COLOURFULWORLD

Wednesday 17 May 2017

Gardening Weekend and Green Verge Collection

The weekend of the 6th and & 7th of May was very productive in the garden.
The weather was fantastic and warm and with the "green verge collection" starting in our neighbourhood this week, it was the ideal time for my husband and I to trim some trees so we could put those branches out on the verge.

In the back garden, the lemon/mandarin (tangerine) was drastically trimmed as it's been very unproductive and has lots of thorns too.


Trimming the lemon/mandarin tree in the back garden




























The passion-fruit vines along the side fence are flowering and fruiting again (they last fruited in December), so twice a year! We have two kinds - a purple one and a yellow one, the purple ones being less acid.
Flowers can be seen on the paw-paw tree (papaya), it's a young plant so it hasn't borne fruit yet.
The banana tree only bore 3 or 4 tiny bananas for the first time last year, so it also got a trim.
Passion-fruit flowers and fruits



Banana tree, Paw-paw (papaya) tree in flower and Pomegranate tree and fruit












The Pomegranate tree in the front garden is old and the fruits are usually few and dry, but this year it's fruiting a lot more, although the fruit is still a bit dry.

My husband also picked the olives from the small olive tree in the front garden. It was planted about 5 or 6 years ago, and this year it's given us 2 and a half buckets!
They are now soaking in water which gets changed daily for a couple of weeks and then will go into jars covered by a brine made with water, salt and vinegar.
Olive tree and picked olives in buckets

I managed to catch a couple of birds on the trees, and in the lemon tree there was an empty nest probably left over from Spring.

Honey suckers in trees, dove on the roof and empty nest found in lemon tree.











While we were working in the garden our cats kept us company, with Fluffy , our ginger boy always close to the action. Shelley preferred to take a comfortable nap, and Twiggy also came to survey the work.
Fluffy and Twiggy survey the cut branches, while Shelley prefer to take a nap










And below is the big pile of greenery out on the verge ready for collection.
Usually a big truck with some sort of mulcher comes along and they use all this stuff to make mulch.
Not sure what they do with it - sell or just use it for council gardens.
We had to remove pebbles from the edge and put down a few more cement pavers (we only had 3 enough for the rubbish bins) so that the pebbles don't get removed along with the greens. 

Greens collections gets done twice a year, so when we get notified it's a great time to clean up the garden.
Green pile awaiting council collection

26 comments:

  1. Sounds like a post from paradise to me with all the here not available fruit growing, lucky you! :-)
    But, weee, a lot of work!
    Strawberries (plural) may be ahead for us here!
    Wanted to get plants for the balcony today but heavy rain is predicted so I delay it again. Soooo late this year with it due to the cold weather.

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    1. Thanks Iris. Not too much garden work since we removed the grass. Just some weeding once in a while and trimming trees twice a year. It's nice to get some fruit too...

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  2. Dearest Sami,
    Wow, you at least can have those citrus trees out in the garden year round without any frost damage! That is the bonus if you are near the ocean, it has such a softening influence. We are more like an inland climate, two hours away from the ocean.
    At least you got some pomegranate fruits. Guess they do need lots of water in the time they are setting and developing!
    One of our cats is always near you when walking or working in the garden. Most like to lounge around and just be lazy!
    This Saturday is our garden tour and as I had planned on doing some tidying up and weeding, I cannot do anything. A week ago I had severe leg cramps at night, jumped out of bed and must have sprained my right ankle. Not much of a problem than but after I biked 16 km on Wednesday, next day it was so hot and swollen. Well, my patience is very thin and I thought I'd rested enough when I felt better yesterday and got up at 7:00 AM. Vacuum cleaning and on my legs a lot, also biking again, not that far though. Today is another bad day and no way I can squat down to do some weeding.
    Such is life... We all plan things but always something unexpected is surprising us!
    You got a lovely garden at least and the bonus is that it literally is fruitful!
    Hugs,
    Mariette

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    1. Thanks Mariette. We have 2 lemon trees and one of them gives us lemons the whole year around, the other (lemon/mandarin) only gives in winter.
      I hope you are recovering from your injury.

