Citrus celebration

Collete the finger lime

Picked

•  mint

I confess, I love all sorts of citrus and if I had more space I'd grow more types.  Sydney is apparently a great climate for citrus, that's what I am told anyway.  I have a lemon, two espaliered Tahitian limes and my newly acquired 'Collete' the finger lime -  an Australian native plant that is becoming a bit of a feature in some restaurants because of their pearly citrus bubbles that pop out when you score their rind. That feature, along with the crazy colours they come in, have made them a bit of a sensation. 'Collette' has a shiny black skinned fruit and dark lime green bubbles. I can't wait till she starts producing although I have been told it can take some time.

As well as her fashionable status, I kind of like the idea that I am growing a tiny little bit of bush tucker...

Here are my citrus.

Here is 'Collette' -  I am enjoying her new growth which is a lovely dark red. She has tiny leaves and monstrous spikes and lives in a pot. She's only little.

Lemon tree, very pretty

This is my lemon, planted in this spot as one of my first gardening acts when we moved here in 2005. I am ashamed to say that I don't know if it is a Lisbon, or Meyer or anything else. It's one of those things I need to pay attention to - varieties.  It doesn't have spikes, if anyone knows what it is I'd be grateful.

It has a bit of a bad case of citrus leaf miner but its doing fine and I can put up with curly leaves.  I have a glue trap hanging up inside the tree in case you were wondering if I grew square lemons!  I have had a few of my fruit stung with fruit fly this year but most of the fruit is completely usable so again it's of little concern and better than spraying. My basil stash is growing beneath it and it (the lemon that is) gets a regular mulch of grass clippings.

I sometimes make this lamb meatball on skewers that uses lemon leaves as the main seasoning, it is just fantastic, you can't imagine how much the citrus flavour goes thru the meat.  I'll put it up here when I next make it.

Tahitian lime

Here is one of my espaliered Tahitian limes - this is the older one. It is currently fruiting quite well despite a stink bug attack earlier this season. I have fruit about to ripen and some babies on the way and  flowers just starting out so I should have a couple of crops to come if I can keep the stink bugs away.

Nearly ready to pick

The leaves are looking like they need a bit of a feed.  It has been such a wet summer I guess they could all do with some iron.

What does everyone else do when their citrus leaves look a little anemic like these ones here?


If I had more space I'd definitely grow a really tart mandarin, and a ruby grapefruit... one day.

Lemon, lime and mint cordial

I have to thank 500m2 and Suburban Tomato for their cordial suggestions for dealing with my lemon glut. I made about 1 litre of cordial using Suburban Tomato's recipe for Lemon and mint cordial, I added a few limes to it as I had some shop bought limes in the fruit basket that needed using up seeing as I will soon have my own crop, otherwise I used the recipe. I love it -  much better than Bickford's! I thought it looked nice in front of my citrus coloured glass that is a feature of our back veranda.

Yesterday's lemon tart and the cordial have reduced my lemon glut to manageable levels now, but more ripen every day.

Summer summary - '11-'12

Always grow sunflowers

With summer drawing to a close, here are some of my reflections on the season.

On La Nina

• It was unusually wet and cool for a Sydney summer, it came as a huge shock after many many years of drought.
  
• Dorathea McKellar knew about El Nino and La Nina long before  they had terms to describe them (I love a sunburnt country a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges of droughts and flooding rains...).
• La Nina is to be celebrated -  it saves my skin from added skin cancer risk and more freckles and  it fills the tank and means that you dont have to get the hose out and water!

On paying attention

•  My oft commented upon eggplants have been a slighly lighter colour purple this year and have had a soft light and fluffy flesh with few seeds.  I wish I had paid attention to their particular variety -  I want to grow them again. Or was their fluffy seedless flesh because of the plentiful rain?

