Spidra's Australian Finger Lime
Citrus australasica

There’s enough room between the bamboo and the Wild Spice rose that I could squeeze the Finger Lime in. It may eventually make an impenetrable fence, but that’s all to the good.

I went out with my ergo spade and my regular lightweight shovel. I started with my hands trying to pull out the rhizomes from the neighbor’s EVIL Kikuyu grass. I’m sure I didn’t get it all but any progress is good. I also had to pick out seeds because they have another variety of grass that goes to seed and when they use their string trimmer, they don’t clean up after all themselves. Which explains why I have so much of their lawn on my property.

When I finally got to digging with the shovel, I realized there was no way in hell I was going to have the strength to dig a hole that would land the root crown at ground level. So I dug as far as I could in the stony (mostly old concrete) hardpan. Then I prepared a bucket full of the Friends of Sausal Creek potting soil and a bit of slow organic fertilizer so that I could heap that over the bits of rootball that were going to be above ground.

I managed to extricate the plant from the pot, thanks to a nice loose leaf mould soili that Four Winds Growers uses. I was very happy to see at least 5 earthworms were in the pot because it was obvious there were no earthworms in the soil on the side strip of the driveway. I then put the bark mulch on top of the mound I’d made. I watered it all in with some Enki water. I hope the earthworms start exploring and breaking up some of that awful soil there. Its hard for me to want to make everything much better between the plants because it will encourage the EVIL Kikuyu grass to move in. It’s been so dry and hard between where I water that it’s actually held them at bay just a tiny bit.

When it was all over, I noticed that one of the nicer bits of new growth had been knocked off the plant so I’ll have to look up my citrus propagation info and see if I can propagate it. If so, that’ll be great.

When I picked it up, the bush looked fairly young and thin. However, when I planted it this morning I noticed there’s at least two flowers on it. So maybe I’ll see some fruit this year.