Chilean Guava

For a few years I have been growing a plant with the common name of Chilean guava (Ugni molinae).  I think there has been a push of late to call them "Tazzie Berry" or "Tassie Berry" to make them more marketable while people think they are a new fruit.  According to wikipedia  it is native to Chile and Southern Argentia where the local Spanish name is "murta", and the Mapuche Native American name is "Uñi" or "Uñiberry". 

This is a nice enough looking shrub that grows really nice tasting fruit.  I have read that they were the favorite fruit of England's Queen Victoria.  Perhaps she actually liked them, or perhaps she liked having something that at the time would undoubtedly have been rare and impossible for most people to buy and therefore extremely prestigious, or perhaps a little of each.

I don't think Chilean guava love blazing heat, so I try to grow them in partial shade.  They take frost, but it sometimes damages the new growth, so I try to grow them near a wall where they experience slightly less severe frosts.  Their growth rate is not overly fast and they are evergreen.

Unfortunately I don't think I have quite worked out its preferred growing conditions.  I grow mine in a pot and each year it grows larger and flowers like crazy but I never get huge numbers of ripe fruits.

At the start of the season it is absolutely covered in unopened flowers.  They normally stay like this for so long I begin to wonder if it has flowered but I missed it and they started to turn to berries.  Then they eventually open and I remember that the unopened flowers stay on the shrub for a long time.

Chilean guava unopened flower buds

After what seems like forever, the flowers begin to open.  There are usually hundreds upon hundreds of flowers, almost too many to believe, and they open successively over a very long time.

The flowers are white or light pink and rather pretty.  Oddly enough I have never seen any pollinating insect on them.  I have tried hand pollinating and it has not made a noticeable difference to fruit set.  Over the next few weeks the shrub is incredibly pretty with all of its flowers.

Chilean guava flowers starting to open

Soon enough the petals drop, and each flower begins to turn into a little fruit.  At this stage I look at the many hundreds of fruits and start to expect a massive harvest.  Each branch is loaded down with dozens of tiny unripe fruits.

Chilean guava berries starting to form

Then for some as yet unknown reason, many of the immature fruits begin to abort.  They do this at different stages, some are far more developed than others.  There are literally hundreds of fruits dropping off each day for a few weeks.  I really don't understand why.

If this were due to lack of pollination they should have aborted earlier.  Perhaps the soil isn't right, maybe they need more water, or frost or heat or wind gets them.  Hopefully I work out how to stop this as I would love to pick thousands of these fruit from each small shrub.

Chilean guava covered in unripe fruits

Tiny fruits starting to abort

Eventually a few of the fruits ripen after they reach pea size.  I don't think I have taken any pictures of the ripe fruit as they are usually eaten pretty fast.  It would be nice if there was some commercial grower of these as they taste nice and I am sure there would be a market for them.

I am bad a describing taste.  To me they taste really good, a bit like strawberry crossed with a pine tree.  That sounds dreadful.  Perhaps someone else would be better at describing the taste than I am!  Even though my description is not flattering they really do taste good.  They smell great, similar to some tropical fruit mixed with pine tree.  I really don't think I am doing this justice.

The texture of the flesh is like a firm slightly dry banana.  Again this sounds bad, but it is really very nice.  I don't think I am all that good at describing this kind of thing.  I am better skilled at growing/breeding/eating things than I am at describing them.

The leaves smell like spices when crushed.  I tried eating one once and was not impressed with the taste or the texture as they were very tough.  I grow them for the fruits, and for the flowers, I don't even know if the leaves are toxic so I don't intend to eat the leaves again.

Over the season we sometimes get hail and crazy wind, invariably it breaks of a few small branches.  I try to use these to grow a few new plants.  I am told that Chilean guava is simple to grow from cuttings, for me they sometimes take a few weeks and other times take a few months to grow roots.

If I have any spare cutting grown plants that have strong roots and are actively I sell them through my for sale page.  If you are interested have a look.  I don't take pre-orders because I can't guarantee how long it will take for them to root.

