LAWN TO FOOD FOREST 🌳 Tip Pruning, Edible Hedge, Syntropic Garden & Raised Bed Garden Tour

I just wanted to get a few different varieties in there, see which ones I liked, see which ones do well. Welcome to my nursery. This is where I've got my potted fruit trees, things that I'm growing from seed, as well as things I just haven't found home for in the garden yet, like this double grafted apricot. And there is our little fog hanging out. Previously tip pruned and now we've got one, two, three, three branching out, which also means more fruit. In a smaller space. Let's go for a full tour of my gardens here in Perth, Australia. I have a whole bunch of different zones, so I've got my raised garden beds out here in the front yard. We've got my centropic garden here, my edible hedge along the front, as well as a deciduous mini orchard, my food forest garden out the back, and my potted nursery. So there's lots to see. Let's go take a look. Let's start here in my centropic garden. So this is something that we converted from a bare patch of grass in a really hot, dry front yard. And I really focused on getting plants established for shade, for mulch to start feeding the soil because it's pure sand, as well as a few bigger fruit trees for long term crops. So right here we have the lemon mango. And then further down is the choquette avocado. And in the middle I have a deciduous plum tree, which is the Louisa plum, a New Zealand developed plum, and has really big fruit on it. Sort of like mango flavoured. So that's really exciting. I can't wait for those future crops. But while I'm waiting for those, instead of just cooking these small plants out here, I absolutely packed it full of other plants that are going to provide shade. So we've got the pigeon pea here, and it's also got flowers on it at the moment. So lots of bees being attracted. And I won't be cutting this now for the rest of the year. I'll be trying to get as much height out of this as possible to give this garden shade as well. Then at the end of summer, once I've used it for shade, I can chop it right back and feed this garden. Surrounded by it is all this Queensland arrowroot. So just huge patches of this, which I think I originally planted only like about five plants. Now there's like right here in this tiny patch, there's probably 30 plants. And I've already taken some of these and put them in the verge garden. So they repopulate really quickly. They grow really fast. And I get asked all the time, where do I buy Queensland arrowroot? Or can I use other types of canna? So the reason that I've got the Queensland arrowroot is because it is an edible crop. You can use the tubers like a potato. But in reality, I don't do that very often. So I don't see the problem in just using normal cannas to grow mulch. As long as they're fast growing and they can reproduce, you can start chopping them back and using them as protection. So they grow really dense as well, so they can add a bit of wind protection. This one here, the pigeon pea is really good for wind protection because it is such a dense bushy shrub. So on this corner, we've got my banana surrounded with the Queensland arrowroot. And then this is the little baby lemon mango. And I've been adding as much material as I can in here into these lines. So this is all the spent radishes and brassicas from the raised garden beds. Popping as much under this banana as possible to feed it. As well as in these two lines. You can kind of see one line there and one line down there. That will feed this main tree line. And behind it I have the heikia. So this is a native and it's grown really quickly, really fast, providing that shade. And I've also chopped it back once. So again, I won't be touching this now. Letting it grow as much as possible to provide shade for this garden here. And I have another one, a different variety of heikia here. And that is also going to act as another shade plant. Here we have the Louisa plum and I didn't get any flowers on it. So it's just all leafed out. But it is young. I only planted this last winter. The birdbath with some little rocks for the bees. And then you can see down here I put my grass clippings. I put anything and everything around here to act as mulch and feed the garden. So we've got the radishes that I will be cutting out in here. This is a moringa. So this moringa got absolutely eaten by bugs. You can see there's like chunks out of all the side of it. So I'm surprised it's still alive. But my plan was to have this as a shade tree to give some dappled light to my tropical section. So here I have the soursop, the starfruit and then my aprium that I have just shoved in there. I've also got a seedling custard apple down there. In between the lime and the feijoa. Lychee. So these ones here would really benefit from having the dappled light from this. Because the sun is just going to come in here and really cook them. So fingers crossed that speeds up. If not, the Queensland arrowroot will get higher all around here. It's in here to add a little bit of protection. And grass. I mean there's grass. You can see the grass in here. And for a while that really did annoy me. But I'm getting used to it. The reason that there is grass is because there is sunlight. And grass is a pioneer. So grass is one of the first things to grow. It loves full sunlight. It can thrive in really crappy soil. But over time, as I start to grow more of these fruit trees, it will shade out this area. And the grass