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.

Citrus feeding time again, folks

It's a wet weekend at the end of February, and so that means it's ideal citrus feeding weather at the ideal time of year. I just did my lemon, lime and potted Thai lime trees, and garden smells glorious, although I'm not sure if Pammy and the neighbours totally agree.

Use whatever you like to feed your citrus. I prefer Dynamic Lifter (which is pelletised chicken poo, hence the aromatics) but there are lots of different citrus foods you can use. 

The reason for the wet weekend being ideal is that in a perfect world, you should apply fertiliser to damp soil, then water it in afterwards. There was rain overnight, the soil was nicely damp, and as showers are forecast for the rest of the weekend, the rain gods can do the rest. All I had to do was fling the dung.

Most fertiliser packets/bags actually come with instructions on how much fertiliser to use, so I suggest you follow those. It's hard to overdose with an organic food like Dynamic Lifter, but half a dozen handfuls scattered all around under the tree's canopy will do it. And concentrate most of the food on the ground that's under the outer edges of the canopy, not near the trunk.

And if the mulch has broken down a lot, it's also an ideal time to top up the mulches, because like citrus, mulch goes down best over damp ground.

Don't you love the way rainy weather is the ideal time to be out in garden? I do ...

Woo hoo, rain coming, action stations!

We gardeners are right up there in the top echelon of people who get a real kick out of enjoying life's simple pleasures. This morning, I'm a kid again, excited by the forecast of showers maybe coming this afternoon, then a definite promise of rain tomorrow. Woo hoo, the first rain in ages! Lots of little jobs to do ...

But wait, there's more. My bag of potatoes is sprouting up a forest of little green men. It's about time, too. It's been three weeks since I bagged them up (you can read all about that little excercise here). 

Traaa daaa, Mr Potato Head makes his debut. I've planted
four seed potatoes in the bad and there are four sets of
buds coming up, so they're all performing nicely.

Now that the potato shoots are up, the other job to do is to
gently fold down the sides of the bag, so the little shoots can
get some more sunlight. They don't need any fertiliser. They
are surrounded by it all already, courtesy of the compost. 

With this rain coming, it's the perfect time to get the job of
feeding the citrus trees done. Our lemon tree is covered in
new shoots, flowers and flower buds, so it's busting for a
decent feed. The same applies to our lime tree and our potted
Thai (kaffir) lime. 

Here in Australia it's best to feed citrus twice
a year, at the end of summer (in late February)
and now, the end of winter or start of spring
(late August). So if you have citrus trees, do
it now. Here's my posting on how I do it from
last February, 'Flingin' in the rain'. Today
I am again using my old standby, Dynamic Lifter.

This is outrageous. I only planted this strawberry seedling
on Wednesday, and it's already flowering. So, as well as
making sure it is well mulched, I have sprinkled around some
Dynamic Lifter and watered it in (but not too much, the
coming deluge will water in all my fertiliser for me).

Another big job to squeeze in before the rains
come is to yank out all the weeds. I'm down to
my last two square metres of weeding to do, so
it won't take long to pull these invaders out.
While weeding is a dull task, I find that if I
do it in small sections over a week or two, covering
the weeded ground with mulch as soon as I
finish, it's not such an onerous task.

One little trick with pulling weeds is to learn
what "wanted" self-seeding plants look like as
babies. These are two self-seeded Love-in-a-Mist
plants coming up, and there's about a dozen
of them showing up now near the lime tree.
I love the ethereal beauty of Love-in-a-Mist
(Nigella) flowers, and I am hoping that they
will become a permanent part of our garden
without me ever having to plant them again.

Finally, I'm planting out some more of my
supermarket sprouts. This time I am giving some
parsley sprouts a go as a border around a bed. 

I'm not sure how the parsley sprouts will take, but if they work out OK then most of the "micro sprouts" (eg, coriander, chervil, radish, sorrel, parsley) sold in punnets at my local Woolies supermarket can be treated as cheap seedlings to grow in the garden. You can read all about the original experiment here. 

