Our most important fruit tree - the CHOKO tree!
We know that sustainable living is more than just about growing fruit and veggies, but providing our own local, organically grown food using Permaculture principles is not only intensely satisfying but also makes great economic and environmental sense. We live on 600m2 in Sydney’s greater west and for many years I have contributed to the family larder by growing fruit and this is an overview of how we do it.
History
I wanted to grow fruit, from the time when we first moved into the house in the late ‘70s. The problem was that I knew even less about fruit growing than I did about growing veggies, and I knew absolutely nothing about that! Needless to say, I made plenty of mistakes during the learning process. Some of the mistakes I made include the following –
• Planting an orange, apple and mandarine on the northern side of the then main veggie patch, causing increasing shade problems as the trees grew. Only the orange is still in place and it masquerades as the Choko Tree.
• I imported a very sickly peach tree from my fathers’ place, which then acted as a fruit fly magnet every spring. When, after a couple of years I removed it, my fruit fly problem reduced considerably.
Linda, inspecting said peach, back in the day
• Planting a lemon in the chook area, long before we had the chook tractor. The chooks compacted the clay soil and the excess manure resulted in anaerobic soil where the tree was, needless to say it died. I then compounded my error by replacing the dead lemon tree with another one which, surprisingly enough, also died.
• Persistently trying to grow berry fruits like gooseberry and red and black currants that do not do well in our Western Sydney Climate.
• Planting a couple of ‘Nelly Kelly’ grafted passionfruit beside the back deck. The rootstock is incredibly invasive. The productive parts are long dead but the rootstock continues to battle us for access to the house.
Nelly Kelly Passionsfruit - productive passionfruit on the left, invasive rootstock on the right
Fortunately, after buying a few good books and getting some training as part of the Farm Technology Certificate I did in the early ‘80s I no longer make such rookie mistakes. My mistakes are now much more subtle and harder to correct!
Planning
There are very good things that come from planning. I unfortunately didn’t figure that out until I discovered permaculture twenty odd years ago. When I did my PDC about 15 years ago, I was introduced to the idea of a Fruit Harvest Calendar which allows you to work out when your existing (and prospective) fruiting plants will produce, so you can arrange for year ‘round fruiting by varying the species and varieties of the fruit you grow. I did one during the course and found it very educative, but I need to re-do it to reflect the fruiting plants that have come and gone in the intervening years.
How to set up your own fruit harvest calendar is covered here.
Fruit Growing Areas
We have a number of areas that are set aside for growing fruit, with or without other types of plants being integrated with them –
Fruit tree circle – a 3 metre, raise and wood chip mulched circle with a worm tower in the centre, topped by an insect watering station. The fruiting plants originally installed include two lime trees (Tahitian and Makrut) two apples (pink lady and gala both dwarves) and a dwarf lemon tree. There were also three red currant bushes planted in the centre of the circle between the trees and the worm tower. While not strictly fruit trees there are also a curry leaf tree and a macadamia nut tree. The gala apple has since passed on and was replaced some years ago by a multigrafted apple and the red currents also did not survive, refer mistakes above. For more detail on the fruit tree circle, click here
2012
2023
Mulberry tree – This deserves a section all to itself! It was a seedling gleaned from my father’s next door neighbour about 30 years ago. It now has a canopy of 10 metre diameter, provides lots of fruit every year with no maintenance, shades our front yard park area, provides lots of sticks for starting the fire in winter or use in the rocket stove all year round and keeps the northern end of the house cooler in summer. The leaves are edible (I have read) but we have not tried them.
Summer
Winter
LUFFA (Longitudinal Edible Food Forest Area) – This forms fence of sorts at the front (east) of the property and is made up a number of fruiting species including – feijoa, lilly pilly, thornless blackberry, midyin berry (still small and scrappy) and a coffee bush (coffee is a fruit!!!). Non fruit related plants in this area also include a large bay tree and three good sized melaleuca alternifolia trees and lots of sweet potatoes. The whole set up provides nice screening from the street and neighbours across the road. For more detail on the LUFFA, click here.
Olive tree (LHS) and LUFFA from the south
From the north east
Small Fruit Tree Area – At almost the southeast corner of the front yard that used to house a small, scrappy and very unhappy bottlebrush, which we removed and now have a small built up area that was originally home to a blood orange and a dwarf fig (that doesn’t seem very dwarf anymore) and that was recently expanded to include a dwarf lemon. It is watched over by ourselves and our lovely next door neighbours. For more detail on the small fruit tree area, click here.
Miscellaneous – There are two fruit trees in the front yard that do their thing year after year. One is an olive tree, no idea what type, it had sat for a long time in a tin at a friend of my fathers’ place before we got it 30 or more years ago. It sits at the front of the property almost as a southerly extension of the LUFFA, but not really. While we do not eat olives (I have passed them on to friends) it is on my ‘to do’ list to try extracting their oil. One day! The second is a dwarf nectarine, which is our only stone fruit, due to the issues we have with fruit fly. It seems reasonably resistant and we get a bit of fruit each year.
Dwarf Nectarine
Banana circle – This has had a chequered past. Originally in the front yard for 10 years where it was crappy soil, too dry and too shaded, the bananas never fruited or made it over two metres in height. After an attack of smarts I transferred it to the backyard where it had good soil, full sun and all the water from the spa/shower in the bathroom piped to it. They are now up to 5 metres tall and fruit when they feel like it, which will make setting up a new fruit harvest calendar interesting. The banana circle also provides welcome shade on the back of the house from the western Sydney afternoon sun. For more details on the original banana circle, click here, and for more dtails on the move and how it developed since, click here.
