The scope of my presentation today excludes dog related damage and anything to do with butterflies, so that brings it down to a fairly streamlined post.
Peach season is over. The crop protection bags I’ve bought have been a game changer as far as bird related losses are concerned. I covered everything I could reach several weeks ago when the fruit was looking gorgeous but not ripe enough to eat. Unfortunately it doesn’t protect from fungal damage.
Never mind. I managed to salvage several peaches in the end, and they tasted great. My plan for next season is to (get someone else to) trim the tree down to a more manageable size, spray with copper sulphate in Spring, and put the crop protection bags on as the fruit nears ripeness. Fifth time’s a charm!
This grapefruit tree has looked very sad since it was planted a couple of years ago, in spite of watering and compost application.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, I took a closer look at the trunk.
It’s been ringbarked! No wonder it’s failing to thrive. I blame the gardening team’s over-enthusiastic wielding of a line trimmer whilst scalping the law a few months ago. I’ve sent a passive aggressive email to the gardener asking his opinion on whether it might be rabbits or insects that are the culprits, we’ll see what he has to say. It’s a bit awkward because it’s the same team who are doing the new fence this week so possibly it may behove me to tread carefully (oops too late).
The next fruit due to ripen are the pears. I’m astounded at how well they are doing, after all the old saying goes “pears for heirs” so I thought it would be years before they fruited. This is how the tree is looking at the moment. Note it’s grafted so there are different types of pears on the different branches.
I think you generally pick pears while they’re quite hard, and then you ripen them to taste in your fruit bowl. I’m hoping this means the birds won’t get at them. We shall see.
The figs are a bit harder to judge, they seem to ripen erratically, either because of our variable rain fall this summer, or something to do with the wasps. In any event, if and when they do start coming in, they will need to be covered because the birds love them.
Last of all will be the feijoas, so hotly anticipated but all too quickly tired of when they become a glut. Why are we like this?