Discover a LUSH FOOD-PRODUCING Home Garden 🌳

Pumped out most fruit last year. It was definitely an experiment, which will be another edible ground cover. I haven't really shown this space at all. Welcome back to my gardens for the first time in 2024. I want to give you a full tour, see what's growing, see what's ready to pick, see where we're at. A bit of a fresh start because I didn't get to finish a lot of my videos towards the end of last year. So we're starting afresh, let's see where we're at. I transformed this patch of grass into a new garden just three months ago. So as you can see, the new garden that we put together at the end of last year is pumping. They're already chest high a lot of the plants and that is because I chose really hardy drought tolerant plants to grow over summer so I could establish this garden really quickly, get some sort of protection plants in. So these plants are really offering protection and shade and shelter for all the other surrounding plants and it's just worked really well. It was definitely an experiment and I'm taking what I've learned from this garden and I'm going to put that into this dirt patch right here this year. So let's take a look at what we've got growing in here and what I've already been picking and eating in just a few short months since this garden was planted and most of these were seeds. So starting off at the front of the garden, we've got Queensland arrowroot, we've got a native, this is a haikia or a pincushion that I hope is going to add some more protection to my avocado as it gets taller. There's tomatoes, this is the Thai egg tomato that we planted from seed, some lavender, some more cuttings of herbs in behind here as well and you can start to see the feed lines that I put in. So this garden was planted in three lines, so we've got the two outside rows and that's where a lot of my chop and drop and mulch is going to be grown to feed the soil and then in between that there's a row of space that I can lay that down so I don't have to worry about putting it on top of other plants. I can just chuck all of my leftover leaves and branches and you can see here this is from the pine tree over the back that we had to trim some off. So it makes it so easy and I love how it's working so far. So the first mulch line we've got Queensland arrowroot, we've got moringa, we've got rosella and this one here is a pigeon pea which is a nitrogen fixer. There's a gap here where something hasn't popped up, this one again Queensland arrowroot and these just repopulate and sort of grow more off the side so I only ever planted one in all of these and some of the patches now have four or more. There's an ice cream bean down here, a couple of other things that didn't pop up, I'm not sure what was there. More Queensland arrowroot, there's some ginger starting to make its way through the mulch, zucchini and some other herbs on the end and then the feed line of all the chop and drop is just behind here. So that means that these plants and the centre row can access that as it breaks down. And then my middle row here we have a red spinach that's gone wild, mulberry that I grew from a cutting, so that's a black mulberry and again I've planted this for quick shade cover to sort of protect the other plants and provide more mulch. A Hawaiian guava from a seed from my one out the back, that one there is another native so that's the heikia but that is a sea urchin one. And then the main trees here is the lemon mango, so I've got two main trees in this garden, the lemon mango and the avocado that eventually will take up the space but while they're still young and waiting to grow I'm utilising that space to not only grow quick food but also mulch and start feeding the soil up because it was basically a sand pit when we started. And then this far side over here we have a massive zucchini, look at these Queensland arrowroots, they're so tall and I think that's why this zucchini is doing so well is that it had a bit of protection from the hot summer sun. More pigeon peas, again nitrogen fixing to help build the soil and also they are edible as well. Yacon which is a root crop, more Queensland arrowroot, more spinach, more yacon, Queensland arrowroot, moringa, yacon, Queensland arrowroot and then in here I planted some cucumber seeds so there's a cucumber climbing up here, there's some thyme on the corner here, another pigeon pea and because I used the New Zealand spinach as a mulch there's obviously seeds in that so that has started to pop up as well which will be another edible ground cover and then the Thai egg tomato seeds which are on the corner and then this one here with this little bit of extra protection is the avocado. And I may need to extend this shade cover because it's still getting a bit crispy in this hot summer sun. So we've got sweet potato popped up out of the compost in this garden bed, some cherry tomatoes which like basically the plant's dead but I'm still getting tomatoes off them so I'm eating those and down here I have another sort of zucchini, very spiky plant so this one is sort of like a round zucchini but I have left it far too long and I really need to pick