We have a couple of apple trees in our garden; a green apple which is a Granny Smith plus a red variety which is a Jonathon. So far we have had a fairly good harvest of apples this year. The Jonathon apples were ready in late February and it was great eating them straight from the tree on a summers evening. They are all gone now! The Granny Smith (green apple) matures a bit later so that tree is loaded with fruit at the moment. We have had it covered with bird netting for the last few weeks … [Read more...]
Humming Tape for Fruit Trees
Keeping the birds away from your fruit trees over summer can be a big job! I find it helpful to use a combination of nets, shiny objects, and humming tape. If you have fruit trees in your garden then you probably have had to worry about birds getting your fruit before you can! Often the birds don’t even eat all the fruit, they just peck holes in it to test to see if it is ripe. This is an annual battle in my garden! A couple of years ago I shared a post which suggested ways to try to … [Read more...]
Treating Fungal Growth on Fruit Trees
Recently I shared a list of the July gardening jobs that I plan to tackle this month. And while I have made a start on this list I have realised that I forgot to mention one job. It is not something that I have been doing for years but treating fungal growth on fruit trees is now one of my winter jobs! Over the last couple of years we began noticing orange fungus growing on some of our fruit trees. It didn’t seem to be affecting the health of the trees but we were a bit worried anyway. It was … [Read more...]
Delicious Summer Fruit: Protecting Your Bounty from the Birds!
It is summer time in Australia and my apricot tree is covered in delicious summer fruit that is almost ripe. That seems to be the cue for the birds to come around and try out the harvest! Even though the apricots are not quite ripe yet the birds have begun testing them and leaving some apricots with peck marks all over them. Over the years I have tried hanging things in the tree but the birds generally get used to most things after a while. I have also tried using netting but my fruit trees … [Read more...]