Fruit in the Home Garden

Winter

Now is the time to select new trees for the orchard garden with June and July being the best planting months.

Complete pruning of stone fruit (Apricots, Plums, Peaches and Nectarines) trees by the end of July (saving large branches to use in the vegetable garden in the Spring for supports for peas). Get rid of any old and dried fruit as they can carry over disease spores. Then thoroughly spray with Lime Sulphur all over and around the tree, until the spray can be seen running down the trunk. If rain occurs within 48 hours repeat the spraying.

Remove all weeds and grass around trees and apply Giganic fertiliser around all fruit trees early in September.

Suggested fruit varieties for this area:

Plums: Satsuma, Mariposa (these two should be planted together as they cross pollinate to produce heavier crops). Santa Rosa is self fertile but improves if Mariposa is used as a pollinator. Frontier is another good variety.

Apricots: The old Moorpark is still a widely grown favourite, plus Trevatt, Hunter & Earlicot.

Nectarines: Goldmine, Arctic Rose and Anzac are all white fleshed and freestone. Flavortop is an excellent yellow fleshed freestone variety for eating, cooking, drying or bottling.

Peaches: Anzac is early maturing and freestone. Redhaven and Golden Queen are well proven favourites with the late season Golden Queen excellent for bottling.

Growing Citrus

Citrus varieties grow well in the Warragul & Drouin area. In fact they are probably the easiest and most rewarding of all fruit to grow.

Recomended Varieties:
Lemons: Lisbon, Eureka and Meyer
Oranges: Washington Navel, Valencia
Mandarins: Emperor, Imperial, Afourer (also known as Murcott)
Limes: Tahitian, Kaffir, Australian Limes.
Grapefruit: Marsh, Ruby.
Cumquats: Marumi, Ngami, Variegated

NOTE: Double grafted trees with two varieties can save space as can those grafted onto dwarf rootstock.