Bananas galore and garden haul

As you can see I am tracking my banana from start to eating. It seemed to take forever for the first Cavendish to ripen.

Two weeks later the heart has grown longer and in comparison with the Cavendish this heart is HUGE so I will be expecting a big bunch. You can see the status of the growth from this first sighting on July 12th

Cavendish Banana is hanging in there

I went out to water the fruit trees and saw all these goodies. I had not taken much notice and voila fruit everywhere.  Large one is a lots a lemon tree, Kefir lime, Nagami and Calamondine cumquat. The trees are no taller than I am so I wasnt taking much notice to see if they were fruiting.

My Uncle Max potted up an Amberella tree for me. We used to eat it in Fiji and I cant wait for it to fruit so I can make pickle with it.

Happy gardening all

Lady Finger Banana 1st bunch

 I've been watching and watching out for my first banana from the Lady Finger tree and today I was rewarded for my persistence. I believe this was planted before Sep 2021 because the photo below was dated 1 Sep 2021

May 2022 this photo was taken, does not look much larger 4 months later

Fast forward to 12 July 2022 (today) after watching for months, I finally spot the heart of the bunch of bananas appearing. the first sign was that the tree was leaning

So up go the two pieces of wood to secure the lean

So we shall see how long it takes from heart to bunch for eating. 

Stay tuned!!!

Garden bed

 Well gardening has started back again after our deluge. I had this garden bed built by Len The Worm Farmer ages ago and didn't have time to get it going. This weekend hubby and I got stuck into filling it.

Firstly with stones to give it some drainage, underneath is cardboard to stop the weeds from coming up.

Then we put mulch in which I forgot to take a photo of

The stones are about 2 inches deep

The height of the bed

Mushroom compost in with valleys so I was able to put some food scraps in them and will cover them with used coffee grinds. then I will add some potting soil, manure, worm castings.

As you can see I have a long way to fill up the bed. It will be the healthiest bed we have put it because I started it with good stuff

Garden Club Jo's garden take two

Those of you who read my blog have seen this garden that I attended in one of the two Garden Clubs I belong to on Macleay Island. Jo and I are members of both clubs.  

The club these photos were taken at yesterday, we call Len's Garden Club (The Worm farm Man), <hubby calls it Len's Harem because Len is the only male (until yesterday) who attends and the rest are women. But yesterday we had 4 men attend woohoo.

As you can see many of Jo's flowers were in bloom in March compared to November photos in the links below.

Please enjoy the wonderful garden of Jo's. Jo is also a garden designer and goes under the name of 

PIMP MY BUSHES Jo has teamed up with Sheridan a Horticulturist. 

Give them a call if you want your garden designed.

Jo 0403 822 990 - Sheridan 0449 267 020

Here are the March photos to enjoy:

November this was Jo's garden you can see below in the links:

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Cavendish Banana First Bunch - The beginning and the end of it

 Well my patience paid out after 4 long years of my serious gardening foray. This Cavendish banana sprouted out a bunch of bananas in September last year. 

July 2019 is when this photo was taken and the banana tree had taken off after dying in a pot and coming back to life. The minute I planted it in ground it took off and grew

I reckon the chicken had a lot to do with its success

Silly me went and put a raised garden bed around it lol. Now there are 4 suckers growing and I need to remove the garden bed.

Sep 9th 2021 this appeared, it was wonderful to watch each section turn into a hand of banana

Today I went to visit and saw this, almost cried. the bunch of banana which weighed around 25kg was too heavy for the tree and fell over even though I had a piece of 2 x 4 wood holding the tree up. 

There are about 7 hands on this bunch and the bananas are still really hard.

I found another wasps nest in the making of that same chilli tree today so I removed the chilli tree

Wasps nest - WATCH OUT!!!

 I've seen this nest before when I went outside but forgot all about it until this morning when I went to check on my passionfruit vine.

I went back into the house and got "dressed" up to tackle the bugs.

Amazing creation, have never seen them build a nest like these in separate columns

All I could find for my face was this paint strainer bag

Here is the bag

Mwah all decked out and protected. Under there I had on a dress, pants, gum boots and I could only find 1 half of dish washing gloves so I put it on and put the other naked hand in my pocket and out I went.

Dragonfruit Pollinating

Not many people know if their dragon fruit needs pollinating. I have just had some flowers show up on my 7 year old dragon fruit plant which has given me many fruit over the years. 

I've been asked how I know when its about open and when I pollinate by hand.

So this first photo shows the flower growing and ready to open. 

 Then the color changes to yellow at the flower end. the fruit end is closes to the plant

The flower end starts to expand. At this point below you know it will open that night, it was about 7pm when it opened. It only opens one night.

This is the majestic flower. The stamen is sitting outside and the pollen is inside. You take your finger or a brush and brush that large yellow bit inside and brush the protruding stamen sticking out.

I collected the extra pollen and put it in a plastic bag and stored it in the freezer ready for the next plant that is self pollinating - means it cannot pollinate it self and needs another plants pollen to do it.

This is two days after I pollinated it. The flower starts to droop and will turn brown, when the fruit appears behind and turns purple I will remove the flower and leave the stamen, this discourages the ants from ruining the fruit.

Dragonfruit poles 2020 - 2022

 I cant believe I never posted about my dragon fruit poles. The first 8 poles went in on 27 Jun 2020. 

This is the construction of the top support made by Len the Worm Farmer. 18 months later Jan 2022 these are the results. I've negelcted them over time and not pruned them or fed them as much as I should. This year I shall do a better job I promise.

Below mulching in between the beds on top of the cardboard so the weeds dont grow again and if I want to use the space I'll put the raised beds inbetween on top of the mulch

In the photo below you can see cuttings I've left in the wheel barrow and they have grown lol, this proves you dont have to baby them too much

These three fruit below are from my  7 year old cutting I got from my Uncle Devlin. You can see the original plant HERE that I treated poorly lol 

January 26, 2022 photos taken

This one is ready to open. I have been checking them everyday