Original position and growth 2011
New position 2023
Mandarine/passionfruit – Remember the mandarine I set up north of the veggie patch I mentioned above? It is now growing a metre from the western wall of the house and just north of the banana circle. I dug it up and moved it by hand about 15 years ago, and while it was not happy with me for 12 months, it recovered and produces lots of really nice fruit most years. It does sometimes go into biennial bearing after a particularly prolific year, but everyone deserves a rest. The passionfruit (a seedling, not grafted) sits below my office window, climbs up and provides shade, and then shows its affection for the mandarine tree, again, fruiting when it feels like it.
Passionfruit
Manderine Tree
The back deck – It was my intention to have ago at growing some fruit on the back deck. First was a grape which I planted in a large pot which has a buried capsule to keep it watered. It has not done as well as I would like, more research required. I also got a couple of allegedly self-watering pots and put in a two blueberries. These did well for a few years but then seemed to sicken and then expire. I suspect both sets of plants of plants have not dealt well with the ferocious western Sydney summer and as they are on the edge of the western facing deck, I fear they bear the brunt of it. Again – research opportunity! For more information on how I setting up the grap on the back deck, click here.
Grape, just after set up
The Strawberry tower – This was made out of a plastic 200litre drum with holes for the strawberries to grow out from. It was originally in the front yard under the mulberry tree, but I suspect it was too shaded to be truly happy. I transferred to the back yard but have not replanted it yet. For more detail, click here.
The Strawberry Tower
Watering
The mature trees such as the mulberry, olive and older citrus get watered when it rains. Simple as that.
The smaller and especially younger trees are watered using tank water and deep pipe waterers. These are 50mm diameter PVC tubes that are 500mm in length sunk into the ground near the root system with 3mm holes every 50mm down the length of the tube, facing the plant. Water directed into the deep pipe waterer goes directly underground, reducing losses due to evaporation and encouraging deep root growth. For details on construction and installation of deep pipe waterers in article form, click here, or for our Youtube videos on deep pipe waterer making, click here, and installing deep pipe waterers, click here.
What you see above ground
There is also a reservoir which I designed that goes on the top of the deep pipe waterer, buckets of grey water are tipped in, allowing the water to make its way into the soil without any losses.
The whole unit
The banana circle, of course is watered by greywater draining directly from the shower/spa into the centre depression of the banana circle. The mandarine is watered by greywater from the washing machine once it has passed through the constructed wetland.
Fertilising
There is some residual fertilisation from the breakdown of woodchip which most of the trees and shrubs have as mulch. Younger trees like those in the fruit tree circle and small fruit tree area have been provided with fertiliser sausages – which is a mixture of manures, wrapped up in hessian bags to form a sausage, and placed around the bottom of the trees. The sausages slowly rot down releasing nutrient for the trees. The fruit tree circle also derives some fertility from the worm tower at its centre. For an article on constructing fertiliser sausages, click here, for a youTube video on how to make fertiliser sausages, click here
Fertiliser sausage,
Fertiliser sausage, in place in the fruit tree circle
The citrus, due to their nitrogen requirements get diluted urine in spring and summer, with a tasteful white watering can in the toilet being contributed to by a donor or donors. This is then topped up with tank water at a ratio of about 1 part urine to 10 parts water. The resulting mix is then applied directly to the soil using the deep pipe waterer.
The banana circle is fertilised by adding organic matter to the central depression where the greywater goes. The damp organic matter then breaks down with nutrients being accessed directly by the bananas.
Pests and Diseases
By and large, our fruit plantation is pretty healthy with only the odd problem showing up.
In terms of pests one of the more common things we get is the scale/ants/sooty mould trifecta, where we use a vegetable oil spray to control the scale, and maybe a collar on the trunk to prevent access by the ants. This is usually on the citrus but can show up on the lilly pilly and bay tree as well The sooty mould discolouration on the leaves is more cosmetic than anything else, caused by the scale secreting honey dew (which the ants want, so they ‘farm’ the scale) and encouraging the fungus sooty mould when it gets on the leaves. If the scale problem is resolved, so is the sooty mould.
Bronze Orange Bug
The main problem we tend to get is bronze orange bug on the citrus and in a bad year they can be in plague proportions and really kick the living daylights out of the citrus. I hand pick and drown them. I have found that if you get stuck into them early in the spring and keep on top of the numbers it will make life easy (for me, not them!).
Fruit fly can be an issue, and I have used paper bags around fruit to keep them out, but in recent years they seem to be less of a problem. We also get fruit bats, mainly to share the mulberry crop and occasionally some bananas but we generally let them have their share and they are happy.
Conclusion
Our fruit growing efforts have taken a while to set up, and even taking into account my previous mistakes, is quire productive. I think that given a bit time, effort and learning, anybody can do what I have done. In the end I think it is really just a willingness to give it a go and see how things turn out. Good luck!
Links for more Details
Designing your own fruit harvest calender
Longitudinal Understory Food Forest Area (LUFFA)
The Banana Circle (original work)
Constructing and installing Deep Piper Waterers (Article)
Constructing Deep Pipe Waterers (YouTube)
Installing (retrofitting) Deep Pipe Waterers (youTube)
Constructing Fertiliser Sausages (Article)
Constructing Fertiliser Sausages (YouTube)