Parsley has always been a plant which is very fussy about being transplanted as seedlings. The old wisdom is that it's best to grow parsley from seed, so I won't be surprised if my parsley seedlings don't survive. But if they do survive, I guess that will be because I planted clumps of several baby seedlings together, and all I really need from each clump is for one seedling to survive and grow to maturity.

Time will tell, but the first stage of caring for my parsley seedlings is to water them well, and I believe that Huey the rain god has that job covered for the next seven days. Over to you Huey!

Tangy weather

One of the good things about gardening in backyards is that the rest of the street can't witness the strange things you sometimes get up to: like gardening in the rain.

Now, all my Sydney gardening friends don't need a weather report – we all know it has been raining for the last few days, and that it's likely to keep on raining for a while longer yet. So most sensible folk might think "oh well, it's raining, might as well read a book/watch a video/bake a cake/clean the house, etc etc".

But no, not this little gardener. "It's raining, yippee, time to feed some plants!" And so that's what I did today: I fed my three citrus trees. As a matter of fact, rainy days are the ideal times to pile on the fertiliser. That's because the theory is that you should water the ground well before applying plant foods. Rainy days take care of that little job for me. And then you should water the ground well after applying plant foods, to get the nutrients down into the soil. Thank you once more, rainy day!

Here in our temperate climate at least, it's best
to feed citrus grown in-ground twice a year,
at the end of summer (late Feb) and early spring
(late August). This is my Eureka lemon tree,
healthy and happy, always willing to scoff a bit
more food and produce some more juicy fruit.

It's not the prettiest lemon tree, having had a
rough childhood, bullied by the roots of a nearby
 climber which is no longer there. But it has bounced
back since the bully left, although it does lean to the
left slightly, like that famous tower in Italy.

Also getting a feed today was this person, the Tahiti lime, which
is grown espalier-style on a frame of solid wires suspended
between two swimming pool fence posts. This loyal trooper is about
10 years old now and is soldiering on nicely. It needs regular
clipping back (about two or three times a year) to maintain
its thinnish, wideish shape, but it's too lush with foliage to ever
take on the classic leafy 'arms' look of the fancy pear and apple
espaliers that you see in the designer gardening books.

There's only one problem with Tahiti limes and
that is they bear their fruit in a big bunch in
late summer and early autumn, then for the
rest of the year there's very few to enjoy.

Even though I religiously thin out fruits where
I can to cut down the gluts, I always miss a few
clusters and I end up with these bunches. 

The exception to the 'late summer/early spring'
feeding regime is potted citrus, such as this
potted Thai makrut lime. It gets fed lightly
but more often, around once a month is ideal.

As for what to feed citrus and how much, there's a stack of different options, each with its own instructions on the pack that are well worth following to the letter. 

For the potted makrut lime I prefer to use a slow-release product such as Osmocote for Citrus, but every now and then I give the pot a small half-handful of chicken poo, sometimes a bit of cow poo, if I am fertilising other plants nearby in the warmer growing season, when I am watering the pot a lot and it's probably growing faster than ever and can cope with a bit of a treat. The main thing is not to apply too much food to potted citrus trees at any one time, but to keep on giving it little feeds throughout the year.

As for the in-ground plants, I prefer an organic-based product such as Dynamic Lifter for Fruit and Citrus (for no special reason other than habit and good results). Notice I say it's "organic based" and not "organic". That's because so many good, useful modern plant foods now fall into this "organic based' category. They don't qualify as a purist organic product but that doesn't bother me greatly. The Dynamic Lifter, for example, is basically chicken poo, but these days the manufacturer (Yates) has added in trace elements to boost its effectiveness. 

My commitment to organic gardening is more to do with avoiding sprays which kill beneficial insects; to use methods which slowly but surely 'feed' the soil over the years with compost, manures and mulch; and to encourage a little backyard eco-system where birds, beetles, lizards, spiders, worms and all sorts of creatures find a home to share with us, and each other.