Need advice for planting passion fruit & fruit trees

[Karen]

Hi, We're such novices it's embarrassing LOL! We would like to plant a passion fruit vine along the eastern fence of our yard, along with one or two deciduous fruit trees for privacy (and fruit, of course!). The fence is very low and it's a busy-ish road with lots of pedestrian traffic. Plus, we're wanting to turn our grass/weeds into an edible food garden! The fence line is only about 4m long (in between two gates). The idea is to plant the passionfruit against the fence, with a deciduous fruit tree on either side. Jackie French says you can plant fruit trees only two metres apart, and the branches will intertwine a bit, limiting the bird's access to the fruit etc.

My main question is this: the ground is currently just grass. What is the best method of preparing the soil to get rid of the grass and create the best environment in which to plant the passionfruit (and also a couple of deciduous fruit trees). I've read different methods of getting rid of grass on another thread here, but the problem is: we want to plant NOW! Impatient, I know, but we're depressed about all the weeds here, and just want to get SOMETHING growing. Also, so we don't have to wait as long for some privacy and greenery.

Can't we just dig a big hole and stick the passionfruit vine in, lol? I look up on the internet but keep getting different ideas/approaches. Put lamb's liver in the hole, put aged sheep or cow or chook manure in the hole, sprinkle dolomite on the surface after planting, build up the ground, leave the ground flat etc.

We want to have a bit of a mulched garden surrounding the trees/vine, with a couple of shrubs, herbs etc. Hopefully edible stuff like blueberries etc.

Oh, we live in Newcastle, just north of Sydney, quite near to the coast. The soil seems to have some clay a foot or two down.

Hope someone can help me make sense of all the different advice so we can work out what to do! I'm assuming it would make sense to plant the vine & the 1 or 2 trees at the same time, so we can then mulch the whole area? Is weed mat a good idea under the mulch?

Karen

[Yvonne Nikolaison]

Hi Karen I am also a newbie so probably will not be much help. I have always told my students that there is no such thing as a silly question and we all have to start somewhere. The cheapest form of weed mat is newspaper that has been soaked in water. Right or wrong when we built the raised garden I was in a hurry so I put down newspaper on top of the grass, hosed it down then added soil and a trailer load of compost and mixed that in together. (I had to get some compost from a friend as we had run out of useable compost.) The sweetcorn and beans that I planted in this bed are doing well. Aged manure will certainly give everything get up and go. There is quite a debate between digging over the ground first and not digging. To my mind I think it comes down to what fits in with your time/lifestyle etc. I love your idea of an edible fence line. While I hope that this helps I am sure you will get better advice from the more experienced gardeners. Good luck. Will be interested to hear how you get on.

[Karen]

Thanks Yvonne. I plan to do no dig garden beds for our veggies (once we get around to that!) but I'm figuring that for a vine and trees we need to dig, especially for the trees, since they have a large root ball or whatever? (We're hoping to get reasonably advanced trees. The vine & trees will be in the one area, so I'm thinking if we need to dig a hole for the trees, we will need to for the vine as well?

What I'm THINKING, basically, will be to have 3 holes dug (chuck the grass bit on the compost??), then plant, then cover with newspaper, mulch etc???

Karen

Yvonne Symons said:

Hi Karen I am also a newbie so probably will not be much help. I have always told my students that there is no such thing as a silly question and we all have to start somewhere. The cheapest form of weed mat is newspaper that has been soaked in water. Right or wrong when we built the raised garden I was in a hurry so I put down newspaper on top of the grass, hosed it down then added soil and a trailer load of compost and mixed that in together. (I had to get some compost from a friend as we had run out of useable compost.) The sweetcorn and beans that I planted in this bed are doing well. Aged manure will certainly give everything get up and go. There is quite a debate between digging over the ground first and not digging. To my mind I think it comes down to what fits in with your time/lifestyle etc. I love your idea of an edible fence line. While I hope that this helps I am sure you will get better advice from the more experienced gardeners. Good luck. Will be interested to hear how you get on.

[Yvonne Nikolaison]

When we put in our passionfruit plant, I just cut away a small square of grass added some compost mixed it with the soil planted the passionfruit and watered well. The passionfruit is growing and happy. The fruit trees we have planted are in large containers, but I did plant the lime tree the same way as the passionfruit.