Casimiroa edulis (White Sapote as a food and commercial crop in Australia)

White Sapote as a fruit tree in Melbourne?

Yes you can grow White Sapote in Melbourne. This relatively unknown (to Melbournians) fruit is delicious and a potential as a market fruit. Click the links below for;

White Sapote description and tolerances

White Sapote medicinal properties

Casimiroa edulis as a food

Casimiroa edulis is primarily eaten fresh either on its own or added fresh to other foods as due to its properties, White Sapote has proved unsuitable to canning or freezing (Morton 1987). Casimiroa edulis is a sweet fruit containing 27% sugars and has been compared to custard, peach or banana in flavour (University of Connecticut 2017). It is often combined with milk to produce ice-creams or milkshakes and is rich in vitamin A and C (University of Connecticut 2017). Apparently it can be made into a spread similar to marmalade (Morton 1987).

Potential as a commercial crop in Australia

Due to its high sugar content (University of Connecticut 2017) I think white sapote has potential as market sold fruit in Australia as most people enjoy sweet fruit. Unfortunately due to its inability to endure chilling long term storage of White Sapote fruit is problematic with a refrigerated life of only two weeks (Morton 1987). Ideally the fruit needs to be picked serveral weeks before ripe with a short piece of stem still attached (similar to a peach) to extend shelf life (California Rare Fruit Growers 2017). Heavy frost and low temperatures will damage White Sapote plants and fruit which is why it may only currently be grown commercially in northern New South Wales.

References

California Rare Fruit Growers (2017). White Sapote. Accessed 30/10/2017 https://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/whitesapote.html

Morton, J.F. (1987), Fruits of warm climates, Media Incorporated, Greensboro, N.C, USA.

University of Connecticut (2017), Casimiroa edulis Llave. Accessed 30/10/2017. http://florawww.eeb.uconn.edu/199900052.html

Giving your backyard the bird. The benefits of birds.

Benefits of birds in the urban garden

I used to live inner city Melbourne and by that I mean in a single fronted two bedroom rental only four kilometres from the CBD. Then I moved to a semi rural area around fifty two kilometres from the CBD and I suddenly felt like I was living in that giant aviary in the Melbourne zoo. Birds I've noticed include rosellas, king parrots, cockatoos, black cockatoos, eastern spine bills, golden whistlers, owls, finches, ibises, ducks and even giant wedge tailed eagles. In fact there are heaps more that I either haven't identified or noticed. The sight of them is beautiful and relaxing (unless they are eating my plants or fruit) and the sound of their song chiming through the garden has an almost therapeutic quality to it. Obviously there are also cons to having lots of birds in your garden but I'm going to concentrate on the positive aspects in this article and try and spread some good vibes into the world.

 Benefits of birds in the garden

• Pollination. It's not only bees that pollinate flowers, birds drink nectar and spread pollen on their beaks thereby transferring male gametes of one flower to female ovules to another flower (or it could be to the same flower or even a flower on a different plant). This process sets in place the production of fruit from the flower which then can result in seed production which can finally result in production of a whole new plant from the seed. Life is an amazing thing.

• Pest reduction. Birds not only feed on nectar but also on other animals and insects (which are also classified as being in the animal kingdom if you want to get specific). Therefore birds can possibly reduce the amount of pest insects in your garden. Snails and slugs are the bane of many gardeners, luckily ducks seem to love eating them so grab yourself some ducks if you want less snails.

• Wildlife Conservation. As the urban sprawl creeps further and further loss of habitat inevitable occurs. Creating a bird friendly environment in your garden can somewhat negate this impact and if done correctly can provide refuge and sustenance.

• Head medicine. The term 'Nature Deficit Disorder' was first coined by Richard Louv in his 2005 book named 'Last Child in the Woods'. He argues that people have an inbuilt desire to be in nature (called biophillia) and that prolonged absence from such environments has negative effects on people. Nature deficit disorder has become a somewhat accepted idea and interaction with birds does provide an experience some would describe as 'natural'. Whether you agree with NDD or not I think many people would argue the sound of birds singing in the morning or on a nice spring day is beautiful.

