Food Trees

The Mulberry produced bowls full of fruit this year. I made several cobblers. I suppose I could try jam but it tends to ripen at the rate of a bowl full every few days making it problematic to turn it all into jam at once. Maybe freezing? Anyway, I didn’t tire of mulberry cobbler so it’s not really a problem. The poor tree has been pruned (tenants again) so that there is really only one significant branch which is overloaded. We’ll have to see if mor judicuous winter pruning can give the thing a boost.

The second photo is the cumquat tree. This produced a fair number of cumquats this year but there were a lot of dead branches in the tree and many of the leaves were yellow so Frank pruned it strongly. Also we gave it a bunch of fertiliser. Should be much healthier next year (fingers crossed).

Next is a bay tree in a pot. It survived the trauma of the tenants and I pulled it from under some shrubs. It looks like it’s having a growth spurt. It’s about 4 years old and knee high.

The Lemon and Orange trees are doing okay. We fertilised them and will have to do a better job pruning them. The tenants cut off the bottom and outside branches, citrus should be pruned from the top and centre to allow light and airflow.

The mandarin tree is bursting with fruit. Should be a fantastic harvest this year.

That poor orange tree had more dead wood than live. Frank sawed at it in hopes of killing whatever is killing it. There are a bunch of new shoots but we’ll see. The bark is splitting on one half (not a good sign). Aphids have moved in. I’m trying to chase them away with a spray of garlic and soap. We’ll see. I think when they’re gone, the ants that feed on them will vanish too.

Update 22 April 2011: The orange tree looked like it was recovering through summer but the bark continues to peel right down to the ground and now the new growth is dying. We made the hard decision to dig it up and fill the spot with more bananas. It’s a shame because this banana ripened earlier than our other tree so our season was extended, but there was nothing more we could do.

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