Permaculture Living

Mulberry flowers rapidly becoming berries. They seem a little early this year – I thought the fruit was usually ready in mid-September, and this photo was from the end of July.

The starfruit, otherwise known as the carambola. If you’re going to plant one of these trees, be prepared for mountains and mountains of fruit.

The (bizarre) flower on the vine…

The beginning of the fruit inside the old flower petals…

The developed green passionfruit, waiting to ripen.

The Rollinia is a Custard Apple variant from South America. It’s supposed to taste like lemon meringue pie, so I wish they’d hurry up and ripen.

From flower…

… to fruit.

These are pods on the icecream bean tree. It tastes nothing like its name to me; it’s like tiny pieces of slightly sweet cotton wool around a huge seed. Not my favourite fruit, but it’s a good permaculture plant because it grows fast, provides shade and is a nitrogen fixer.

Meet the Finger Lime, a fruit native to south east Queensland. It grows on a spiky bush and is also known as ‘vegetarian caviar’.

My favourite after-lunch snack to have while wandering around the farm.

The first (second, third) capsicums on the biggest of the lipstick capsicum plants I have growing in containers. This is the first time I’ve grown them, so I thought smaller ones would have a better chance of making it to an edible state than large supermarket-type capsicums… so far, so good.

One of my favourite parts of my permaculture course is being introduced to new food experiences. Today, the Pitaya or Pink Dragonfruit.

I’ve tried the white version before, but this was the pinkest fruit I have ever seen, more intensely coloured than a beetroot and with a milder sweetish, musky flavour. It grows not on a tree but on a cactus-like vine.