Silkie chicken hatch

We bred silkie chickens in the past.  They are a lovely breed of chicken.  When we moved to acreage we decided to get a larger dual purpose breed so got rid of our silkies and breed plymouth rocks.  I loved the rocks, they are an amazing breed that is perfect for acreage.

Now we are back in town the plymouth rocks are too large, so we have barnevelders for eggs.  They aren't pets though, the kids aren't allowed to pat them, so we decided to also get a smaller breed for the kids to cuddle.  A friend gave us a few bantams to see if we could make it work.  The kids love them, so we decided to get a few more for the kids to have as pets.

Silkies are perfect cuddle chickens, and I love silkies, so we decided to get silkies again.  Depending on how they were raised they can be adorable bundles of fluff who love cuddles, or they can be moody things that sulk over there and wish you weren't anywhere near them.  As they were intended to be cuddle chickens we decided to hatch eggs and raise them with the kids rather than buy point of lay.

We bought some silkie chicken eggs and did a hatch.  We got a handful of different colours which was fun.  One thing I love about silkie chickens is how cute they are when they are tiny!

Silkie chicken hatchlings

The silkie chickens grew fast, and before we knew it they were living outside in a cage and no longer under heat.  We put a ramp into their house as they took a while to learn how to use the ladder.  They aren't the brightest breed of chicken, but that doesn't make them any less lovable.

It wasn't long until the silkies were too big for their cage and were allowed to free range during the day.  We also have a silkie rooster and a few other bantam chickens, so we had them in different houses at night but mingling in the yard together during the day.  At the start they kept completely separate from each other.

We already had a lovely blue silkie rooster, so decided to separate the boys from the girls before there was any trouble.  I love the colours of some of the boys, too bad they weren't girls as I would have kept the splash silkie, the buff one, and the red one.  The splash rooster was the friendliest and most loving I have ever seen.

The girls kept free ranging with the rooster and the other bantams, they became one flock pretty easily as they had plenty of space to get away from one another.

Unlike many other breeds, silkies are not too hard on the lawn.  If the grass got too long they stay away from it!  Silkies aren't the best at reducing insect numbers under the fruit trees, but they are better than nothing.

The boys lived in a different cage out the front yard, it took a few months before they explored far enough to possibly mingle, then we put up a little fence.  They don't fly, and aren't smart enough to work out how to get through the large gaps in the fence, so our problem was solved.

Even though silkie chickens are not very effective foragers compared to many other chicken breeds, having the boys in the front yard meant slightly less mowing for me.  We have raised vegetable gardens, the boys foraged between them and helped lower the number of insects.  This is good and bad, as they do not discriminate between pests and beneficial arthropods.

I really loved the splash rooster and the red one, they were friendly and every day when I got home from work they would run over for a cuddle.  Being extra roosters they were eventually heading to the freezer, and I was worried that I was far too attached to them.  I started to try and think of a way I could keep them as they were so docile and lovely but really couldn't think of anything.

I am happy to say that someone bought those two and is planning to breed from them!  What a great outcome.  I hope they love their new homes.

If you would like a silkie rooster and can pick him up let me know using the contact form on the right hand side of this page.  I still have some white, grey, buff, and blue silkie roosters.  Any that don't get homes soon will end up as my dinner.

Mulberry Leaf Vegetable

I love mulberries. They are an amazing fruit that you usually can’t buy from the markets as they don't store and are just too delicate to transport long distances. The trees are quick and easy to grow, high yielding, look nice, provide good shade, are long lived, and the leaves/branches are excellent animal fodder. White mulberries are also one of the few fruit trees that can grow from a tiny cutting and fruit the following year.

Mulberry leaves are said to be very rich in magnesium, potassium, zinc, calcium, and are really high in iron. They are meant to be a rich source of several vitamins, phenolics, and antioxidants. According to the FAO, mulberry leaf contains 15% to 28% protein, which is high for a leaf vegetable.

Considering how easy mulberry trees are to grow here, and how they really suffer no pest or disease problems in my garden, and how healthy they are meant to be, I thought I may as well give mulberry a try as a leaf vegetable.

My white mulberry back in spring

I have heard for many years that mulberry leaf can be used as a vegetable, and that mulberry leaves can be used to make tea. I have eaten raw leaves a few times and find them uninspiring. For some reason I had never tried the leaves cooked or as herbal tea before. So last spring and summer I picked some nice young leaves from my mulberry trees and my children and I gave this a try.

