Africanaussie

When I first started my little garden the only plant in the back yard was our rather large lychee tree... and lots of grass.  Eventually my garden evolved, and I never thought that I would have the room for much fruit. I was thinking of fruit trees in their own little orchard. Not every fruit tree is as big as the lychee tree though, and slowly more and more fruit has been added, until I think I am heading towards having a food forest. The idea of a food forest is to have layers, which works well in the tropics where most plants need shade from the direct hot sun.  I have quite a few pawpaw in the back veggie patch as they spring up on their own, and I let some of them grow to maturity.  They are the yellow pawpaw, and I have recently added a red papaya to add a bit of variety.  Then I have a lime mandarin and barbados cherry  in the middle veggie patch - they can both be kept small by pruning.   Most of the time I still keep up a small shadecloth but I t...

I often think of my small garden in terms of different rooms.  This last shopping trip definitely reflected that  train of thought. When I saw a dwarf mulberry tree for only 16.00 I began to think about the fact that I have a collection of different fruit tree/bushes, but they are scattered around.  I had been toying with the idea of moving my hanging strawberry plants to planters that fit flush against the fence, as the hanging ones always seem to collapse.  This is the spare carport at our entrance and does not look very enticing. So all it took was the purchase of a mulberry tree to start  "Fruit salad alley"  That was the first project I undertook over the weekend.  Passionfruit grow well in this climate, but need to be moved into another area after a while.  They develop woody passionfruit virus, and lately, even though new vines start up in the back vegetable area they never quite flourish like the original one did.   I would love...