thanks
Melanie

For more information on growing citrus and blueberries in Canberra, go to http://www.thegarden.com.au and look at the information sheets.

As for blueberries, as long as you get the highbush blueberries, not rabbit-eyes, they do well here. The rabbit-eyes are for low-chill climates and are avilable on-line but usuallky not through the local nurseries, so if you shop locally you should be safe. They do like acidic soil–add well-rotted cow manure to the soil and mulch with pine needles or pine bark for a bit more acid. If camelias, azaleas or rhododendrons do well in your garden (or your neighbours’) then blueberries should so fine as they like similar soil and climate.

We don’t get possums (yet) so I’m not sure about the lemons. You can be sure they’ll for the berries though as do birds. When they are fruiting, you need to keep picking very two days (or more) and netting is advisable.

So pleased to hear about your passionfruit success. We are just about to plant two. I’d like to try Black Magic as I’ve read it’s good for Canberra, and one other.

Nicole, the blueberry can be planted out now, in fact this is an excellent time to plant them. Most of ours have no leaves on yet, some have just a few leaves.

Scott – Thanx for the heads up on how many plants would be needed for both eating and jam (hubby likes blueberries on his cereal in the morning).

RedPhin – Thanx for all of your VERY informative information on lemons, I much prefer a lemony lemon so will steer clear of the Meyer. If necessary we can hessian the lemon over winter to help protect it from frost, we planned this for our passionfruit (see below) but is hasn’t needed it.

I am growing passionfruit up the wall of the house and we had planned on hessianing it for winter but it hasn’t needed it, sure it has yellowed off a bit but it is still alive etc. I think part of this helps that the central heating unit is also on this wall not much further up so this may also help heat the wall up. It is on the Westerly wall of the house. One of the plants is about 2 yrs old and the other 2 are about 1 yr old, the older one is a grafted Nelly Kelly Black Passionfruit and the other 2 are non grafted black passion fruit (we tried different ones to see what does best etc) they are all doing well, no fruit yet but that is to be expected as they say it takes like 2 yrs for it to fruit (we did get flowers on the older vine last year so hopefully this year we will get our first crop of fruit).

Does anyone know if Lemons or Blueberries are susceptable to Possum attack? we have t have all of our vegie beds fully netted or the local wild possums eat everything, and knowing if I would have to net the trees etc would be handy.

The Meyer is the hybrid one that does taste pretty orangy. Probably the most frost hardy of the bunch but don’t buy from Daleys. They’re in Northern NSW (almost QLD) and their plants (sadly) are not hardened. They’ll die as soon as they arrive. Go somewhere in Pialligo instead. Neighbour has a beaut one of these that fuits 12 months a year. But, like you I wanted a lemony lemon so…..

Of the lemony-lemons…..

The Eureka is still struggling along although the amount of time and care I have to put into getting this fella to fruit in canberra is pretty insane. Am about to pop another in front of my best and warmest warm bricks – hopefully that should be a good plant. They really aren’t good frosties though.

The Lisbon is basically stuffed. Despite the fact it’s growning right next to an orange and a mandarin, it’s the one that’s popped it’s clogs first. Total loss.

As an aside, I’m trying to source a finger-lime grafted on to super-hardy root stock. Might be another failure, but it’s always interesting to try…..

Thanks for your help :)
Nicole

Thanx for your response.
Sharon