Garden of Edendale

Our new orchard shed, donated by Hamish Stewart Catering, has been fully assembled and in use for the last couple of weeks which is very exciting. More exciting than you can imagine actually because getting it has proved to be a mission for myself and Lloyd, our Caretaker.

It was paid for months ago but arrived damaged by the courier company and no-one seemed very bothered when we rang to tell them and the company we bought from. This took ages to get sorted and then when Lloyd tried to assemble the shed, the roof did not fit!!  The company were not very bothered about that either. I won’t mention who we got it from as they have recently sold the business and it would not be fair to the new owners but suffice to say we won’t be dealing with any of them again. Thanks to Lloyd and a bit of woodwork magic the shed is now finally functional and not having to carry all our gear down to the orchard is great. We also used it to shelter from the rain at our last working bee, so it has many uses. A BIG THANK YOU to Hamish for giving us the money for the shed!!

The last few working bees have been a bit hit and miss with heavy rain stopping play on a couple of occasions but in general we still have up to 5 hardy souls who come down to the orchard on Thursday afternoons before school pickup to weed and mulch and check our trees. Today one of our regulars, Jodie Little is spraying our trees with copper. This is an organic method to prevent many fungal diseases on fruit trees and this is the time of year to spray all dormant deciduous fruit trees and citrus that are not bearing fruit.  We have had to pick a day with good weather or the rain just washes it off.

Here’s a few pics of our new shed and the orchard in winter 2011:

Apparently June equals winter, but there has not been much sign of it in Auckland this year. It’s a little chilly but hardly freezing cold and as i type there is a beautiful blue sky outside.

So, because our bananas were fruiting in winter we bagged them up to protect them from the cold, or at least Lloyd the lovely caretaker did, it was a bit high for the rest of us. Great, job done I thought, but then as warm day followed warm day I began to wonder if the bunch of bananas were just rotting inside their steamy home. So last week we removed the bag and I was relieved to see our first (and thus most precious) bananas were still looking mighty fine. Not exactly sure whether to bag or not at the moment, but we are learning as we go I guess so time will tell.

As for when to harvest, well I have googled this and found twenty different answers, so if anyone knows then you had better leave a comment! What I can gather is that the fruit takes at least 2 months to ripen and you have to pick them green IF you see they are starting to split, or if they are being eaten by animals / birds / insects. Otherwise it’s ok to leave for a bit longer. We need to wait until the bananas are looking more rounded and filled out rather than square looking as they do now.

When it’s time to cut the bunch down we have to cut at least 30 cms above the bunch and then cut down that particular tree as they only fruit once. This tree has put out many new suckers so we have plenty more bananas to come. To ripen fully, we leave the bunch hanging for a while, some info says in a cool dark space, some says in the sun, so will need to investigate further.