will be much easier to manage and be suppressed. So for now, there is grass. But it won't be staying. And then along this row here we have zephyr deer. We have quai muck. We have a few other little hidden things. Like down in here. It's hard to see. But this one here is an apple seedling. So I've grown that from seed. It's from my red-fleshed apple. So it's just tucked in there. Down here we've got a poppy. Some dianthus flowers. New Zealand spinach as an edible ground cover. Then we've got my black pomegranate. And, exciting, we have a flower. Then behind that is the choquet avocado. Which will be getting shade cover very, very soon. I've just chucked in a few more Queensland arrowroots here. To get a little bit more protection. And you can see these radishes here that have gone to flower. These were from where I laid down last year's spent radishes. So they've just self-seeded in the mulch line. So I'll be cutting those back again. And chopping and dropping for more mulch. This is like double the amount of mulch. Just from laying down a few radish plants last year. There's more in there. Here I've got another pomegranate. The Persian pomegranate. And so this hot corner here. I've got some really hardy plants. Like the pomegranate's really hardy. The rosemary is super drought tolerant and hardy. So again, I've got that right on the corner here. And they're a really hot spot. Next to the driveway. I've got two driveways here. And one driveway on the other side. This is my front hedge. So this is my edible screen cover from the road. And it is all evergreen. Fruit trees and ground covers. And middle layers as well. The new verge garden. So they're looking a little bit ratty. Queensland arrowroot. But they're all shooting off new shoots. So this one that I planted now is now going to be three plants. My envision is that that is going to get up around here. And then I can chop it all back after summer. And create some more mulch and soil for the garden. These yarrow are beautiful. And the bees are loving them. Look at the colour. So I have got the yarrow in this garden bed. Which is more contained. Because it does spread like wildfire. We've got the lime and it's covered in baby limes. This is my dwarf Tahitian lime. Looking really nice and bushy here. And we have a mango. So this mango is definitely due for a haircut. Going to chop it down to make it nice and low and bushy. To take up that space there. And then if it does shade out the lime. It doesn't matter too much. Because the limes actually prefer a bit of shade. My feijoa. This one is starting to send off new growth. New flowers. So that's really exciting. And again feijoas will be a really good screen cover. And I'll be able to train it up as high as I want it. But I'll also be able to cut it back pretty heavily. And not worry about it. Feijoas don't mind a good haircut. And they're really good as a screen cover or in a hedge. Down here is just more Queensland arrowroot, yarrow, mango. And I will be removing the flowers eventually. But not right now. Because if I was to remove them now. It could push out new flowers. And I don't want that. So I'm just letting it go. If any baby mangoes form. Then I will take those off. Then we have my orange tree. So the blood orange is looking so beautiful. It has got some aphids on it. Which is very common at this time of year. But there's also hundreds of little ladybugs everywhere. That are starting to hatch out. You can see. It's very speedy. The black ones. The ones that are more black are quite young. Look at them all. There's like so many. And I wouldn't have got those. If I didn't let some of these aphids come on my lemonade tree. And under the orange tree down here. I have my New Zealand spinach as a ground cover. I also have some pigeon pea in here. Lots of things that I've just popped in. That I can cut back. And then feed and mulch these fruit trees. Then next to my blood orange. We have my guava. And so this is the Thai guava. It's a really big white guava. And it's starting to get really bushy and tall. I've tip pruned all of this. So that means I've just taken. I've just cut the tops off all of these branches. And they have been shot out with four or five different branches. To make it a lot more bushier. Because I don't want it to get super tall. But I want it to sort of bush out. And take up some of these gaps in between the fruit trees. So now is a really good time to do any tip pruning. Even on your citrus. So things like this. My mandarin. If I was to tip prune this. I'd just literally take the tip out of it. And then it would shoot off. And branch four or five different ones. So you can see down here. I have previously tip pruned. And now we've got one, two, three. Three branching out. Three branching out on that. Instead of just having one shooting right out where I don't want it. Because it's spring and we're getting a lot of growth. You can tip prune and you'll get really quick results. A much bushier plant. And again, that is what has happened on my guava. So I've tip pruned this previously. And instead of now. So instead of one branch. I now have one, two, three. Which is going to make that a lot more bushier. Than if it was just one branch shooting out. Which also means more fruit. In a smaller space. Rather than just big long branches. So I've tip pruned all of these. And that one I haven't. And things like this. You can just literally pick it out. You don't need to be too fancy with it. So there