• Increased property value? Some say that increased bird life = increased property value. I haven't looked through the info properly on this but on face value it seems as though this could be true.

With all these positive impacts I hope you're all excited and want to implement some strategies to increase bird numbers in your garden. If after reading this, you still can't get over your negative view of birds then maybe just stick a plastic flamingo in the backyard.

Want tips on how to attract birds to your garden?

Growing garlic 2018

I apologise in advance for my mangled attempt of referencing in this post. I'm trying out using some referencing software and I think I've entered some info in the wrong way. Anyway I've planted out some more garlic this year and the bulbs I sourced are fantastic. I thought I'd write up a little post on garlic planting.

Common name: Garlic
Genus: Allium
Specific epithet: sativum

Description:  Garlic is a bulbous herb 60cm in height, with four to twelve leaves attached to an underground stem. Flowers are contained in an inflorescence called a spike and are greenish-white. Amazingly seeds are not usually produced in the wild but have been produced in the lab (www.kew.org, 2018).


Origin and brief history: Central Asia is considered to be the original area where garlic grew and it's said by some to have been bought to China (which is where Westerners discovered it) by the Mongolians from the Asian steppes (Salvestrin, 1984). Other historians claim that garlic did in fact originate from China itself (Petrovska and Cekovska, 2010). Ancient Egyptians used it in their cooking and fed it to their slaves and ancient Egyptian crypts contain the oldest visible inscriptions of garlic (Petrovska and Cekovska, 2010). It is mentioned in England before 1958 by Peter Martyr in his writings about the new world where he says it was used in Mexico (Salvestrin, 1984).

Growing your own garlic;

Locally grown organic garlic is superior in flavour to the commonly imported Chinese garlic you find in supermarkets however it is also significantly more expensive. As luck would have it though, garlic is dead easy to grow in Melbourne and most parts of Victoria so why not give it a go yourself?

How to source bulbs 

Basically you can use any garlic bulbs you would find at a farmers market or you can buy bulbs online through various suppliers. You want to plant out a variety that has a flavour you appreciate and source bulbs that are large as I'm guessing they probably have more energy reserves that can be utilised to produce a larger end product. This year I bought Italian purple garlic from Hopkins River Herbs which I found through farmhouse direct https://www.farmhousedirect.com.au/hopkinsriverherbs. The garlic I received tastes fantastic and was large in size so it's just what I wanted.

Soil

Well drained clay loam with a PH between 6.5 and 7 is said to be the best soil in Victoria from growing garlic (Towers, 1984). However I know lots of people that grow it in various soils. So long as it's not in extreme clay or sand and the PH is reasonable I think it will be ok.

Timing

People have all sorts of crazy ideas in regard to timing. I've heard lots of different stories such as 'plant out on mothers day and harvest on fathers day'. Another tip lots of people have given me personally is to plant out in autumn before the weather starts to cool down. The idea behind this I'm told is that the change in weather somehow assists germination and the early growth stages. Whether this is true I don't know but all the crops I've planted have turned out well using this timing.

Irrigation

My basic irrigation strategy for garlic is simply to give it some water when there hasn't been much rain. Pretty simple but it seems to work fine.

Planting method

After you've sourced your bulbs you want to break them into cloves but you don't want to plant out the cloves that in the centre of the bulb. Smaller cloves have less vigour and are better eaten than planted out. Place them in the soil tip up and base down and try to cover them with around 5cm of soil (although this is a rough measurement sometimes I've done it with less or a little more). I then water them in out of habit and that's the whole process.

Harvesting

I will cover harvesting in a later post in detail.