I used fresh young leaves and made a kind of herbal tea with them. It tasted nice enough, not bitter or horrible in any way, but nothing really outstanding. I would compare the taste to green tea, but maybe more leafy - if that makes sense. It smelled similar to green tea, kind of, there was nothing overpowering or unpleasant. Nothing really stood out to me, it was ok.

My kids thought it was ok too, none of them disliked it but none were overly enthusiastic over it. I have made this tea again a few times, I drink it but if my kids have the option they will usually go for something fruitier like pineapple sage tea. I think you can use dried leaf for tea, but we only used them fresh.

Over spring and summer I cooked some of the tender young mulberry leaves as a vegetable and shared that with the kids. Ok, maybe I didn’t really cook them. Maybe we just ate the leaves that had just been used to make our mulberry leaf tea, but the end result is the same.

Many leaf vegetables have bitter or unpleasant after tastes and sometimes leave you with a weird feeling in your mouth, mulberry leaf vegetable did not have this. It tasted nice enough, kind of leafy which was to be expected. My kids enjoyed it and asked for more, I think the novelty of eating cooked mulberry leaf made them ask for more.

No one disliked mulberry leaf as a cooked vegetable, probably because its taste was mild and not overpowering. Being mild tasting I think that it would go well in many dishes in place of other vegetables, or to compliment other vegetables, or as a side dish with a meal.

I picked these tender young leaves

I am amazed at how many different climates a mulberry tree will survive in (tropics through to temperate as long as they have enough water), and how long lived and productive they can be, yet how infrequently they are exploited by people as a food source. The berries are utterly delicious, the leaves and stems can be fed to livestock, but the leaves are really quite healthy for people appear to be completely underutilised as a cooked vegetable.

I wonder if there is some reason people don't cook and eat mulberry leaves as a vegetable more often. Perhaps it was once a famine food so people didn't eat it in better times and its potential use as a food has since been forgotten?

I think I need to find room to grow a few more mulberry trees. I love the berries and now that I know that I can use the leaf as tea or a cooked vegetable they are even more useful to have around.

White shahtoot mulberry

I really like my white shahtoot mulberry.  Each spring it is absolutely covered in long sweet mulberries.  As we are heading into winter here in Australia my mulberry trees are going dormant.  Then in spring they will erupt in catkins and leaves.

Most white mulberries (Morus alba) have dark fruit that causes mess.  White mulberry doesn't refer to the fruit colour as white mulberries come in white, pink, purple, or dark black.  Unfortunately most 'black mulberries' sold in Australia labelled with the binomial name of Morus nigra are either incorrectly labelled white mulberries with dark fruit, or are hybrids of white mulberries, instead of the black mulberry species.  I would love to get a black mulberry one day as their flavour is absolutely superb but I am yet to find anywhere that actually has one for sale,  but I am getting off topic.

As the white shahtoot mulberries are green/white when ripe, instead of dark purple/black, they don't stain faces, or hands, or washing, or cars etc.

White shahtoot mulberry is either a species of its own (it is often claimed to be Morus macroura), or it is a hybrid between the white mulberry and another mulberry species (which is highly likely).  My white shahtoot is grafted onto white mulberry rootstock.  When it is larger I would like to graft a few more of them.

Like many other mulberries, white shahtoot mulberries are pretty low maintenance and highly productive.  The bowl of mulberries above was collected one day and was pretty standard for the amount that was collected most days while it was fruiting.  This does not include the ones I ate whole picking, or the ones the kids ate while no one was looking, or anything that was stolen by birds or other animals.

The mulberries on white shahtoot are quite long, making them fast and easy to pick.  When they are ripe they change colour slightly, when ripe even the slightest touch makes them come off the tree, and slightly under ripe mulberries still taste good, so harvest is a breeze.

At this stage my tree has only grown slowly and is still very small.  Even as a small tree it is absolutely covered in berries in season.  I can hardly wait to see how productive this thing is when it is larger!