you can see. Now it will shoot out those little pieces just by the leaves. Down here I've got some pigeon pea. And a seedling loquat. Which wasn't really the plan. But I had a seed and I put it in and it grew. So that ends up being a big tree. So I have, again, I've tip pruned this to make it really low. And bushy. You can see I've cut it there. And it's branched out into one, two, three, four. It's got like five main stems on it. Again, I've pruned it here and it's going to shoot out again. But this one, this loquat, might not stay here. Because it is going to be a big tree. And I don't really want that for this spot. But for now it's staying. And it may just be that I cut it back every year. And put it through a mulcher and create mulch for this garden. So it could act as a really hardy, quick plant that I can farm mulch from. But we will see how that goes. We've got my mandarin here. Which is looking amazing. Nice and bushy. So this one was going to get cut back. Because I don't love the mandarins. But I never got around to it. And my other plan is to put a caracara on here. So grafting caracara scions onto this. Which I never got around to either. But it's going to have a pretty big crop of mandarins this year. Down here I do have a hidden, sneaky little avocado. So this one is a rare avocado. This is called Nola. And not a lot of people are growing this very successfully. So I don't know how good it's going to be. But apparently it can have red skinned avocados. And it's right next to my linda avocado. Down here there's little hidden things. All amongst the garden. Very slow growing sapodilla that I grew from seed. Next to that we have another feijoa. This one is shooting off flowers as well. So this one is grafted. We've got the white goose on top. And a duffy down below. I'll also be using this as material to graft onto my seedling feijoas. At the back. Because one of those is not very productive. So I'm going to use this once it gets a little bit bigger. Start cutting this off and using some of this to graft onto my feijoa at the back. Look at this beautiful dianthus. Down here. And then hidden again in here we've got a fig. So this is just a random fig that I didn't have anywhere to put. So it's here for now. And hidden, even more hidden down in here. There is a dwarf grimy charmer. So that's tucked in down there. Next we have my lemonade tree. Which is, the aphids are actually starting to dissipate off this. And we have obviously so many ladybugs. We've got lots of little fruits coming along. So that is how the verge garden is looking at the moment. It won't be long. You can see there's a new shoot popping up there. A new shoot there. Some of the older ones have died off that I planted. But there's another new shoot there. So there's two on this one that I planted here. And then these two here are the same hakeas that we have in the centropic garden. So my plan is that they will get nice and bushy there. Another mango, the dwarf Thai mango. Next to a big pigeon pea acting as a little bit of a wind block here. So you can see from this side it is starting to fill out. Once this feed jar gets up here there will be a lot more privacy from the road. And then I do plan on having a few more rows of trees on the verge. Things that I can use to chop and drop for mulch. To sort of farm mulch for my garden. But also a few natives as well to attract more native wildlife. And create a few more buffers of protection from the road. Here I have another row of trees. And it goes all the way down here which was originally a pathway. So this was a path but I ran out of room for my fruit trees. And now I have a secondary row. And so on the end here we have my multi grafted plum cot. And I have a few different varieties on that one. Starting to flower here. All the grafts are starting to flower actually. The actual plum cot is only just starting to wake up. So that's the spring satin plum cot. And then right here pigeon pea which I'm using as mulch. So I want to have more of these pigeon peas dotted all around in the hot areas. So that they can provide shelter. Like this is a really good wind buffer as the wind comes through. And then I can chop it back and feed the trees. So I do want to plant a few more of those around. The mango which is going to get cut. The papaya that I transplanted is still alive. I've nearly kicked that over so many times. So I don't know if that will last. But that's a seed grown papaya. I've got my African pride custard apple down here. The new trellises which I have rock melons planted to grow up here. The rainbow chard is looking amazing. Doing heaps at this time of year. Lettuces, kale, volunteer tomatoes. On the end here I have a mystery yellow plum. So it's yellow on the outside, yellow on the inside. And I have grafted an apricot onto that. There's a poppy. Then we have my perlite grape to grow up this part of the arbour. This one here is my flame grape which is three quarters of the way up. And I reckon it's going to get to the top of the arbour probably in a few weeks. Fingers crossed. And start getting some shade up on this arbour. So I've got four grapes. I've got the flame, the sultana, the perlite and the black maru. So two green grapes, one red grape and one black grape. And that's sort of just an experiment. I may not keep them all. I just wanted to get a few different varieties in there. See which ones I like. See which ones do well. Because some of them are going to be more susceptible