Pomegranate

This year we finally harvested….wait for it….ONE pomegranate! It seems less, but when I tell you the care it took to get to this point, it will be a big deal.

Year 1: We bought the plant in 2012 summer, hence, it was too small for any flowers or fruits.

April 2012

Oct 2012

Year 2: In 2013 summer, we saw a couple of flowers. The flowers are quite pretty and look fantastic against the green leaves.  However, those did not last long and fell off before the weather became hotter.

Sep 2013

April 2014

Year 3: In 2014 spring, we saw many more flowers than the previous year. Initially, we were pretty excited and expected fruits that season. But Melbourne is pretty windy (or maybe the plant was still too young), so the flowers started falling off. However, this year the tree continued to flower. With the second batch of flowers, I gave hand-pollinating a try. It did not help and those flowers fell off too. The tree taunted us with continuous flowering till late summer.

July 2014

2 Nov 2014

3 Nov 2014

6 Nov 2014

8 Nov 2014

Year 4: This was THE year, the year we got a fruit. The plant followed its cycle of flowering-falling flowers-more flowers-more fallen flowers from 2015 spring. But, unknown to us, a flower near the foot of the tree had stayed on and was turning into fruit. We did not notice it till it was quite well settled, due to the Daisy growing around it. Maybe that is what kept it on the tree when the winds blew. It took an awfully long time for the fruit to ripen. The variety we have is Ben Hur, with fruit expected to be as large as the size of one’s hand. The fruit we got was not quite that large, but bigger than I have seen in India. I was waiting for the skin colour to change to red (like it said it would), but it didn’t. Finally, I saw that the skin had split, indicating that the fruit was ripe. We had it for an evening snack that day. The seeds were really large and tended to be a bit chewy, but the flesh was really sweet and juicy. Perhaps this variety is better for juicing.

Sep 2015

Jan 2016

Feb 2016

April 2016

April 2016

Summer round up - 2

Princess lilies – For my birthday this year, Anshuman gifted me a new plant called Princess Lily. It has nice white flowers, with slight pink and cream streaks though it. Even the leaves are lovely, with a nice white border. Once the flowers die down in autumn, the plant still looks striking. It needs a partly shady spot, so I put it under the Hakea.

Princess Lillies

Cactus - Last post I was looking forward to a cactus flower. It did have several flowers, surprisingly very dainty for such a prickly plant! Only the purple cactus flowered. The red and yellow had no change from the last year. In fact the stem of the yellow one seems to be rotting, even though I never water it.

Cactus flower

Crepe Myrtle – This is one of my absolute favourites! I envy the people who have this growing in their yards. When full grown, the tree is 8 ft tall or so. The branches are quite linear, fanning out from the trunk. This gives a spectacularly organised effect when they have flowers growing at the end. So far, I have seen various shades of pink, light purple and white. They only flower for a month in February-March, so they are much looked forward to.

Crepe Myrtle

Carnation – These are still happily flowering away. Since the seeds were mixed colours, we have had white, light pink, dark pink, red and recently a dark purple Carnation. Strangely enough, they smell like cloves. I googled and turns out that the variety I have is called “clove pinks”, because of the smell.

Cascading colourful Carnations

Calendula – Until I grew this, I had no idea what a joy it is to see an orange flower. Maybe because that is my favourite colour! I had grown a couple of them in a pot, which took more than a year to flower and died after 2 pale yellow flowers. Since we did not have any vegetables in the patch this year, I sowed several seeds of Calendula. They struggled with some pests for a bit, but really shot to glory from January! Each flower lasts for roughly a week and attracts butterflies and bees.

Calendula

Winter is around the corner. While this forces us indoor, we have the lovely Daphne to look forward to.

Summer round up - 1

Not much is happening this season as we did not plant any new vegetables. Vegetable grow quickly, so there is something new every week. Fruits take so much longer!

Guava – I saw 8 flower buds in December. These have now become fruit. The fruit are still in the growing phase, so they are only as big as a strawberry, but still, getting there!

Fruit in February'16

Strawberry – Speaking of strawberry, we discovered a hidden stash of strawberries growing deep within the plant. I had given up hope as for the last two years we had lost our crop to a pest. But my aunt and uncle, who came to stay for a day, found them. They were really healthy and much bigger than we have had before. More are expected, equally big in size I hope!

Strawberries

Promise of more Strawberries!

Melon – I planted three melon seeds from a fruit that was store bought. One of them germinated and is now trailing along the width of the vegetable patch. The yellow flowers are quite striking, but were slow to attract pollinators. Now, I can see a couple of fruits forming. I am not sure whether they have enough time to grow and ripen before the winter comes. As I understand it, they need a lot of heat to ripen. But, look like the fruit is doing just fine! The photo on the left is from 22nd February, the right photo is from 26th February. Look at how much it has grown in  4 days!

Melon - photos are 4 day apart

Pomegranate – As usual, the tree had a zillion flowers during spring. Many looked like they would become fruit, but fell off. I read somewhere that pomegranate should be planted in a sheltered position, with less wind. Unfortunately, ours is not and Melbourne can get quite windy. That is why most fell off…save one. This flower was right at the bottom of the tree and we almost missed it. Now it’s quite well grown. The tree we bought does claim to give a large fruit, bigger than one’s palm. Let’s see whether that happens.

Lone pomegranate

Lime – We are plagued by the Citrus gall wasp, which is common in Australia. It burrows a hole in the stem to lay its eggs. These are characterised by bumps and lumps in the stem. I tried to snip off those branches last year after the eggs had been laid, but I think I succeeded partially only. Hence, this year too we got lots of leaves, but no flowers. A month ago, we saw a bunch of them in the stems at the back (which incidentally did not have any visible citrus gall wasp infestation). These now look like potential lime. It is ironic that this was the first plant we bought (2011) because we genuinely eat lots of lime and it is quite expensive here.

Lime

Potato – Potato still surprises me by growing from a different spot every year! I have no idea how it travels from one end to the other of the 7 ft vegetable patch, but I swear it does! This year we got three plants, which I harvested a couple of weeks ago. The potato were quite tiny, but so delicious.

The other potential vegetable harvests like Broccoli, Asparagus and Herbs did not do well. I was only able to harvest a few Chives and Basil. Everything else was too minimal to harvest, so I let them take a break and go to seed :D

Just yesterday, I cleaned out the vegetable bed of the dead Virginian Stock and unearthed what looks to be a chilli plant. I had small chillies growing in that spot in 2015 summer and the plant looks like that. I am now debating whether to bring it indoors for winter. It will certainly not have enough time to grow, flower AND provide chillies before the winter comes.

Chilli