Lemons

It's that time of year again when we are in lemon harvesting mode. Lemons provide so much that is beneficial and useful. The zest is wonderful in cooking and baking.... the juice itself has multiples uses.... and some time ago I learnt how lemon powder can be prepared and how useful it is also!

It was been quite a production line, as the children and I each took up a role, as part of harvesting and preparing the fruit gathered from our two lemon trees. Washing and drying each lemon.... carefully zesting the skins.... halving and then juicing them with the aid of the electric citrus juicer (what a great kitchen tool this has proven to be!).... we all took turns at doing each step of the process and the skills involved were shared and learnt.

The children enjoyed taking part in this harvesting activity. They have been learning the past few days some other hands-on gardening skills also.

Before any leaf blossom is evident, we have been taking time to cut back some of the additional new branches and shoots that would make accessing fruit, etc rather difficult at a later point. This has been an opportunity for skills to be taught and learnt also.

Usually I would have done all the pruning much earlier in the winter, but sadly ill health has up until very recently prevented me. So we are endeavouring as a family team to now get the garden back on track, as quickly as we can before Spring is upon us.. A number of the trees have been in serious need of a bit of a spruce up and tidy up pruning-wise, and will be much healthier and fruitful eventually, once this is all completed.

In order to get some good guidance about pruning, we watched a Youtube Video, in which Paul Gautschi shares his tips for pruning trees ( I will share the link to Pruning With Paul Part 1 - Back to Eden Garden here). This video series are very informative, and one which I would highly recommend watching. Both the children and I learnt a great deal from Paul's teaching about pruning trees.

We have learnt so much as a family from watching the various Back to Eden Gardening Method videos on Youtube, including this one about pruning. We have gone on since as a household to take on many of the principles of the Back to Eden Gardening Method, when it comes to gardening and pruning our own spray-free backyard garden.

We have yet to determine how best to prune our rambling grapevine, so that will have to be next on the list of things to research online!

In the meantime, we are pleased with the progress that is steadily being made, and look forward to sorting out soon what seeds we will start sowing for Spring. It will be wonderful to be back even more and more outdoors, out in our backyard garden, over the coming months. Yay!