Shahtoot mulberry, one branch laden with fruit in Spring

Look how productive they are!

I don't think that the white shahtoot handles hard frost as well as other mulberries.  Each spring it seems to have some minor damage to a few branches.  That being said, my little tree has survived a few winters of hard frosts and is growing larger and stronger each year.  I am told that once it is larger the frosts will be less of an issue.

I have had a few berries that are forked, unfortunately I didn't notice until they were picked so haven't any pictures of them

At this stage I only have the one little tree.  I am told they don't grow from cuttings very well and are best grafted.  This spring I plan to try and graft a few more.  If that goes well I may be able to sell them through my for sale page.

Yellow fruited raspberries in Australia

This past summer I had a few people comment on my yellow fruited raspberries.  Most people were taken by their stunning colour.  The people who tasted them were amazed by their delicately floral and surprisingly sweet taste.  They are an impressive plant and something that always generates interest in the garden.

Yellow fruited raspberries, productive and tasty

These yellow raspberries are a slightly different version of the regular red raspberries.  There are very few places in Australia to get yellow fruited raspberries and I count myself lucky to have had a chance to grow them.  The plants look like ordinary red raspberries, they grow the same, they spread the same, they flower the same, but the fruit is yellow instead of red, and it tastes different.

I would almost say yellow raspberries feel different in the mouth, but I grow a few varieties of red raspberries and each of them feels slightly different in the mouth, so this trait probably isn't unique to yellow raspberries.

The yellow fruited raspberries I grow are quite productive.  Sometimes they grow a few flowers, but mostly they have clusters.  The berries don't all ripen at once, so the harvest gets spread out somewhat.

Yellow fruited raspberries - this cluster eventually had nine raspberries

Spreading out the harvest instead of ripening all at once means that if birds happen to steal some, of if there is a swarm of bugs, or if the weather turns dreadfully hot and the plants get fried, I should still get to enjoy some of these yellow raspberries.

Yellow fruited raspberries - berries don't ripen all at once

There is a story that birds ignore yellow raspberries (and yellow or white strawberries) and will only eat the red ones.  Many passerine birds do see red especially well, so this story almost seems logical.  Many people swear by it, and I even see places advertise white or yellow strawberries to 'beat the birds'.

Birds, however, are not that simplistic.  If they were they would have all died out long ago.  Birds eat yellow raspberries in my garden just as much as the red ones, perhaps a little more so.  I don't lose a lot of berries to birds, so I normally just let them share.  Strangely enough, I lose far more white or yellow strawberries to birds than I do red ones when they are grown side by side, but that is a story for another time.

If you have trouble with birds, net your raspberries to protect them, don't rely on their colour to stop birds from taking them.

Yellow raspberries taste similar to a red raspberry, but yellow raspberries tend to be sweeter and more floral.  I quite like them and my kids seem to prefer them to the red raspberries.  While I enjoy the taste of yellow raspberries, I grow both red and yellow fruiting raspberry plants.  If I had to chose a favourite I think I prefer most of the red ones.

Yellow fruiting raspberries

Over winter when my plants are dormant I sell yellow fruited raspberry plants (as well as a few varieties of thornless red raspberries).  I don't have huge numbers, but I should have a few extras most winters.  I can post them, but not to WA or Tasmania or outside of Australia.  If you are interested they are listed on my for sale page.

Drosera Capensis from seed

When I was young I grew a cape sundew (Drosera capensis), it lived for many years and was rather large by the end.  It was the first carnivorous plant I successfully grew, through that plant I learned how to grow carnivorous plants, how to things from seed, basic seed saving, how to take cuttings, and some basic plant breeding.

They are so easy to grow that I ended up with more of them than I could count.  The lessons I learned from it allowed me to successfully grow and reproduce venus fly traps, and I eventually grew a whole lot of other carnivorous plants too.  I missed growing carnivorous plants.

For a few years I have wanted to grow carnivorous plants again, but haven't had the money or space, and I had nowhere safe from my kids to grow them.

Drosera capensis sending up a flower stalk - not my photo

Recently I got some seed of Drosera capensis.  Seed was cheaper than buying a plant, but it is risky as seedlings are tiny that things can go wrong and old seed or poorly stored seed can have low or no germination rates.

