Apples and Blueberries !

At last my double grafted Apple tree is flowering , I was interested and a little concerned about whether the two varieties would blossom at the same time ,the tree has one branch "Granny Smith" a green apple that's good for cooking with ,and one branch "Red delicious" a very nice eating apple . The theory behind "family" or multi graft apple trees, apart from novelty or space saving reasons , is that one variety will pollinate the other so instead of requiring different trees to pollinate each other, the one tree with its two types will look after itself


the first blossoms




Blueberries ?


My Blueberries have also sprung into action ,after being covered in masses of white flowers now it would appear little BLUEBERRIES are forming( I am not really sure how its supposed to work never having grown them before ) I know they like acid soil but i am a little undecided about using peat in the garden ( destroying wetland seems a bit drastic ) so i used tea mulch spread quite thickly around the base of the plants. The tea was given to me by rw scissors who obtained it from an ice tea manufacturer who use real tea leaves in their drinks. I figured tea plants are camellias which like acid soils so by my fuzzy logic
tea leaves=acid
I also knew that even though the labels say that some varieties are self fertile and don't require pollinators ,they will crop better if you have multiple plants near each other so earlier on in the year I managed to propagate some sucker growth and now I have multiple plants !

flowers and fruit

new garden bed

I decided to build a new garden bed at home as spring had sprung and apart from fruit trees and some soft fruit plants in tubs I didn't have much in the way of food production happening. I moved into this house earlier in the year and like the previous house it has quite a big garden for the central-ish suburb we live in but unlike the previous house I didn't feel quite as comfortable digging up large patches of lawn to grow vegetables- the joys of renting!

I chose to use h3 treated pine , h3 meaning treated for above ground use, it will deteriorate eventually but I figured for the 20 bux total the wood cost it would last me long enough.
I bought 6 1800mm lengths and sawed 2 in half to make 4 1800 lengths and 4 900 lengths.

I used a piece of pine balustrade for the corner posts
I joined the 900 lengths to the corner posts first,

Then the 1800 lengths to those ,

then I lined the bottom with some old card board and spread a layer of rotted hay that had previously lined a calf shed

A pile of rotted oak leaves from last year and a couple of bags of soil filled it up
so far it's planted out with silver beet , cauliflower, parsley,broccoli,capsicum and some great lakes lettuce