Fantastically Fruitful

Yesterday I harvested the first few fruits of our small apricot crop. Homegrown apricots fresh and warm from the tree are a world apart from those available in the supermarket, which seem to be either hard and tart or floury and tasteless. Mind you, apricots are probably our least successful crop - I suspect the varieties we have need more chilling hours than our climate usually provides - but the taste sensation of our precious few fruits is worth the effort.

Also being harvested at present are strawberries and youngberries, both producing in abundance. Any fruits we don't eat each day are washed, dried and frozen. Some will be used to make strawberry sorbet, the rest are kept until a cold winter's day when I will make jam. (There are two strawberry sorbet recipes in Gardens For All Seasons, one with mango and one so quick you won't believe it.)

Our mouths are watering for the nectarines, which should be ready to harvest in a week or so and which we watch every day in anticipation. Despite a quite bad case of curly leaf this season, the nectarines will give us a good crop; the peaches were more badly affected, but we'll still get a few. The Satsuma plums will not be ready for another couple of months. The dangling CD's  and windchimes you can see in the photos are our so-far-successful strategy for keeping the birds off the fruit.

The plums, nectarines, apricots and peaches are all from multigrafted trees grown on dwarfing rootstock, so we can have several productive fruits in a small area. There are also two multigrafted citrus trees, one of which still holds a few lemons waiting to be harvested.

The self-sown canteloupes in the vegie beds will give us delicious fruit in autumn. A feijoa tree planted a few years ago is fruiting for the first time and that too should fruit in autumn.
All this fruit (as well as the vegies and aquaponics system) is grown in quite a small space (one day I'll measure the area), no bigger than most suburban backyards.
Along with all this fruit, produce from our vegie garden is prolific at the moment. Last night, while Rodney caught and despatched most of the trout from the aquaponics system, I harvested the last of the parsnips, freeing that tank bed for more beans. The last of the broad beans are ready to pick, leaving that space available for corn. We are eating beans, broad beans, zucchini, red onions, mixed lettuce and baby Swiss chard. Tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, potatoes and capsicums are developing nicely.

I haven't mentioned the numerous herbs that are in pots and other small spots; the nasturtium flowers and leaves that go in salads; the daylilies which we could eat but don't; the amaranth with its edible leaves and seeds, but which I'll be leaving so granddaughters can play with the long tassels; the sunflowers grown as a cubby for granddaughters . . .  It is a fantastically fruitful small food garden.

If you have any size of backyard (or front garden), you can grow lots of food. If you have a courtyard or balcony, you'll be surprised at how much you can grow once you put your mind to it. 

To get started in the garden see Creating Your Eco-Friendly Garden.

For heaps of ideas about growing food in small spaces see Fabulous Food From Every Small Garden.

To keep your garden in top shape all year round, have lots of fun in the garden and learn fascinating things about gardening and the environment see my new book Gardens For All Seasons. 

All published by CSIRO Publishing.