Tag Archives: fruit

Dragon fruit update!

Posted on by

So far so good with a lot of the dragon fruit! We had one flower the first night, 8 the second night, 9 the third night, and one on the fourth and final night of flowering. A total of 19 flowers!

Here you can see one flower bud that will not be viable, the the others look good!

We hand pollinated each night, using a soft paintbrush by brushing the pollen off the stamens and the petals where it had dropped to, and then brushing it into the stigma. In our enthusiasm, we went out too early the second night and the pollen hadn’t yet been released, but when we went out a couple of hours later there was plenty of pollen on the lower petals we could brush up into a container.

From early in the mornings after flowering, the flowers were covered in bees! this must have helped the pollination process too!

Now, nearly two weeks later, three unviable fruit have fallen off, but the remainder are swelling very nicely!

Berries!

Posted on by

Since moving to McCarthy Park 2, we have trying to find the best place for growing berries, as we had in McCarthy Park 1……. the chickens eat them, the ducks eat them, they frazzle in Perth’s hot summers……..

In our continuing attempts to reduce the amount of lawn, bit by bit, we came up with the idea of raised grow beds near the aquaponics. This area has a few benefits- the animals can’t eat them, they get morning sun but afternoon shade, they are contained (so they don’t get out of control), and they are close to the house (and the blueberries) for easy picking!

Unfortunately it is quite late in the season so we may have to wait until next year to get any berries!

We have several potted blueberries, which fruit at different times so providing us with plenty to eat and plenty to freeze for later in the year!