Garden Problems Archives - Page 13 of 15 - Andrea Whitely Garden Consultant

OK, so last year, I had this great idea to plant a passionfruit against our fence. This is not the first I’ve planted but IT WILL BE THE LAST!

How Gorgeous, you say…well, think again!

We dreamed of loads of juicy, fragrant, passionfruit pulp oozing over freshly whipped cream on top of home-made pavlova and the sheer joy of knowing that I had grown them myself.

I already had this in mind when I planted my vine

I carefully chose a Nellie Kelly Grafted passionfruit and here’s what Nellie Kelly say about it…”

Nellie Kelly Grafted Black Passionfruit

Passiflora caerulea (rootstock), Passiflora edulis (scion)

The Nellie Kelly Grafted Black Passionfruit has delighted generations of Australian gardeners with its hardy rootstock and tasty fruit. The grafted black is grown around Australia, from the cooler south to the northern sub-tropics and is self-fertile, requiring only one plant. The vine produces round, medium-sized fruit that is soft to firm with a juicy tanginess that sweetens as the fruit wrinkles and matures over summer and autumn. The Nellie Kelly Grafted Black Passionfruit vine will cover an area of 6 to 8 square meters during an 8 to 10-year lifespan, producing up to 400 pieces of fruit each season.

Plant in a sunny, well-drained area and expect flowers from early spring with fruit ripening during summer. With any grafted plant it is vitally important to remove any growth below the graft, including suckers, using a sharp knife or blade.”

I prepared the hole as I always tell people with lots of “good tucker”, my personal planting mix, a lovely rich blend of mature compost and blood and bone, some people even say you should put a whole cows liver into the planting but I did not go that far this time.

I picked one out from the nursery which looked just like this one.

I planted it and watered it in well, it was growing very nicely along the trellis then one day I spotted the first, day two, three more and…..

what they don’t say is that this baby can send out suckers

…not just a few either…

They are EVERYWHERE!

They are popping up all through my lawn.

They have gone under the fence into our neighbours’ yard, right through my perennial border plantings, around the base of all of our deciduous trees and every single morning, I am pulling out new suckers. It is a job that I could well do without on a warm summer’s day…and to date-no flowers-all the energy in that plant is going into those darn suckers which are trying to take over my whole yard. The leaves are quite different from the grafted plant, much lighter green and on thin evil, tentacle-like vine stems that grab onto everything alive or dead.

So, if you’re looking for me this summer, it looks like, I will be in the backyard pulling out very much unwanted, very much un-loved and super annoying Passiflora caerulea, ROOTSTOCK!!!!

Next year, I’m buying locally grown passionfruit pulp or making friends with someone who has too many and I will let someone else deal with these suckers!

Have you ever planted something that went nuts in your garden????

Photos Courtesy of Nellie Kelly-Thanks they are lovely!

Queue the dramatic war music…

…….we’re under attack here in Floreat.

It’s Man V Cockatoo.

The scout turns up early with a squawk and a flurry and we hear the first bang, bang, bang of the nuts on our tin roof. “They’re here again!” Mr Garden Consultant shouts and jumps up resplendent in his blue striped flannelette winter PJs, dropping everything that he’s doing and charges outside armed with a tennis racquet, his weapon of choice, which he has taken to leaving perched as a trip hazard for the unsuspecting, at the back door. It’s hilarious to watch him as he grabs tennis balls (which are now in our neighbours’ backyard) and finally resorting to the remnant nuts that have hit the ground from the tree and fires them back up into the trees as he shouts “get out” while Jazz the labradoodle, furiously barks in support, all in a largely futile effort to discourage the now ten or maybe twenty huge black birds from feasting in our tree. It wouldn’t be so bad if they ate the nuts and took them away but they crack the coating with their powerful beaks and discard the outer shells into our garden. The shells are known in our family a honky nuts and when you stand on them inadvertently on a cold morning with bare feet they really hurt. They clog up the pool filter and cover the lawn. It’s like a teenagers party up there and we’re not invited, we are just the darn hosts.

It seems that the nuts are juicy, tasty and ripe in our Marri tree Corymbia calophylla, at the moment and the giant Red-tailed Black Cockatoos have moved in. They have been to visit us every day for the past two weeks and I have to say that we are not winning the battle or the war. They are in complete control of our land at this point and all we can do is take cover.

These huge black birds,Calyptorhynchus banksii naso, with their distinctive red tails are very, very noisy, deafening when they are en masse and actually quite unwelcome guests however their habitat in suburban Perth is ever decreasing and so in a way, I feel like we are doing a bit of a community service by providing food for them but boy oh boy are they messy eaters. They are native to the South West of WA and are known as Forest Reds. These birds feed on Marri, Jarrah, Blackbutt, Karri Sheoak and Snottygobble. Also on some garden eucalypts and berries of introduced White Cedar (Cape Lilac). They can live up to 50 years of age.

Our gutters and garden beds are filled with discarded nuts, leaves and twigs from the tree. The bottom of the pool is covered with them and the lawn looks like we have just had a very windy storm.

They will keep returning until the last nut has been eaten and there is actually nothing we can do about it, despite Mr Garden Consultant’s best efforts with the tennis racquet! Nature rules again. Until then, we must clean up their mess which is taking about two hours a day. I guess we should feel privileged that they have chosen our healthy garden to lunch in but somehow it takes the edge off when the clean-up begins.

I think that I had better get on the phone and call the gutter cleaners!

Category: Garden Problems

Losing the Passion For Passionfruit

Under Attack In My Own Garden!