Thinning citrus

I always thought there were two good reasons for thinning out your crop of baby citrus fruits, but reading up on the topic I've discovered a third excellent reason to do it.

1. The first reason for removing some of the baby fruits from your tree is to increase the size and quality of each of the remaining fruit that forms on the tree. Knew that.

2. The second is that thinning fruit prevents the tree totally jettisoning all fruits during a heatwave. A few years ago I didn't know that, and I didn't thin the fruit much, and a heatwave struck early in the season, and then I discovered that in order to survive the tree will willingly abandon a whole season's crop of thirsty little baby fruits (especially if it has also been dry and the plant is thirsty, anyway). Young trees are more likely to do this than older, established trees, but it's always a bit of a risk when fruits are just forming.

3. Here's the thing I discovered only recently. Citrus trees can tend to have a pattern of bearing a huge, bumper crop one year, then virtually no crop at all the next year. If you thin out your crop each year, it will tend to keep on producing crops to a nice, steady beat, year after year. Cool discovery!

Anyway, that's what I've been doing lately, and I thought one or two photos might be helpful.

This is a baby Eureka lemon this morning, covered in the latest shower of rain. Originally part of a cluster of three, he's the only one left, and he has doubled in size in a week of rain.

And here's the two-year-old Eureka lemon tree itself. In its first year I removed every last fruit from the tree, so it could put all its energy into growing. Last year I let just a couple of fruit mature, and they were lovely, squeezed over oysters I think it was. This year I have removed four out of every five baby fruit, as my main priority is for the tree to keep growing, but that should still give me about 15-20 nice lemons a few months from now, if all goes well.

Over the other side of the pathway, this is my espaliered 'Tahiti' lime, which is now about eight or nine years old and, given the small space it is allowed to occupy, fully grown. It actually needs a trim back, especially the top bit, which is hard to reach now, but I'm leaving it alone while the baby fruits are forming and the rest of the plant is looking so green and well. I've never done an espalier before, but it has worked out fairly well. I blogged all about it last year, here, if you're interested in the idea. Anyway, these last few days I have been thinning back what was looking like a bumper crop of limes.

Typically, I start off with about four, five, six or seven baby lime fruits in a cluster. As every last branch and stem of the tree is covered with these crowds of lime-green babies, my aim is to leave just one fruit to develop in each spot, after thinning.

The easy way to remove the fruit is to pinch one in your fingertips and give it a gentle twist. They usually come away very easily when they're young, like this.

As mentioned earlier, with this cluster I've just left one, the largest and healthiest baby.

I find the best way to thin the fruits is to have a couple of goes at doing it. Yes, it is a bit boring and arm-achey too, so I do it bit by bit, not all in one go. Besides, I always seem to just miss heaps of clusters the first time round, so I come back a couple of days later do a bit more. The nice part about doing the job is the lovely fragrance of the leaves, by the way. So it's not all bad and boring.

This approach works just fine if you have only one or two trees, as I do. I'm not sure what they do in orchards! Maybe they hand out fruit-thinning duties as punishment to bad orchardists – maybe they don't bother at all?

While at best it's fragrant drudgery, it is worthwhile doing, and here in Sydney it's the perfect time of year to do it.

Compost recipe

Last night we had some friends around for dinner and I cooked a Moroccan-style tagine recipe called 'Lamb Tagine with Seven Vegetables', served with couscous. So this morning my vegie scraps bin was almost looking photogenic, which is not the word you'd usually use to describe it! And the thought soon popped into my head that this would be as good a time as any to do a little blog on the recipe I use for cooking up compost here in Amateur Land.

There's all sorts of things in here: carrots, beans, onions, garlic, zucchini (courgette), pumpkin (no seeds though), turnips, chick pea husks, strawberries, scraps of mint, coriander and parsley, plus apple and pear cores, a banana skin, tea leaves, coffee grounds, etc.

And this is where it goes: into the tumbler bin. The problem with all these lovely scraps is that they are a bit wet, and also a bit acid, too. Hence the need for a compost 'recipe', as the vegie scraps are the things most commonly added to this bin.

Next ingredient: dry stuff, in this case two handfuls of sugar cane mulch, the cheapest and most plentiful mulch available here in Sydney. Sometimes, if I could be bothered, I use shredded office paper, but mostly I go for mulch, as it's in a big bag in the shed, about 10 feet away, and it's easy. Shredding paper is very boring, and I don't think it's as good as mulch at soaking up moisture, anyway. Dry leaves are another option, if and when you have them. So, virtually every time I add a bin of vegie scraps, I add a few handfuls of mulch, as well.

Next ingredient is a good heaped handful of dolomite lime. This 'sweetens' the mix, keeping its pH closer to neutral. Before I got onto using dolomite, my composts had alarmingly low pH levels, which acidified the soil here, which is inherently acid anyway. I don't add the lime every time I add a bin of scraps. About once a month seems to be enough.

The next (and last) ingredient is air, and it's probably the most important one, in fact. I give the bin three or five spins, making sure that the end that was facing up prior to the tumbling faces down at the end of tumbling. (Not sure whether this hopelessly disorientates all the poor worms inside the bin! And there are quite a few in there, as I also add in a bit of worm-laden ordinary garden soil to help the whole composting process to get going.)

Dolomite lime is readily available at any local garden centre here in Sydney. It's just crushed rock, and looks and feels like a soft yet grainy powder. As well as using it in the compost bin, I also use it in the vegie garden regularly, when preparing beds for planting (about a handful dolomite lime per square metre, mixed in with lots of compost and a handful per square metre of chicken manure). Dolomite lime also adds good amounts of magnesium and calcium to the soil, which is generally beneficial for plant growth and health. And, best of all, its action is gentle, so it's the stuff to use. It works slower than ordinary garden lime and it's unlikely to get you into too much bother if you're a beginner by either using too much or using it near the wrong plants. The only exception to that little comment is, of course, if your soil is already alkaline. You'd be mad to add dolomite lime, or garden lime, to already-alkaline soils. In Australia, acid soils are the rule in most areas, including mine, but alkaline soils are common in some areas around Adelaide and Perth, for example, where the underlying rocks are limestone.

This is the alternative to dolomite lime: garden lime. It's faster-acting and stronger than dolomite lime, so you need to be more careful in applying it. It doesn't contain the magnesium that dolomite lime has, but it's loaded with calcium. I never add it to my compost bin, and I rarely use it in the garden, as it's a bit too heavy duty for my needs.

So that's my el-basic compost recipe.

kitchen scraps + mulch + dolomite lime + air

Mix, and repeat endlessly!