![Make this the year you start growing your favourite fruit. Picture Shutterstock Make this the year you start growing your favourite fruit. Picture Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/4bca5fe9-4053-4035-ac74-185fbe15ed77.jpg/r0_53_1000_615_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Despite bellowing a hymn that began "Yield not to temptation..." every morning for several years in my school days, I'm a firm believer in giving way to all temptation of the garden variety.
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(That does not mean giving in to all temptation to all activities that might take place in the garden. A chainsaw massacre in a rose garden is still reprehensible, even if you are just taking the chainsaw to the roses as an excessive way to prune them.)
But this is the time to give full rein to any fancy for more roses or callistemons, veg, fascinating fruit like medlars or tangelos, or even home-grown maple syrup trees, though possibly "full rein" should be a slow trot rather than a gallop, as you work out "How can I fit 50 more old-fashioned rambling roses on a suburban block?"
Answer: you probably can't, apart from maybe half a dozen rambling roses over the carport, two over the chook pen and a few more deterring burglars with thorny varieties growing up the walls or along the fences. But the other 25 or so roses will make 25 people extremely happy as gifts, and you just as happy watching someone else do the work while you look at the annual blossoming.
I've just been looking at the flower and vegetable seed catalogues to order the seeds for spring and summer. For the last decade or so I've tried to be sensible. There are only two humans regularly eating from the garden, and both of us are gently decaying as the decades pass by and are no longer able to do so much weeding, and sadly, less gluttonous vegie eating too, so it would be sensible to plant, say, three tomato bushes, a row of silverbeet and spinach, a plot of carrots, a small amount of sweet corn...
I never have managed "sensible".
I haven't even managed "almost sensible".
"Sensible" can also be a synonym for "boring".
So this morning I thought "Darn it", or rather, a more earthy expletive I won't repeat in this newspaper. I'm not going to be sensible at all this year, despite the long-range weather forecast of heat, drought and bushfire. If necessary - and it will be necessary - we'll hire others to help. But I'm blowed if I'm going to waste a garden year being sensible.
Nor should you.
What haven't you tried? How about "crookneck squash" - crooked yellow zucchini with thin necks and fat bottoms that look and taste fabulous when picked small. Try growing the pea varieties that don't leaf, but put out enormous numbers of peas instead (no, I have no idea how they manage to do enough photosynthesising). Discover the pleasure of podding peas by hand while gossiping with friends. Try the new super sweet mini melons that fruit prolifically even in our climate.
Have you ever served purple-skinned, red-flesh carrots to your guests? The purple carrots actually aren't as crisp or sweet as the orange ones, but bake or steam them whole and serve on a white plate and they look stupendous.
This is the time to grab every catalogue you can, and entirely give in to temptation.
Think you don't have room for more roses? Plant groundcover roses in big hanging baskets along the eaves - then add a drip irrigation system over them, plus slow-release fertiliser, for 10 or so months of brilliant blooms each year.
Put rails up 40cm apart to partially block the glare on that too-sunny window - or get a carpenter to do it for you - and hang small pots of succulents over them, or ornamental grasses or even herbs, if you will remember to water them.
How about fruit trees? Will 2024 be the year you finally taste the sublime perfume of a backyard ripened apricot? Apricots travel - but their flavour doesn't, and vanishes in the cold while their texture becomes floury. Of course you have room - espalier it against a wall or grow it in a pot by the front door.
Do you make marmalade, orange cake or duck a l'orange? Then you need a Seville orange tree: hardy, productive and sour - but with about 50 times more orange flavour to its juice. Just add sugar.
If you would like to wow your friends with your savoir faire and elegance, and only have room for a pot, try the more decorative of all citrus, the chinnotto, also known as "Italian cola" for its tangy juice, a bit odd eaten fresh, but sublime juiced and served in a tall glass with plenty of ice.
Then there are the fruits you can rarely buy, as they don't travel, like mulberries or early white peaches - a chilled glass of 50 per cent white peach puree and 50 per cent iced champagne is the perfect holiday celebratory drink.
I've just bought a dozen pink newly released native limes - we already have the green and red ones - plus three more dwarf apple trees, despite a ludicrous abundance of apple varieties already. But one of new ones is an Irish Peach, a late maturing apple and an excellent keeper. We will also now finally have a Democrat apple, one of the latest to bear, an old-fashioned Aussie apple with the darkest red flesh skin and whitest flesh I've ever seen; and a late-picking Sturmer Pippin apple which is the best apple for storing.
I've also bought yet another red-leafed smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria dummeri 'Grace') from yet another nursery in the hope it actually is what the label says. This is my fifth attempt to replace my original red-leafed smoke bush. The other four have vaguely red-tinged leaves, but not the true red of deep summer 'Grace' is supposed to have. Sadly many nurseries buy their stock from the same supplier, so I'm ready to be disappointed yet again.
Maybe it's an atavistic mid-winter urge to plant, or plan on planting, so the long sunny summer days will return. Perhaps it's simple defiance - next summer may be heat, dry soil and bushfires, but I'm planting anyhow.
Or maybe my planting urge comes from gazing at the ancient camellias, irises, plums, apricots, damsons, walnuts and two surviving peaches planted possibly a century ago or even more, and still bearing most years. I wouldn't see their flowers or taste their fruit if someone hadn't given in to temptation and planted them way back then.
Perhaps some of the bounty I plant this year will still be fruiting or blooming in another hundred years, and will tempt someone to plant too, just slightly more than is sensible.
This week I am not:
- Cutting Floribunda and hybrid tea roses back by at least two thirds to encourage new growth and more flowers - and more wallabies. Wallabies love new growth and rose buds, which is why we have only climbing floribundas or hybrid tea roses that grow out of wallaby reach. I should prune those back after they have bloomed but don't need to - Possum X does all the rose pruning necessary, plus a bit more.
- I am also not cutting back our once-a-year bloomers like Lady Bank's rose in both yellow and white, and Climbing Albertine, as any pruning now will mean no spring/early summer blooms.
- Nor am I planting anything at all, except maybe the finger limes, as anything planted this week will grow slightly better if planted next week, or the week after as the days lengthen.
- Deciding not to pick the mandarins just yet, even though they are now frost sweet - if they mature just a little more they will be easier to peel.
- Definitely not throwing out the dried hydrangea flowers in the brass vase, as they have begun to put out roots at the base of their stems. I'll plant them out in about a month, so they have time to establish before summer's heat.