 That's what 1kg of Italian purple garlic from Hopkins River Herbs looks like

Over exposed pic of the separation in progress

You want to avoid those smaller cloves in the centre. They wont grow into decent bulbs

All ready to go

Make sure you plant them pointy end up

References

Petrovska, B. B. and Cekovska, S. (2010) ‘Extracts from the history and medical properties of garlic.’, Pharmacognosy reviews. Wolters Kluwer -- Medknow Publications, 4(7), pp. 106–10. doi: 10.4103/0973-7847.65321.

Salvestrin, J. (1984) ‘Review of garlic overseas and in Australia’, in Sutherland, J. (ed.) Growing Garlic The Unforgiving Crop. 1st edn. Melbourne: Department of Agriculture NSW, p. 1.

Towers, B. (1984) ‘Growing garlic in southern Victoria’, in Growing Garlic The Unforgiving Crop. Department of Agriculture NSW, p. 83.

www.kew.org (2018) Allium sativum L. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science, Kewscience. Available at: http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:528796-1 (Accessed: 8 May 2018).

 

How I've improved the soil in my backyard veggie beds

First of all I realize it has been a while between posts (I'm not dead in case you were wondering)

When I opened up my blog a few days ago I was shocked to see the last post was in 2016! Basically I got a bit blogged out and forgot / ignored it. I'm pretty sure that I've lost all the people who used to follow my blog and that is my fault but hopefully I can get things rolling again and put down some content regularly from here on. If you're an old follower who is reading this because of some kind of alert then please come back again. Anyway I'm alive and well plus I'm going to be starting my own garden design / maintenance business very soon now which is personally very exciting (see www.aggregata.com.au for a partially finished website).

Improving the soil in my backyard veggie patch

History of the site

We purchased our land in Macedon Victoria around 10 years ago and after a while I noticed a few strange things about the soil. The block we live on was one of the most barren in the street. Unlike the other blocks which had lots of trees and plants ours was rather bare with large patches of mixed species (weedy) lawn. Through digging in the backyard I found very little top soil compared to the front which had at least 15cm and more in some places. I'm wondering whether the top soil in the back yard was scalped by a bob cat at some stage.

Soil analysis

I learnt how to complete a basic soil analysis through one of my subjects at university and I discovered the following info about the soil in the backyard;

• It had a PH level of 5 which is slightly acidic and possibly detrimental to plant growth for some species
• Using the soil texture triangle I was surprised to find the soil was in fact classified as sandy clay loam (56.52% sand, 30.43% clay and 13.04% silt)

Ah Manutec my old friend. You are so much more accurate and reliable than the $5 Bunnings PH probe.

Is it 5.5 or 5? Hard to tell from the pic but it looked more like 5.

Soil improvement last year

I dug the beds last year in preparation for spring planting. I sprayed off the turf with organic herbicide and dug in some compost. Unfortunately I didn't attempt to rectify the PH. Plant growth was not great last season.

Bed #1 with last spring / summers pathetic left overs.

Bed #2 which I cleared out a few weeks back.

My raised bed. You can see the difference. So much growth. On a side note organic snail bait doesn't work. I caught the little buggers munching on my bok choy it a few nights ago. I'll have to try other methods as I don't really want to go back to using Baysol snail pellets.

Overhaul

After pulling the old veggies out I dug in roughly half a m2 of five ways soil mix then limed the

Although last years crop wasn't very good I was pleased to see the soil had improved structure wise. It felt nice and loose when digging it over and it had a nice amount of moisture. The soil definitely was less hard packed. I applied lime at the rate of 100g per m2 to try and change the PH back to a more neutral level. I'll do another PH test soon to see if it worked. I then watered the lime in and mulched over with old straw from my chicken coop that I removed a few weeks back. The plan for the beds are to plant out 1kg of garlic that is arriving in the mail soon.

There's nothing like the feeling (and smell) of driving a ute with one m2 of 5 ways mix on the back.

Look at that pristine bed all ready to go and not a weed in site. It won't stay that way for long :)

I always water down mulch. Don't know if it really helps it settle and become wind resistant but that's the idea.