I had good rates of germination and decided to record the number of days from planting the seed.  If I remember I will try to record the flowering date, but that is a few months away and any number of things could happen between now and then.

Days to germinate Drosera capensis
Seed planted             22/03/2019      Day 0
Germinated              06/04/2019       Day 15
Carnivorous leaves   21/04/2019      Day 30
Seeds ready to plant 19/12/2020      Around 21 months under poor conditions

Drosera capensis seedlings

The seeds are tiny, several would fit on the full stop at the end of this sentence.  The seedlings are far too tiny at the moment for me to be able to take a decent picture, so I found some pictures on the internet of mature plants.

For a full list of vegetable days to maturity (I know that sundews are not really vegetables) please click here.

Drosera capensis leaf curling around prey - not my photo

Non-photosynthetic plants

You don't see many non-photosynthetic plants, which is probably a good thing.  I am not talking about fungi, they are not plants.  I am talking about flowering plants that don't photosynthesize.

The first time I saw a non-photosynthetic plant I was a teenager.  We had done a hazard reduction fire and a few weeks later a stem appeared in the parched ground.  It grew no leaves, only a flower stalk.  The flower stalk reached about 5 or 6 feet tall then opened into flowers.  It was a native orchid.  It was beautiful, I had never seen one before and have never seen one since.

Broomrape flowers

Most people know that green plants use photosynthesis to make energy, and that albino plants quickly die, so non-photosynthetic plants need some other way to gain energy.  Apparently non-photosynthetic plants are either parasites which directly feed off other plants, or they are indirect parasites through being myco-heterotrophs (feed off fungi) the fungi usually feeds off other green plants. 

Non-photosynthetic plants is a fascinating topic.  Sometimes this is a symbiotic relationship between the non-photosynthetic plant and the fungi, often the fungi gets nothing out of the deal.

Some non-photosynthetic plants don't have any above ground parts until they flower.  Others have stems and things above ground.

Non-photosynthetic plants sometimes have no above ground parts other than flowers

Last year I found a non-photosynthetic plant.  I hoped it would be an orchid, so I kept going back to check on it until it flowered, but it wasn't an orchid.  It was something I had never seen before.  I showed someone who identified it as a 'broomrape'.

Broomrape

Broomrape are plant parasites, in Australia there are three species.  I am not sure which this was, I have narrowed it down to two possibilities.  None of them have been recorded here, but two of the species have been recorded an hour or two from here.

Broomrape growing among grass

Branched broomrape (Orobanche ramosa) is a noxious weed that must be destroyed and reported.  It represents a serious threat to grain crops and has never been reported in this part of the country.  After looking at pictures on the internet and reading descriptions I am pretty confident that this plant was not branched broomrape.

Clover broomrape (Orobanche minor) is a minor agricultural pest, but not considered too much of a problems in Australia.  I don't think it needs to be destroyed and reported (I may need to double check this).

Native broomrape (Orobanche cernua var. australiana) is, as far as I can tell this is very rare and almost extinct.  Being native and rare it is not to be destroyed.

Non-photosynthetic broomrape

The plant is an annual that has long since died and disappeared.  If you can tell from my pictures what species of broomrape it is I would love to know.  Or if you have a simple way to tell between the two species please let me know, if it flowers again next year I will have a closer look.

Days to maturity Buckwheat

This year I grew some buckwheat.   I grew buckwheat mostly for the flowers, it was planted so late that the frost will likely kill it before it gets a chance to set much seed. 

Days to maturity Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum)

Seeds planted       02/03/2019       Day 0
Germinated           04/03/2019      Day 2
Flowering             26/03/2019       Day 24

The time from planting the seed until buckwheat flowered was remarkably short.  I had dry seeds in my hand, then a little over three weeks later they were flowering!  I heard it was fast, but was always skeptical, so I'm happy to have seen it for myself.

I was also surprised to see some plants had white flowers, others had light pink, others were dark pink.  I much prefer the dark pink flowers.  I wish I planted buckwheat a few weeks earlier so it could set seed.

For a full list of vegetable days to maturity please click here.

Buckwheat setting seed