On pest control  

zucchinis are not pests

• Eradicate the stink bugs when they are green babies and destroy them imediately! Even better, search your citrus for their lovely clear eggs and smash them before they can emerge.This way you might have a lime crop.
• Wear goggles when destroying stink bugs I got sprayed in the eye late last year and had to go to the optometrist to make sure I wasn't in some serious trouble. Tip -  irrigate your eye imediately if you get sprayed and you will save your eye.
• Hosing the aphids off the backs of the leaves of your cucumber works!  It uses a lot of water but it's better than spaying with other things and it's a La Nina year so I have lots of water.
• I now know what red spider mite looks like. I dont know what to do about it...
• Silvereyes (they are very sweet little birds) are great early season pest controllers in your tomato patch.  They search your tomatoes for green grubs and feed them to their babies. They also sometimes take a little nip.  Welcome them with open arms. Even if they nip your fruit. I can share with lovely birds.
• Glue traps work for reducing fruit fly. I love them!
• No matter how many glue traps you have, you will still have fruit fly.

On zucchinis

• Plant one zucchini and one zucchini only. Pick them young and eat them quick while they are at their best and have a miriade of recipes.  I have really enjoyed the ones I have used this year and no longer consider the zucchini a pest.

On tomatoes

• Pick your fruit before it rains lest it split!
• Learn how to eat split fruit in a La Nina year.
• My brown berries are more fruit fly resistant than the red varieties.
• Give up on growing large tomatoes in Sydney -  fruit fly is too much of a problem.



make lemon tarts

• Prune your plants a little in a La Nina  - this will help to ripen the fruit.  Don't prune  in a El Nino, your fruit will get sunburnt. Same goes for your skin really!

On chillies

• Grow them, love them, preserve, pickle, freeze, jam and eat them. They are one of life's great pleasures.
• Next year grow padrons, pick them, fry them and eat them with salt washed down with fino.

On lemons

•  Make lots of Lemon Tarts

On parsley

• curled parsley doesn't like La Nina as much as Italian.

On beetroot

frogs love La Nina

•  Dont be afraid of pickled beetroot.

On sunflowers

• Always grow sunflowers, always.

On frogs

• They like La Nina better than El  Nino.

Tomatoes, pests and glue traps

Picked:

• tomatoes
• cucumber

Planted:

• spring onions - 2 punnets
• zucchini seeds

The zebra tomatoes that were weak and spindly because they were too shaded by the wattle?  Well they have enjoyed the extra sun, thickened up and are now flowering. Hopefully I will get more fruit now.

I have had a fair bit of trouble with the zebras and not just because of the shade. If you are in NSW or Qld you will know of the lovely fruit fly! It is because of this pest that I usually only plant the smaller tomatoes (cherries and this year berries as well). It seems easier to control the fruit fly on these smaller tomatoes. 

But tempted by their lovely stripy skin and my already mentioned penchant for a fashionable ‘rainbow’ of tomatoes (just like the cook books) tempted me as did the claims of their fabulous flavour.  So I committed and, in an attempt to beat the fruit fly, searched for solutions.

I don’t spray - you probably guessed that by now. We are a small household and if I lose some produce to pests or birds then that’s fine – I grow enough. So this year, tempted by gluey plastic sheets, hung these up around the patch and very soon I was catching the blighters!  There is no poison, just a sticky yellow surface and fruit fly and other pests like white fly the house fly and mozzies get stuck. I cannot say that there have not been unintentional victims -  I have had the odd lady beetle and skink get stuck - but these have been very few (can count them on one hand) and I have plenty of unharmed lady beetles doing their own type of pest control for me.And plenty of skinks running thru the leaf litter and mulch.

These glue sheets, as well as bringing the fruit in before they are too ripe,  seems to have worked for some fruit but still the zebras are much more prone to fruit fly maggots than the little ones.

SPRING ONIONS

I rarely buy spring onions from the green grocer (cant actually remember the last time I did).  Instead I stagger planting spring onion seedlings thru the year.  Spring onions from the garden are a treat, when you pull then from the ground their hollow leaves pop.  When you cut them they have a juiciness and they taste sweeter than shop bought ones. I guess I have three lots of spring onion s in at the moment - all of different ages to keep me in supply.  Today I planted two more punnets.