it. And down here we've got the grapes which is my long-term vision for the shade structure and some protection from the hot afternoon sun here with these temporary shade structures. So the front citrus line still needs some work, there's gaps in between and I want to really fill the space out with a lot more plants this year but the lime has got heaps of limes on it the new feijoa has pumped out new growth and so this one will bush up and really give me some privacy here with evergreen leaves, again citrus have the evergreen leaves so this will be a lot of privacy from the road. The blood orange and there's lots of fruit on that so those will be ready in winter, we'll be able to see those. So this is a different guava, this one has got a big fruit that's white inside so I've got one flower coming on so I really hope I get some fruit off that. Down below as you can see it's just a little bit dry and hot and nothing's really growing so I need to work on that, I've got to come up with something else because what I'm doing is obviously not working. So we've got the mandarin and another feijoa and this one is double grafted, it's a duffy with a white goose on top of it and it's got new growth and it's got some little fruits on it as well so I'm excited to try those. And down here I've got a fig that I planted because I do have a whole bunch of fig plants so I've popped that in there, that should do really well out here in this hot dry conditions. The lemonade which is loaded and it's also got lots of new flowers and little baby fruits so I think there's going to be a really long harvesting season on that because there's some large ones and some tiny tiny baby ones. As you can see here like this big one here and then there's some little baby ones here so lots of lemonades in the future. But yeah again this one eventually will be all, the space will be taken up by these plants to offer some more wind protection and some privacy as well out here in the front yard. Down here outside the house we've got New Zealand spinach going absolutely wild, I need to cut this back and I'll use this as mulch and some other yacon, a pumpkin that's sprawling through here, kale, the yellow cherry guava and then of course down here we have the pond and I will give you a full pond update video on what's worked, what hasn't worked but for now this is what's been happening in the pond. The first exciting thing that happened in the pond is my fish had little babies so these are the minnows and I think there's around six little babies now which are actually not so little anymore. I also collected some little baby tadpoles from one cyber bova thanks to a Facebook group and they quickly grew really large, I didn't even realize tadpoles got that big and then they turned into frogs and I turned into a bit of a frog stalker with my camera. This pond is right outside my office and it's not like I needed another distraction but these frogs are definitely it. Look at this pineapple sage as well, it's loving life. This garden gets only morning sun and the rest is shade so that's why it's looking so lush and green compared to the rest of the garden which is also good for the pond as well. Now you can see here this is the pineapple sage that's out in the elements, full sun all day and it's pretty crispy so yeah these gardens are a little bit sad but there's zucchinis and herbs and things still growing in here. We've got tomatoes, I planted a few more zucchini seeds, spring onions, the passion fruit. This one is the red Panama and I grew this from a seed from a store-bought passion fruit. I also attached some string lines to help the plants have something easy to grab onto to climb up the arbor. I have the bottle gourds slowly climbing up as well. So starting off my food forest style garden out the back we have, this is the shady corner so this gets shade pretty much most of the time, a little bit of morning sun and we've got sweet potato climbing up and also passion fruit so this is the yellow Panama passion fruit and I got to try a few fruits over winter and they were delicious and it doesn't seem to mind this spot here so it's growing really well. All the ground cover is now sweet potato and we have my worms so they can stay nice and cool here in the shade of the big pine tree during the hot summer sun. I've got monstera which is the fruit salad plant and so that again prefers a little bit of shade and then I've put some more mesh up here so the passion fruit can fill up that space there and it can be all green and then we have Queensland arrowroot and the first one that has a whole bunch of fruit on it is the strawberry guava. So the strawberry guava is loaded, the branches are literally just hanging down with fruit. The parrots tend to find this one so we'll see how we go with actually getting this fruit to eat. And right on cue the morning after I filmed this we had a few visitors to the garden. So there's a few gaps in here because I've given the mulberry, the white mulberry, a bit of a prune around to make space for a new tree which is a dwarf mango. So this mango tree is going to replace this eventually. This has done its dash, it's been an amazing