What's on our farm right now...

We're almost at the end of the most difficult part of the year- the long dry summer (Nov-Feb) when the area receives almost no rain. Here's what is on our farm right now:

• 10 moringa trees (started from seed, 20-50cm tall)
• 1 pomegranate tree
• 1 peach tree
• 2 lemon trees
• 6 avocado seedlings (all started from seed, 20-50cm tall)
• 1 mango seedling (started from seed)
• 1 macadamia nut tree (already on plot)
• 1 citrus (probably naartjie, already on plot)
• some prickly pear, along the edge of the plot.
• 4 grape vines (3 hanepoort, 1 sultana)
• A fair amount of fynbos/proteas/lavender that was already on the plot.
• some sweet potato plants
• 1 small pawpaw, grown from seed
• 3 (struggling) olive trees, densely planted together

Everything is small and at least a year away from really producing anything, which means that I have to learn patience. A forest is not grown in a day, apparently.

We have a fair amount waiting at my parents house, waiting to go into the ground as the weather cools down and we get a better idea of good places to try to plant:

• 2 guava trees
• 2 acacia trees (hoping to add many more- security and nitrogen fixing)
• 2 peach trees
• 1 orange tree
• 3 elderberry trees (young, from cutting)
• 2 pomegranate trees
• 2 blueberry bushes
• 1 apricot tree
• 1 plum tree
• 20 or so strawberry plants. (many quite small)
• a few more nitrogen fixing trees, seedlings.
• 2 comfrey plants
• 14 grape vines
• 3 granadilla vines (pretty small right now)
• Quite a few pawpaws, grown from seed
• A lot of pineapples- pretty much all the pineapples eaten in our households this season are in glasses of water, growing roots.

There's also quite a lot I'm interested in buying in the next couple of years, but it seems like a good idea to go relatively slowly, since we don't know a whole lot about the plot yet.

I'm on the lookout for nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs, and I have a bag full of foraged seeds, which I'll try to plant directly into the soil and just see what happens. So far things have been growing slowly but well, and mulching each tree heavily seems to have helped a lot-- we've just been watering once a week, with soda bottles. Having the plot is such a new experience and right now we're still just spending an hour or 2 there at a time-- I'm really excited at the prospect of living there, but building still hasn't started, so it will be a while!