Hi everyone! It's been a little while since I posted directly in @hivegarden. I've been working hard on finalising my herbal monographs and remedy posts and putting them in @naturalmedicine. Here's my first #gardenjournal entry for a while.
So, what's been happening at Ligaya Garden?
We've had our annual haircut, that's what. A big prune (not of the eduble kind) that has left us pretty bare. Any of you good folks who have been following our activities for a while will know that we let the trees get way to big as we sought cooling summer shade. They got too big to easily harvest from and we were losing (sorry, sharing) a lot of fruit to the wild critters. We have solar now so shade is slightly less of a concern because we can run the air-conditioning a little more without blowing the budget.
Over the last couple of years, I have been reducing the height of all of the big trees. Last year though, I forgot the summer prune, so these could jump up to full height again. The summer prune is important because after winter, the trees try to regain the size they were before the cold weather sent them dormant. A good prune mid to late summer convinces them that they weren't as big so they only grow to the height they were after the prune.
I'm actually a little late with the pruning but we had several birds nesting so of course I had to protect them and wait until the babies had fledged.
Another reason for the severity of the prune is that we want to grow more herbs at ground level and they need vitamin S, that is, sunlight. The garden will probably use a little more water I the heat but we should be able to get more out of it. We were so much more productive before we let the trees go nuts, we even grew sun loving Corn.
The Almond was reduced in size the most. It took up a lot of space for very few Almonds so this year I'm going to try to graft Peaches onto it to get more out of the space.
Did you know that Almonds aren't nuts?, they're fruit. They're actually a form of Peach. I was blown away when I learned that the nut is the seed, the papery bit around it is the flesh and the thick skin is just that.
There's still the 5 metre high 'dwarf Mulberry and a couple of big Olive trees to go but the job's nearly done.
Anyway, wish me luck mulching it all up fortunately we have a verge to mulch and some friends who want to try some of the wood in their smokers. Everybody wins!
Thanks Athena for the close and wise supervision.