plant to get this garden established. It's provided shade, shelter and food but as well as a whole lot of green material. But I do want to have a mango a little bit more so that's sort of a transitional phase here. I haven't taken this out yet, it's providing shade for the mango and protection from the harsh summer sun so eventually that will go. And as you can see the ground covers are loving having that dappled shade. So there's the sweet potato which I don't really harvest, it's more so to protect the soil and create mulch but also if I want sweet potato I can just go out and find one. Then I've got the false cardamom which is a really fragrant tropical looking plant. I also have the Queensland arrowroot everywhere that I'm just repopulating as a, it can be a substitute for potato but also it has really beautiful tropical leaves that provide a whole lot of mulch for the garden. And then we have the Hawaiian guava so there's heaps of fruit on that. A lot of the fruit has been damaged or scratched on the outside by the, we've had intense easterly winds so huge wind storms here and that has meant a lot of my feijoas have actually dropped off and I'm probably not going to get as much fruit this season on a lot of these guavas. But there's still plenty on this tree and they're just a little bit scratched up. Then behind there is the pomegranate. So I've got one lonely pomegranate which I've got in a fruit bag. I just use like jewelry bags that you can get. They're really easy to put on individual fruits. And then we've got the two feijoas. So these are my two feijoas. This one actually pumped out the most fruit last year but a lot of the fruit this year got blown off. So this tree doesn't seem to have as many fruit on it as this one. It must have been a little bit more protected here but I'm still going to get a whole lot of fruit so I'm really happy about that. And the lemon tree in the back which I've started giving a bit of a haircut. I still need to finish those top branches up there because I like to keep all my trees at a manageable height so that it's easy to pick the fruit, easy to prune, easy to see if I need to cut anything back. And then along from the feijoas we've got more Queensland arrowroot. We also have the kumquat here and there's heaps of fruit on that that's hopefully going to take up this empty space here. And then we've got some rosemary in the corner and the passion fruit which is growing down the fence line and loving life by the looks of it. And I haven't really shown this space at all and this is sort of my nursery at the moment because it's too hot to be planting things out into the garden so a lot of things that I'm growing from seeds, cuttings, special plants that I don't want to dye, I'm keeping in pots until we get to autumn so I can plant them out into the garden when I create some of these new garden spaces. So I have a shade cloth up here, this is a shade sail. It's probably about 90% cover because I could buy it ready-made, it's got hooks and I could just install it straight away. Most fruit trees you're going to be wanting more of a 30 to 50% shade cover but it's so hot here in Perth it doesn't matter, my plants are happy and they get morning sun in the side and then as you can see the afternoon sun is streaming in as well so they are getting enough light in here but not getting cooked by that hot midday to afternoon sun. I have a whole bunch of unique and sort of a rare tropical fruit trees and that is what I'm loving at the moment so I've been collecting those, see something that's on my list, I've been adding it to my collection. So we'll do a full tour out here and I'll show you everything but for now here's some of my favourites. This is the Thai night star fruit, my last one didn't make it through the winter so fingers crossed. I also have a custard apple and I believe this is the African pride. Another mango that's going out the front eventually and I did manage to get my hands on this lemon pinky which is a variegated lemon with slightly pink flesh. Rillineas are another one that are really hard to grow, especially here they don't like the winter and they also don't like the extreme heat. And all of these pots you can see are on this new metal plant stand that my partner built for me. I wanted to get them off the ground to help with drainage but also to get away from all of the slaters that were living underneath all the pots and just breeding up storm. I've also got all my seeds growing on these metal shelves as well, again helping with drainage. I've got red tamarillo, I've got guavas from my guava tree, I've got papaya, sapodilla, lots of fruit grown from seeds. This is one of my special plants, this is the red fleshed apple, I have one single fruit. I've also got a bunch of stone fruit and pots that I'm practicing grafting on and I do want to find homes for these as well in the garden. Let me know in the comments what video you're excited to see next. I've got a pond video, we've obviously got lots of projects coming up this year with some new gardens and some transformations but I'm always open to ideas so let me know what you think I should add to my garden or do next.