It is 30 degrees in Melbourne and the sun is shining brightly in the blue sky.
We took ourselves off to the local lawn bowls club this afternoon to see approximately 80 plants our gardening group donated and planted a few weeks ago. There have been two big dumps of rain since then interspersed with glorious spring weather so the plants are looking great. We have plans to do some more volunteer gardening stuff and will chat with people in the coming week about it.
This morning at home we started with reflecting on life, the universe and everything, then did repotting and gurneying the mould off a shade patch of concrete.
I did some emergency pruning of our lime tree. We are in a multi-year project to do strategic pruning of our lemon and lime trees to help them become better balanced. When we moved in a large, unpruned bougainvillea on the lefthand side fence shaded the lime tree (the tree on the left in the photo) so the lime tree leaned over to the right towards the lemon tree trying to find some sun (and didn't bear any fruit).
The previous owners pruned the lemon tree on one side only, away from the fence so it had more branches, leaves and fruit on the front of it than behind. It was also growing to the right to avoid the shade caused by the lime tree. When we moved in we nearly lost the lemon tree because it was so unbalanced it nearly fell over. We shoved a heavy outdoor table against it and then pruned it substantially.
We also chopped down the bougainvillea and regularly poisoned it so it didn't grow back. The lime tree then flourished and bore fruit for the first time. Last autumn we pruned the lime tree substantially because it too had grown so much away from the fence and had developed a dangerous lean. Now we are harvesting a lot of limes from it which we are giving away to neighbours.
This morning's prune of the lime tree on its right side will hopefully encourage the lemon tree to grow on the left and rebalance itself. We are getting fewer fruit on the lemon tree at the moment, largely because it needs to recover from the substantial prune of a couple of years ago.
While looking at the photos I took to accompany this post I spotted a tall branch on the lime tree sticking above the rest of the tree and leaning over the front of it. I think I should cut this branch too to make it better balanced. It is also too high to pick fruit from.
Moral of the story: Writing up one's gardening exploits for others and taking photos of them actually helps one notice more things to be done!
#LemonTree #GardeningAU #Melbourne