Love Is A Loaded Passion Fruit Vine

Love Is A Loaded Passion Fruit Vine

I love my loaded Passion fruit vine during February. Passion fruit thrive in the subtropics and almost anywhere that is not frost affected. Our vine, is 4 years old now and produces the purple fruit, Passiflora edulis. It was planted to grow on the boundary fence, but amazingly it has grown over the safety net around the trampoline. The effect is magnificent, and is a very good use of the vertical space created by the net. The result is a bouncy, leafy bower, complete with dangling sweet treats.

Packed with Vitamin C and iron, the delicious healthy balance between acidity and sweetness lends itself to complement many deserts and ice creams, though most of ours are eaten straight off the vine. I will give away and process much of the fruit in the coming weeks as the crop quickly ripens. It is wonderful to pull out frozen Passion fruit pulp mid-winter for a treat.

Fun fact – a Passion fruit is actually a berry, and within each berry is typically 250 seeds.

Endless Passion fruit is sweet compensation for the lack of leafy greens from the garden at the height of summer, but for now the laden Passion fruit vine is ripening at the rate of 2 or 3 Passion fruit per day – one for me, one for you and one for the freezer, perfect!

Rain refreshed, it’s time to plant

REFRESHED AFTER THE RAIN make the most of a rain event which naturally refreshes the soil to plant the garden after the summer heat. The recent rains that accompanied the Super Blue Moon broke the spell of the dry summer and made it possible to grow greens again. Now is the time to plant silverbeet and lettuce.

I want to eat super tasty, fresh plucked organic greens from the garden each day.

Our backyard is set to be rejigged soon, and the raised garden bed will be moved, so for now the growing area will be on the ground along the south fence, a very sunny position.

PREPARE THE GARDEN, I have shovelled some of the soil from the raised veggie garden onto the ground to make a new garden, added compost and watered all. This garden includes container planting – 5 black recycled tubs – and not a lot of planning, it will be interesting to see where the veggies flourish.

PLANT SILVERBEET. For a spend of $35 on seedlings (silverbeet is currently $4 per bunch at the shops), and a bale of organic sugar cane mulch, I now have a potential crop of 10 silverbeet plants, 8 Cos Lettuce, 4 Rocket plants and one Tommy Tomato, oh and not to forget the several clumps of Chives. More garden space is available for a succession crop.

With regular water – it will be essential to water twice a day for a week until the seedlings establish, and in a couple of weeks we will be eating from the garden again.

So, just like that, after the full moon rain, the veggie garden is growing again. Silverbeet and lettuces will be ready to eat soon!

Rain refreshed, it’s time to plant!

Garden waste recycled as useful resources

Check out the bean stakes (see photo in previous post) – straight from another part of the garden, from a shade-loving plant that grows on a cane! I’d like to make my garden sustainable by keeping its footprint small: using material produced in my garden, and other recycled materials – see old chicken wire gate recycled as the support for the snow peas.

I have been experimenting with mulch, trying to use organic matter shed from other plants in the garden, as there is plenty, which I have to rake up each day – now I understand why it is preferred not to have trees surrounding the house, though I do believe that the benefits of shade over the house in summer and experiencing the wildlife, especially the amazing birdsong that we hear each day, does outweigh the annoying aspects of maintenance.

The best mulch so far is the shorn ‘hay’ from the native grasses. Cutting the grasses back at the end of winter allows them to shoot anew in spring. This should be a fairly sustainable method of mulching. Not sure about the nutrient value of these grasses going back to the soil.

Jobs – plant more native grasses to use as mulch.

I have held off mulching too much until the plants grow up a little. Small plants can get shaded and lost beneath mulch.

I am not super impressed with the soil that I bought for the garden. It is going to take a while to create a good growing environment with lots of nutrients and organic matter. I will improve the soil over time with additions of compost and manures.

My compost is much improved with adding comfrey. I have added several green leaves, chopped up, each week and it has reduced the vinegar fly maggots. I have sourced the comfrey from my local community garden.

Jobs – plant some comfrey and get a bag of horse manure.

Check out the Greenharvest website for more info about Comfrey.

http://greenharvest.com.au/Plants/Comfrey.html

‘Comfrey probably has the widest range of uses in a permaculture system of any plant.

The leaves are a useful addition to compost or used as mulch,as they contain silica, nitrogen, magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron. Comfrey is lush and fast-growing in the right conditions and can provide abundant supplies of mulch. When planted in the orchard, it can be slashed to provide mulch under fruit trees. Comfrey leaves, measured as dry matter, are about 15 to 30% protein which is as high as most legumes. The leaves readily decompose when soaked in water to make a liquid manure.’