We're half way with our Project now!

The view of the front lawn and its groves, etc., facing east and south-east:

Out of 5 big soil piles, this is the last full pile left. The other pile at south is less than half pile and it will be used up soon anyway.

After considering the sizes of groves and such, we decided to 'bulldoze' the path between the fruit grove and rose bed - making it accessible for the mower. I am thinking of building a gate at this point, to make it an interesting point of the area as I would love to put a sitting area just at the back of the fruit grove because the little tree just above the fruit grove is the white mulberry - supposed to be quite large when grown and it would provide lovely shade? Time will tell...

What to do with your in-laws/parents who have nothing on their hands? Make them work! har har (insert another evil laugh here) Although I suspect my dad-in-law actually enjoyed the work and having a go on driving the mini-loader dingo...

A close-up of mum-in-law being supervised by the acting head gardener!

Here's the filled-up pear strip... looks quite good. The space between the strip and grove is for the mower, of course. We just need to cut off those little heads off the pegs then plant pear trees, bulbs, seeds and little plants, especially one for the arch...

This is the view toward west. I think the strip is about 3 metres wide and about 30 metres long! Plenty of room for 14 pear trees, eh?

Another west view - this time to northern, over seeing the fruit grove. I think we measured the area of the fruit grove as 220m sq. And I am only planting about 50 trees in this grove - so there should be plenty of space for adding more understorey plants and such.


We also used the oppprtunity to re-do our banana circle here, putting in the edgers and spread some manure and top up with soil to keep it warm and smothers the weeds/grass down. Amazing the bananas are doing quite well, despite severe frosts we've had here the last few days! However the growth is really slow - I am still trying to work out if we will get our bunches of banana by end of year or next year! There's 6 banana 'trees' growing at the moment and all at different growth so that means we will or should get a continuing supply of bananas when time comes...

Now, going to the back of property into the chook run, this is the top area of the citrus strip. Looks more tidied than before.

I estimated that we will be able to plant between 6 and 8 citrus trees in that strip.

This is the lower citrus strip, I am hoping to plant more here too - probably can only get away with 3 or 4 trees. All this will be fenced off to keep chooks away from digging up and eating up all the new plants.

This is the trellis strip - I have 2 kiwi fruit plants and a couple of table grapes waiting to be planted here. I still need to do bit of work in this strip, clearing weeds and bits before rolling out the cardboard and fill up with soil.


In all, I think it all looks great - more tidied and (gasp) more organised! I will put in another post when I have planted all the trees and take photos with list of fruit trees next month or two. I am still waiting for two large orders to arrive - they're expected to arrive eary to mid July. Fingers crossed they arrives so I'd have fun planting them all before it get too hot!

Cheers till then!