side I haven’t pruned. Can you tell?A tree from the peach/nectarine/almond family. But what is it? I will have to wait and see. It looked like it hadn’t been pruned at all and its trunk is rather too tall, but I gave it as good a pruning as I could.Another tree from the peach/nectarine/almond family. Just a baby this one, which also hadn’t been pruned and has almost no structure to speak of. I will have to keep pruning it as best I can over the next few years.Mandarin ‘Silverhill’ tree – a young thing in an awkward position. I rescued it from a bunch of hideously thorny (Flying Dragon) rootstock growth, which was coming up from the base due to it being planted too deeply. Now I have to rescue it from the canna lily that is growing right around it.I think this is a cherry guava tree.The other tangelo tree – I haven’t pruned it yet. Where’s that trunk got to?Pear tree – I got to eat its final pear of the season when we moved in.Apple tree – it’s hard to get a good photo since it’s in the middle of the chicken coop!Loquat tree.Another loquat tree.Loquat flowers – it’s a funny time of year for fruit tree flowers, but loquats apparently fruit between October and December here.Fig tree – I don’t know much about fig trees but it doesn’t look entirely happy in the frosty Waikato climate…Another small fig tree.Figs.Walnut tree on the left.Grapevine.One of two passionfruit vines, which need some tidying and training.
I think that is all we have at the moment. Well, aside from all my potted fruit trees. Now I have to figure out what to do with each one of them…
Potted fruit trees – plum ‘Billington’, dwarf almond ‘Garden Prince’, apple ‘Granny Smith’, dwarf apricot ‘Aprigold’, dwarf orange ‘Best Seedless Dwarf’, peach ‘Golden Queen’, Tahitian lime and lemon ‘Yen Ben’.
Wild Hope Homestead 