I used to have a very fixed idea of seasons and food production which matched the classical 4-seasons art works you might find in art galleries around the world. Spring was for new growth: flowers, fresh green leaves and maybe a few berries. Summer was for fruits and vegetables. Autumn brought grains, major harvests and falling leaves. Winter, the dormant season when everything rested in preparation for the next spring.
None (or almost none) of this holds true in my garden. I’ve learned that here peas do best in winter, summer can be a dormant season for many plants, spring and autumn trigger spurts of growth. I am far from knowing the cycle of each plant, but I’m trying.
Today, 2 days before the Spring Equinox, I decided to take stock of the state of the food trees in my garden. I have quite a few. I’ll group them by their current stage.
Dormant: Banana (some new leaves, but nothing major yet)
Budding/new leaves/flowering: blueberry (new growth and flowers – flowers have been on through winter with no berries yet), mango (one new flower – still suffering from the whipper snipper damage), olive (few buds of leaves – still suffering from the whipper snipper damage), avocado (heaps of new growth, flowers and buds), macadamia nut (new growth), maqui berry (new leaves), cherry tree (recovering from the whipper snipper damage with a few flowers this year) fig (new leaves), orange, lemon
In fruit/harvesting: Orange, Lemon, mulberry.
Recently finished fruiting: Mandarin, kumquat (fruit will last a couple more weeks).
The citrus trees have the knack of bearing fruit while putting on new growth and flowers. They’re a hard one to find a dormant season to allow pruning. The others are much easier to classify into growing stages.
Here are photos of most of the plants I mention in this post. I haven’t included the young lemon and orange trees which may have different growth patterns to the mature plants. Right now they have a lot of new growth, both leaves and flowers.
- Banana plant
Blueberry Bush
Mango Tree
Olive Tree
Avocado Tree
Macadamia Nut Tree
Maqui Berry Tree
Cherry Tree
Fig Tree
Orange Tree
Lemon Tree
Mulberry Tree
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 
Yes Laura I too find it difficult to determine when things should be grown here. Our seasons are very clearly the wet season and the dry season, but we still call it winter and summer. I started an excel spreadsheet just to try and keep track of when things needed to be done. You have some lovely trees – we just have the one big lychee tree, but I see little lychees forming – very exciting.
I tried sowing lychee seeds and got a few shoots but then they were dug up and eaten (the bandicoot is my primary suspect). I’m not sure one would grow in Sydney anyway and I’m pretty sure it would be too big for my garden, but still…
I lived in Darwin where the seasons were Wet and Dry (and that dreadful Build-up). I used to think of them as “hot and wet” or “hot and dry”. On top of that you’re so close to the equator that the hours of daylight is very constant. How in the world can plants figure out when to grow in that kind of environment?
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All the pictures of the trees you shared with us are lovely ! 🙂 Thank you for that
I loved the Four Seasons picture, I added it to a post in my blog. Please let me know if you mind so I would remove it immediately 🙂
Glad you liked the pictures. To be honest, that wallpaper isn’t mine. I can’t remember where I found it but it was on one of those free photo sites and came without credit to the original producer.