Orchard Update - Goal: 300 Fruit Plants In The Ground This Year... 2015!

For someone who is a little impatient and prefers an instant result, growing plants can be a little testing at times. They take forever to grow, and some plants take 3-5 years before they start fruiting. So this year I've set a goal... get 300 plants in the ground... so they can start growing.

So for the last few weekends, we've been busy planting.. which has involved a lot of digging, moving soil/compost about the place.

So far we have in the ground:

Year 2015

26 Grapes (4 varieties)

80 Raspberry Plants

10 Blackberry Plants

16 Mandarin Trees (2 varieties)

16 Orange Trees (2 varieties)

8 Villa Franca Lemon Tress

80 Cranberry

16 Blueberry (2 varieties)

So that is about 252 plants so far.

So another 50 to go!

Next on my shopping list is Heritage Apples, more Passionfruit if my seeds don't sprout... and another variety of Raspberry... and I would like to add some more Plums.

Since purchasing the property... we had already planted about 40 plants... a mix of Nectarines, Meyer Lemons, Feijoa, Plums, Pear, Apples, Mandarin, Orange.

So we are getting quiet a bit of variety...

Below are some progress pics... my apologies on the quality.

I'm Loving The Passion Fruit

One of the many packets of seeds that I've purchased were for passionfruit. A very yummy fruit but very expensive to buy at the shops... $30KG. So I've been very keen to give them a go.

I managed to grow 4 plants from seeds:

Most Beautiful Flower!

We have only had 2 fruit in their first year... but hopefully if they survive winter we should have plenty next year.

I'm growing them along the pond fence, and I'm very impressed at how well they have done, so I'm going to increase the plant numbers... we have 4 plants on one side of the fence, so I will add another 8 plants in to cover another 2 sides of the fence. The fence is possibly a little on the low side, but I will see how they go before I think about raising it.  

My attempt at raising a second lot of seedlings from seeds has not been that successful so far. Fingers crossed they sprout soon.