Growing fruit trees in Western Australia

I wrote a hub a while back called My backyard veggies well now I'm am writing about my fruit trees I'm lucky to have a big back yard and the Mediterranean climate here in Western Australia has helped to grow some lovely fruit trees, nothing beats growing your own fruit and then having the pleasure of eating your fruits of labour I'm lucky we have a bore and a reticulation system to water my fruit trees otherwise it would be too hard to grow my fruit trees just by using plain tap water plus we have water restrictions to now for long hot summers.

I will explaint to you what fruit trees I have and how I take care of them .

At our house we grow banana palms and we have about 20 of them we don't get the big full grown bananas like from up in the north of Qld, we get the smaller ones but they are nice and tasty

We have an apple tree with two grafting's, Fuji and golden delicious apples the main problem growing apples is fruit fly which I have to spray I use fruit fly baits and I use Yates organic fruit fly bait it does help but I'm afraid its a on going problem the second pests is birds they eat the apples I have bird netting and I use old Cd's to scare them off (Cd's have a shinny bottom like a mirror the birds see they reflection and they scare themselves away ) also plastic snakes are suppose to help even the inside of old wine casks work at deturring them.

We have a small mango tree we haven't had any fruit on it yet but it loves the summer, mango trees need a lot of water and they don't like a lot of wind they are pretty easy to grow really. It takes about 10 years for a young tree to first produce fruit so I have about 8 more years to wait.

Pomegranate trees are really easy to grow they survive almost anything and they grow beautiful fruit which is really good for you I have some growing on my tree now but are not ready to be picked at time of writing, I have two dwarf fruit trees a nectrine and a peach tree I grow them in some big pots they are both ornimental and productful. The last plant is an avocado tree its only small at the moment but its growing well . Same as the Mango tree it takes a few good years till it fruits. But when they do they have many fruits.

The key to growing my fruit trees is I think lots of sheep manure and mulching and water we have a worm farm so I use worm castings and worm tea to help my fruit tree grow I also regularly use fish emulsion as a tonic. Fish emulsion is very good and very strong so you must be aware of how much you do put on as it goes along way but hold your nose it is very smelly stuff.

You don't really a big garden like to grow fruit trees you can can dwarf varitaries and fruit trees that can grow many fruit on the tree I think they are called fruit salad trees .

The only real concern is growing fruit trees in western Australia is the soil its actually like sea sand you need to keep adding organic matter like manures seasoil soil improvers and good fertilizer and having a bore and retic is very important to keep your trees healthy and as long as you keep on top of the pests and diseases that fruit trees can be prone to get then there is no reason why you cannot enjoy good quality home grown fruit .