It's citrus feeding time, folks!

Don't you just love it when a plan works? I do. Last week, looking at the weather forecast, I spotted the magic word "rain" predicted for Tuesday August 24. And Huey the Rain God didn't let us down. The rain started late yesterday and it's still raining. 

A creature of gardening habits, I knew that the weeks spanning the end of August and the beginning of September are the ideal time to fertilise my citrus trees, so it was always at the top of my "to-do" list. All I needed was to wait for a good day of rain to come along, because that way the rain will water in the many handfuls of fertiliser I scattered around my Eureka lemon, Tahitian lime and Thai Makrut lime trees.

While I was at it and had plenty of fertiliser to spare, I scattered it around all manner of other plants that could do with a boost in spring, but the main game was feeding citrus. If you have a lemon, lime or other citrus tree in your garden, try to get out there over the next few days (showers are forecast through to the weekend) and your citrus trees will reward you with bumper crops.

I love a shiny footpath and water dripping off foliage. It means I have a day off from watering the garden, and I can watch the rain do the last stage of fertilising for me.

Both the lemon tree (pictured) and the lime are covered in flower buds right now, so a big feed is all they need to turn flowers into fruit.

The Eureka lemon is the ideal variety for Sydney gardens. In cooler climates the Lisbon variety is preferred, while the Meyer lemon is great in pots in all climates.

As is the Tahitian lime the ideal one for Sydney.

And this wrinkled weirdo is the Thai Makrut lime (also called the Kaffir lime), whose culinary value lies in the grated rind of the fruit (it produces hardly any juice), and the wonderfully aromatic foliage, which I toss into all sorts of South-East Asian curries and stir fries. The Thai lime is a great choice for pots, too, because it's naturally quite small.

This is my preferred citrus food not only because it's organic-based and the smelly aromas don't last long. It just happened to be what I had in the shed. 

Right now it's hard for locked-down gardeners everywhere to visit one of those big Hardware superbarns such as Bunnings. I actually bought my Dynamic Lifter a while back at my local Woolworths Supermarket, so try there if you don't have any in your garden shed at the moment.

There's also a small but well run local garden centre which I support by paying a bit more for the mulch, fertiliser, plants and seeds they stock, and it's still open. So maybe there's a small garden centre near you that is still open, or at least open for a click-and-collect shopping expedition?

In these difficult times, it doesn't really matter what you feed you citrus trees with. Almost any fertiliser I can think of is better than no fertiliser at all. If it says something about "fruit and flowers" then this is the good stuff, but even if the fertiliser just says "general purpose" you are in the citrus-feeding business.

Try to read the instructions on the pack before you get started. If you do your fertilising now, while the ground is wet and more showers are forecast, all you need to do is wait for a break in the rain, get out there like a mad person, laugh at the sky if the neighbours are watching, and scatter the fertiliser around the base of the tree. 

Don't direct the fertiliser at the tree trunk itself — there's no roots there. Instead, spread it out under the whole canopy of the tree, and especially around the ground directly below the outer edge of the canopy (that's called the 'dripline', because that's where most of the rainwater drips onto the ground).

The dripline area is where a healthy tree has oodles of roots. Direct your fertiliser there and let Huey the Rain God do the rest.

And after you've done the job and the poor locked-down neighbours with nothing to do are still watching, permit yourself to send one last chuckle skywards. All your gardening mates will know exactly how you feel.

The 10-Year Rewind – Part 8 – Stormy Intervals

Every day this month I am looking back on the 10 years since I started this blog in June, 2008. Part 8 is this one — Stormy Intervals — from March 2009. I just had to include at least one posting about rain in Sydney ... where would our garden be without the regular (if sometimes temperamental) assistance of Huey the Rain God?

I love a good storm, but then again that's because I don't live in Tornado Alley in America's midwest, or in the Caribbean, or in tropical Australia, where hurricanes put another factor of 10 on top of what I consider to be a good storm. I guess people in those parts of the world could do without pop-gun storm-lovers like me. But that doesn't stop me liking a good, quick little Sydney storm. We had one pass through late yesterday, and it gave the garden a lovely, deep drink without doing a lot of damage.