to powdery mildew or anything like that. So I've just got options. If they grow. So my raised garden beds are full still. I've got plenty of work to do cutting these out, chopping and dropping these back into the Centropic Garden. But down here, I don't know if you can see, but we have Mr Frog. He's hanging out on the Romanesco. So I've been having fun coming out here every day and seeing where he is. But he is loving this plant so I don't want to cut it back yet. Sometimes he's in the pond, but we're still having a mix of hot and more cooler weather. And so he is absolutely basking in the sun here in this little spot. The pond's still getting a little bit more shade cover. With the sun still being a bit lower in the sky. So for now, I can't touch this plant. We've got lots of rainbow chard and kale, lettuces, edible flowers. The bees are loving the radishes, which is really good timing with all my fruit trees flowering. I'm attracting lots and lots of bees to the garden. They are just humming on these. And then pollinating my other fruit trees, like my blood orange and my lime over there. The Nashu pear on this side is starting to wake up. So you may notice that some of my fruit trees aren't pruned like a big open vase shape. So this one here, the Nashu pears and also the blood plum. I've got more of a vertical shape going on just because I'm limited on space. So I don't want the branches to be out huge and wide. I'm growing more of an upright sort of tree. So I have pruned it so the top, there's no central leader anymore. It is starting to branch out. And then I will continue to prune it to have a lot more branches that are pointing upwards. So that I can reduce the amount of space that is needed. Because I don't have a lot of space here in the suburbs. So this garden here is probably going to be looking the most different from our previous video. And also what we'll be developing the most over the next month. With all the Queensland arrowroot starting to jump up. As well as new growth on the deciduous trees. The banana is loving this warmth. We're starting to get a lot more growth on that. And before we go and check out the back garden and see what's growing out there. And the potted fruit trees. I did just want to let you know on some exciting news. I now have a Substack newsletter that you can subscribe to for free and get weekly tips. I did already have a newsletter so it's going to be very similar to that. So if you are a subscriber for my previous newsletter, it will now be on Substack. So you'll be getting emails from me just as you already were. But you'll also be able to jump into the Substack app and see them in there. I'm also adding in a paid subscription. So this is going to be a lot of bonus extras. So I'm going to be adding in monthly gardening guides. With everything to sow, prune, harvest, what fruits are ripening. Everything that I'm doing in the garden in that month. To help you if you want to garden alongside me. Or just give you a little bit of structure and guidance on what to do each month in the garden. Then that will be available. As well as I'll be bringing back some of my live videos, live Q&As. So if you want to have access to that then it is just $8 a month at the moment. Depending on where you live obviously in exchange rates. But that will be increasing over time. But for now it's $8 a month and you get access to the free newsletter. As well as bonus posts and content. Monthly gardening guides, live Q&As and some bonus videos as well. So I'll leave the link in the description below. And if you want to join me as a free subscriber or as a paid subscriber. I would love for you to join me over there as well. Welcome to my nursery. This is where I've got my potted fruit trees. Things that I'm growing from seed. As well as things I just haven't found home for in the garden yet. Like this double grafted apricot. I'd love this to be in the ground but I just don't know where I'm going to put it. But I will be using this to graft onto other trees as well. Because this has got my early Newcastle and my trivet apricot on it. We've got my loquat which is really getting close to being ripe. I've got them bagged so the fruit flies can't get in there. I've got a bunch of blueberries. So I've got quite a few different low chill blueberry varieties that are starting to produce. Figs, grapes, finger limes. I've got a currant which is an experiment. It survived last year so we'll see how that goes. A longan, an orange tamarillo. And more mangoes that I haven't found homes for. I've got lots of figs. As well as my old pallet planters which surprisingly are still alive and well. I've got random things in them at the moment like dragon fruit, figs, radish seeds popping up. This one has a blackberry in it. This one has a seed growing passion fruit in it. There will be a shade cover going up here very soon. Because this area just gets way way too hot in summer and things in pots dry out. So getting some shade up will be essential for me in summer. But I am really trying to minimise my potted fruit trees. And I know it doesn't really look like it but that is the plan. These are high maintenance for me here. I personally prefer to grow in the ground much more than I do growing in pots. At the moment this is it. If you've got any questions leave them in the comments. And if there are any videos that you want to specifically see more on then please let me know in the comments as well. I sometimes feel like these