Apple of my eye

When we bought our place there was one existing apple tree. We don't know what variety it was but it was about 7 or 8 years before we actually got a decent crop off it. There were many factors including,drought and the need to be pruned correctly(which we knew nothing about) and finally the continual onslaught of the King Parrots. As beautiful as they are, they just strip and destroy all the fruit .

So finally we came upon the idea of the polythene pipes hooped up over the trees and then the net over that. Some people prefer to remove their netting each year, we just leave them and keep the tree trimmed to stay just under the netting.The second smaller apple tree is a Pink lady,planted in honour of our dear uncle who had prostate cancer and swore by  the eating of a Pink Lady every day,Unfortunately he never got to see the tree produce it's lovely apples as we lost him just over a year ago.We also grow a lovely raised bed of rhubarb which produces an abundance of rhubarb for me to can. We quite often have an apple and rhubarb crumble for dessert, nearly everyone seems to love the combination.

I think this picture below  was probably the first year of canning the apples and rhubarb ,but this last year I did many dozens of jars of each and have them stored in the pantry.

As we slowly establish our place we will be planting an orchard of a few more fruit trees,so that we will have a few more varieties of fruit on hand to can without having to purchase  it. We have already planted two fig trees and have apricots of our own.
So looking forward to it.
Until next time,
Cheers from Jane in Aus.