While we can cop storms here from all sorts of directions, the south-west is the most reliable point of entry, and here's our little storm approaching late in the afternoon.

I'm a weather radar addict when storms approach. My part of the world is closest to the area marked Sydney Ap (airport) on the mid-section of coast. The yellow bit in the radar image contains the heaviest rain – and all the lightning – and it passed straight overhead.

Only minutes away now and the dark cloudy bits look perfectly primed for a large, judgmental hand to reach down and smite someone. Alas, nothing of the sort happened and instead large blobs of water splattered down slowly, the advanced guard of the assault suggesting that it'd be a great idea for all boys with cameras to go inside now.

The front path becomes shiny, the thirsty hedges say 'thanks' for the drink and the wash-down, and moments later the real fun begins.

Within 30 seconds the rain changes from blobs to streams to grey torrents; gutters become rivers and strong trees sag under the weight of water.

Out the back of the house the pergola springs a leak where it attaches to the house and water starts streaming down the glass blocks that form part of our back wall. "Will you please stop taking photos and help mop up the water?" says someone far more sensible than me, as she lays towels against the back door, to stop the seepage getting in. You always know when it's really raining hard here, our leaky pergola lets us know.

Two really close lightning strikes this time round, one just across the road. What a terrifying, loud, violent sound close lightning is. Yet, 20 minutes later and it's all over. The street tree glistens after its wash and picks it head up, shaking its leaves free of water in the breezes, just like a wet dog.

The only 'damage' to speak of is pair of the potted, scented-leaf pelargoniums, which were due for a trim tomorrow anyway, as they've grown too lush and a bit too big for their pots. The intensity of the rain and the weight of the wet foliage has bent them over. A bit of remedial trimming, and maybe a bit of tying a staking behind the scenes, should attend to their immediate needs. 

Just a bit under one inch (25mm) of rain in 20 minutes is the harvest, a wonderful gift for the garden. March is meant to be our wettest month, with 131mm of rain on average, and so far we've had just 30mm of rain by the 14th.( A second storm later last night added another 15mm of rain, so the soil is much happier now.)

That was just a playful, helpful little 20-minute storm. I can't imagine what a hurricane would be like. I hope I never experience one, quite frankly. Nor a tornado. But as for our late-summer/early autumn temperate storms, they're common enough, and occasionally quite deadly if you're in the path of a falling tree, or taking shelter under one when lightning strikes (and these things do happen) but most of the time they're just a bath for the garden and a reminder that nature, in its fury, is the most powerful thing on Earth. 

Good old Rain Gods!

Thank you Huey! It is so nice to wake up this morning to hear the gentle hiss of rain on the tin roof that covers the back part of our house. And to look out upon the garden and see the pathway covered in a shiny film, I know that finally the plants are getting a proper watering, a soaking of their souls that a mere gardener with a hose and a watering can cannot hope to provide. 

Pictured below is soggy land this morning, bathed in the dull light of low grey clouds.

I am sure I must have mentioned it a few times before on this blog, but I love watering the garden. Even though we didn't have much of a garden in the home where I grew up, as a little boy I still loved watering the garden. All we had then was two hydrangeas, a lawn and a row of unruly oleanders that didn't need any help whatsoever from wistful little boys. But for me even then, watering the garden was a lovely time of quiet contemplation and daydreaming.

Despite my lifelong love of watering our garden, some mornings I do get a bit sick of it. As the weather cools down (finally!) this autumn, the garden's established plants don't need extra water, but we always have some new crops that need a regular drink. And so yes, some days even one of my favourite things can become a chore. Sigh. Being a grown-up can be so boring sometimes ...

And so here's truly heartfelt thanks to our Rain Gods, for doing a wonderful job and also letting me have the morning off.