garden tours just get a bit repetitive. But we do have my mini fish tank greenhouse down here. So this is my mini fish tank greenhouse and this is where I grow a lot of my seeds. So at the moment we have my apricot seed. I've got some custard apple seeds. A few guava seeds. And I did have some cucumber seeds that popped up but then something ate them. So there's still bugs getting in here and I need to replant those. I've got one of my water containers there where I save rainwater to use on my seedlings. And an asparagus patch behind in my pallet planter. So I haven't showed you this back garden for a long time now. And it has been in a process of regrowing after I hacked it back and changed a lot of things out here. So let's take a look. So one big change here is that the passion fruit is gone. But we have a new one. Mango is flowering. The papaya sadly didn't last through that last end of winter. But we have all new growth. So I am just going to see if it branches out off here. Lots of kumquats still. New ones coming through. And lots of new growth on this. Another mango in here. I've got a banana, the leaning tower of banana. And then the seedling feijoa. So another reason I've been avoiding this area is because there's a baby bird nesting in my feijoa tree. So I haven't wanted to scare it away, just leaving it to it. It's very well hidden so I can't even hardly see it. But that was super exciting. I feel like that's garden goals when your garden is safe enough for little birds to be nesting in. And again on this one we're getting lots of flower buds coming through. Down here I have my lavender in between. Because this flowers generally at the same time as my feijoas. It's a little bit earlier this year but it's attracting lots of bees to the garden. Down in the back here is an avocado. So it's flowering at the moment and pushing new growth so it's looking a bit ratty. But that is going to take up the space where my old lemon tree used to be. So not only do bees pollinate the flowers on the feijoa but also little birds. So if you see a whole bunch of little birds in your feijoa trees don't be too alarmed. They are really good pollinators. They love the nectar and the little petals and they help pollinate and get more fruit. The parrots on the other hand, those are not as good. So we have the two feijoas and the avocado in the corner there. We have a little miniature peach down here. We've got bananas. The pomegranate has come back to life in the back there. And then down here getting swallowed by nasturtiums is the yellow petanga tuber. And my custard apple which is pushing new growth as well. And next to that we have my Hawaiian guava which has another graft on it. So this one is the one tree from out the front which I've grafted onto here. And the rest is all Hawaiian guava. And I have one more guava that I want to graft onto that. Down here we have got a little mini Davidson plum. Again I'm having to keep the nasturtiums under control. But it's got new growth on it. That is a native Australian plum. More bananas. And then in behind that we have another mango. That is the dwarf palmer mango. Here we have my plantain which is massive at the moment. And it's got some little side pops on it as well. We've got the pinkerton avocado in full bloom. And flies hanging out because flies are actually the main pollinators of avocados and mangoes. The papaya. This one looks better than the other one but definitely didn't like the winter. The blood lime in here doesn't do very well in this spot but it's pushing new growth. Next to another little avocado with lots of new growth. Flowers on here. Very protected down here. This one is the rillinia and it is coming back to life. But again, not loving winter. And then down here we have my sweet grenadilla which is looking beautiful. I've given it this to climb up to and then eventually onto this where this was. This is looking very sad. The caterpillars have had an absolute feast on it. But new growth is popping through. This is my gold passionfruit. Compost bin. My two worm farms. And in here, my driveway patch, we have my deciduous fruit. And I've got apricots that I really needed to bag. So this is my bolita with another variety grafted on up here. So these are just jewellery bags that I use as fruit fly netting and just reuse them every year. And I just use these on the trees that have a few fruits. Obviously I'm not going to be putting on something that has got like a hundred fruits on it. So this only has two fruit by the looks of it. Oh no, there's one here. This one's too little. Yeah, I'm going to wait. It's still got the flower on it. I don't want to knock it off. I want it to be actually holding on well. And a kiwi berry update. A lot of you are wanting to know about the kiwi berry. So we're going to be doing regular updates. And it is up and away on the trellis. So the apricot is pretty much all leafed out. This one still hasn't moved yet. The tamarillo. The tamarillo is flowering. Give it a little tap, tap, tap to help pollinate it. No action on the kiwi fruit yet. Still asleep. Around here. I have laid out my weeper hose ready to do watering in summer. This is a little apple tree here. The other kiwi berry, I still haven't got trellis up for this one yet. And it really is starting to take off. You can see all my Zealand spinach ground cover. Some random parsleys, self-seeded. And the low-chill nectarina, which I still need a net. It's got little baby fruits on it.