Capeweed – love it or hate it?
We're often asked what we think of capeweed, which can be seen growing in great abundance all over the countryside (and our farm) at this time of year in spring. If you've been following us for a while, you'll know we're generally big fans of weeds—if you haven't yet...
7 Steps to a Simple Worm Farm
This week we're talking about worm farms, and the huge capacity of worms to turn "waste" food into a rich source of nutrients for your fruit trees. It's the single best thing you can do at home to provide high-quality fertiliser for your fruit trees. You may not...
Practical grafting
Want to see a couple of practical ways you can use grafting to create, save or improve fruit trees? It's such a cool way of getting functional fruit trees in your garden for free that we recommend everyone learn it, but sometimes you have to "see it to do it", so...
Can you grow an apple tree from a seed?
This is a very common question in the fruit growing world. The answer is very simple—yes (they're called seedlings)—but in fact the more interesting question is, will a seedling apple tree bear edible fruit? This is much harder to answer—it's "maybe"—and in fact...
6 step plan for beating Codling moth
Grubs in apples are scary and revolting - particularly if you only find half a grub, right? Apart from the visceral disgust of biting into an apple and finding that something beat you to it and is already living inside, it also downgrades the quality of the fruit....
How to know if your fruit tree flowers are healthy
At this time of year the fruit trees look absolutely gorgeous, with many of the apricots, peaches, nectarines, and plums in flower. The early pears and some very early apple varieties have also started to show what we call 'green tip', which is the equivalent of...
3 Ways to manage your weeds in spring
With spring underway, weeds (or understorey plants as we prefer to call them), are starting to grow in earnest, which means the plants that grow under your fruit trees are likely to start looking out of control pretty soon. If you look really hard at the photo below...
What should my fruit trees look like in spring?
As new fruit growers get to know their fruit trees, they're often unsure what's 'normal' in the different seasons - that was certainly the case for us as we learned our trade! Even experienced fruit growers will learn something new every single year, if they're paying...
Is organic growing really any better?
Do you choose to eat organic food? The latest figures show that 6 out of 10 Australian households buy organic food at least occasionally, and that consumer demand for organics is growing at a rate of 20–30% per year. That's a lot, right? But you only have to step into...
12 ways to make money from your fruit trees
Most people who grow fruit at home do it for the sheer pleasure and satisfaction of growing some of their own food. They may also be dreaming of self-sufficiency, wanting to teaching their kids where food comes from, or just understand that the more food we can grow...
Do you need to spray your fruit trees?
In organic growing we don't use chemicals that damage the produce, people or the environment, but that doesn't mean we don't spray. All deciduous fruit trees are prone to fungal diseases, some more than others, and if they're not properly prevented or controlled in...
To mulch or not to mulch?
There are many different approaches to mulch, with some people swearing by it, and others rarely or never using it or recommending it. We tend to be in the latter camp. Our fruit growing study tour of the USA last year got us thinking slightly differently about mulch,...