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  3. Sami...
    A flor do maracujaleiro, como dizemos em madeirense é muito bonita. Por aqui as árvores morrem porque eu ando sempre a entrar e sair da Madeira....
    Kis :=}

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    1. E verdade Gi, a flor e lindissima. Nos temos rega automatica, mas geralmente so usamos isso no Verao, no inverno quase nao regamos e esperamos que chova de vez em quando...

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  4. Um bonito jardim dá boa disposição, faz bem à alma.

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    1. Obrigada Pedro, concordo. Um jardim e bom para a nossa alma e bem estar.

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  5. Cats are always there where the action is, but they don't give a hand, just look at all the fuzz.

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    1. I wish they could help us too, sometimes an extra pair of hands or paws is needed...Thanks Marianne :)

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  6. Que maravilha este recanto e jardim e as árvores começam a dar os seus frutos.
    Um abraço e boa semana.

    Andarilhar
    Dedais de Francisco e Idalisa
    Livros-Autografados

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    1. Obrigada Francisco. As uvas e figos ja terminaram, agora e a vez de outras frutas - maracuja, morangos em breve e a seguir nesperas.

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  7. Gosh you did a good job Sami, that's quite a pile you have there! I really had all good intentions of working in the garden this weekend but it looks like it's going to be a wet weekend.. saved 😀😀 you have so many fruit trees, i only have a lemon and a mango tree. Have a good weekend.

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    1. Thanks Grace, yes a wet weekend ahead. We have lots of fruit trees, some were here when we bought the house, others we planted.

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  8. I would give ANYTHING to live where banana, olive, and lemon trees grew and flourished year round. You have such a wonderful and lovely place to live. Looks like you have a great view from your front yard, too. I'm in awe of all the work you got accomplished and I was more than impressed with the fact the city picks up your trees, limbs, etc. twice a year. You are so lucky. I will have to find a place to take the tree I just cut down.

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    1. Thanks Elizabeth, glad to see you're back. We are lucky we have a big garden and we live across from a park too. Yes, it's great the councils pick up the "greens" and also the "hard waste" like furniture, etc, also twice a year.

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  9. Sami your garden is absolutely amazing!!! Olives, passionfruit, pomegranates! I just looked up about paw paw trees as I have never heard of it before, but the fruit looks really exotic. Keep up the good work!

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    1. Thanks Sara. I thought it strange as I'm sure paw paws get sold in Portugal too. I looked up and there are two types of paw-paw, the one I'm talking about is also called Papaya which you probably know.

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    2. The website I opened only had the "weird" kind. Now I googled paw paw fruit and looked for images and I saw papayas as well. I had no idea they could also be called paw paw. Really nice to have tree!

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  10. Sami, I notice in the above post you say you soak the olives in water for a month changing the water daily. Why water? What process do you use to pickle olives?

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    1. Hi Carole, it's actually not 1 month, my husband will leave them in water for 2 weeks, water gets changed daily.
      Then they go into a brine made with water, salt and vinegar. Olives go into jars and the brine is poured in to cover them.
      Here is a link for various methods, although we didn't slice up the olives as we did that last year and maybe they were in water too long but they just went soggy and we had to throw them out.
      http://www.wikihow.com/Cure-Olives

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  11. You have a lovely collection of edibles in your garden Sami! I love those green waste collections, so motivational to get in with jobs that need doing!
    Wren x

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    1. Thanks Wren. The green waste collection is great, really good to get the garden in shape.

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  12. Wow, your garden looks great all the flowers and fruit, and olives!
    I really enjoyed reading your post and looking at your photographs.

    Those green verge collections are a good idea ...

    All the best Jan

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    1. Thanks Jan, it's nice to have some fruit and veggies in our garden and we don't treat them with chemicals which is even better.

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