Planting SUBTROPICAL fruit trees + creating microclimates

Hello YouTube and welcome back to my garden. I've been a bit quiet on socials but a lot has been happening in the garden so I want to show you what I've been planting and a little bit of an update. Let's go take a look. First up I decided to plant out this pathway. It can be really windy at my place and now that the surrounding gardens have taken off this area has become a sheltered microclimate for my delicate subtropicals. Planted soursop which really hates the wind so fingers crossed it likes this new home. I've also planted an African pride custard apple and a pexin prolific and another one that doesn't like the wind is the starfruit. The row on the side is planted with chop and drop plants such as Queensland arrowroot and pigeon pea so the plan will be eventually to use this as the new pathway when things get a little too crowded. But for now it is a very cozy sheltered space to keep my new plants protected over the winter months. My soil is pretty much pure sand so I add in as much extra nutrition as I can and mix that around with the sand for good drainage but it's going to be important that I continuously layer and add mulch and add green material on top of these to break down and feed the soil and that's what this garden next door is going to be about is continuously chopping that, dropping that straight onto the new trees. I've been collecting cardboard and I will continue to add layers of cardboard and mulch to try and suppress the grass and retain the moisture. It's been a long summer here and still no rain as we near the end of autumn. The hardy plants that I chose to grow are the reason my garden looks so green. The Queensland arrowroot has provided great sun and wind protection and I'm now starting to let light in by chopping it and annoying me for a while. I really want to cover the fence but it's been tricky because this is where the passion fruit is growing from so I have to be careful to try and do minimal root disturbance on that and I'm planting a dwarf mango. So this is the Irwin mango and it has a beautiful purple red fruit. I'm also planting one of my tree tomatoes or tamarillos that I've grown from seed. These don't like the wind so I'm hoping this little spot in between the feijoa and the kumquat will give it a nice sheltered section to get started but first I need to cut down some of these Queensland arrowroots to make space. This is society garlic and I love using the flowers in my cooking so I'm always breaking it up and spreading it out throughout the garden. I still find it hard to believe that this is now my front yard when it used to be a complete blank canvas. I love coming out here and checking if my seeds have popped up and just walking around and really enjoying this space now. It's always changing, it's always evolving and actually none of these plants I planted in here this season. They've all either lasted over the summer or self-seeded and I think that's amazing. It's a completely low maintenance garden now and continuously providing me with food. My blood orange is well on the way, it's covered in fruit even though the grasshopper has eaten all the new growth. So although I haven't planted a lot of things in my raised garden beds over summer, they are still full of food, lots of self-seeded things and when we finally get some rain I'm sure there'll be a whole lot more seeds popping up. I have planted in a few now, a rainbow chard and some radishes to fill in the gaps but I just can't believe, look at these brassicas. This one is super huge so I'm assuming this is going to be a Romanesco because they have massive leaves but it could have cross-pollinated with something over there that I grew last year. So all of these will be a type of broccoli. I grew purple broccoli last year so I'm assuming it's something along those lines although they could be definitely crossed. And although I was hoping I was going to get some coverage on this arbor this summer, that was not the case but I have got my seed-grown passion fruit on the way for next summer until the grapes get high enough because the grapes have done pretty much nothing. So this is the red Panama which has big red fruit and it's starting to climb. Sweet potatoes popped up on their own over summer so I've let them cover the bed, keep the soil moist. I don't even know how this thing is hanging on but it is. And in other exciting news, I have this avocado. This is the linda which is a type B, has really big fruit and that's going to help cross-pollinate my choquette in the other garden. And then down here this little guy, this is a double graft with a brogden and a reed. So I'm giving it some extra wind protection. I've painted it for the hot sun. I'm hoping to get this thriving. And a lemonade. They're starting to drop daily. So this is the linda and again I've painted it and tucked it in here so it's a little bit more sheltered from the wind. Heaps more projects to especially out the back. I'm going to be replacing a few trees. So we've got that, we've got heaps of pruning and I'm excited I get to get my mulch out.