The second grapefruit seedling I grew is surprisingly alive. It's a bit more threadbare than the first, but then again it has to deal with the neighbour's herd of fence jumping sheep, and is generally in ground that's pretty dry and ridden with roots from nearby shrubs and other plants.
Yesterday, while pulling up the boysenberry canes from under the grass, and staking them up in a poor mans trellis, I managed to break a few of the canes. Noticing that they had white roots, I decided to try and pot them for later replanting.
Behind the boysenberry, are two planter bags of cuttings of what I believe to be heritage "Gabrier's Gully Gold Field" gooseberry that someone went out and retrieved. Named for the location, rather than any particular variety. And behind that are two more planter bags of Invicta gooseberry cuttings.
This grapefruit plant was grown from seed, in theory there's another planted out alongside the road, but I've not been out to check to see if it still survives.
Will the fruit from this taste okay? It'll be another couple of years before I get the chance to find out, I guess. Worst comes to worst, I have loose plants to try grafting things like finger limes onto it, if the fruit it bears are not worth eating or giving away.
A lot of my existing blackcurrant cuttings I've planted out, are of unknown varieties. The reason for this is that any way where a name or date is written on plastic, results in faded unreadable plastic within several months to a year. After that, it comes down to where whatever it was, was planted. And how reliably the notes are, if there are any.
In this case, I must have started my new tagging regime. This involves taking segments of coke cans, and inscribing the variety name on them with a sharp implement. So I am almost certain these are Cotswold Cross blackcurrant cuttings.
Reading New Zealand fruit books and remembering what I read online, the gist was to cut away canes that had fruited, and to trellis the trailing canes for next year's fruit. However, one of the books says that generally brambles fruit on 2 year old canes, so how you identify what ones fruited last year I guess is a matter of experience.
I don't have the experience or tools to make a proper trellis, so I've just taken the poor man's approach. I basically uncovered all the trailing canes out of the surrounding grass, and tied them up the post with garden twine.
Here's the Tasman boysenberries:
In New Zealand, have fruit trees or bushes and can graft cuttings or wanting to try?
I'm exchanging cuttings from my fruit trees this Winter, with some other interested people who have their own selection of fruit trees/bushes. If you're googling for scions/cuttings for grafting in New Zealand and have your own selection to exchange, please comment and we'll get in touch.
Here's my exchange list for Winter 2016:
There have been a few frosts and the yams have died back, so it's time to start harvesting before the grubs eat them all. Last year's harvest was a debacle and the grubs got most of them.
I planted late in January, as I had read that they don't really start growing until late anyway. Previous years I've put them in, in the Spring. But it doesn't seem necessary. I can't find the photos on flickr, so labelled and uploaded them.
2016-01-07: The bed has been dug and 90% of the stones put aside. The yams saved from last weeks harvest are sitting there in the egg cartons. They're survived the Winter pretty well, and the ones with cuts or damage were dipped in ash which seemed to do the trick.
These are the first two of three garlic beds I've planted this year, both used for the broad bean landrace last year. There's a wider third bed which was dug and planted out in several days of hot weather.
Here are the varieties and the beds they're planted in:
