Sublime limes

I love research. I laugh myself silly over otherwise sensible organisations giving money to researchers to find out whether blondes are stroppier or if one-year-old babies can learn words from DVDs.
A recent study tried to find out whether long-term exposure to the electromagnetic waves associated with cellphone use would protect against Alzheimer's disease. Interestingly, it was conducted on mice, who I wouldn't have thought would spend a lot of time on their cellphones but, hey, what do I know?
Well, I do know that a mid-afternoon nap markedly boosts the brain's learning capacity, and I could have disseminated that information quickly and free of charge, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of dollars and several months it recently took a university research team to figure it out.
Even more useful is that I can tell you, again for free and with certainty, that chicken manure delivered fresh from the source on a daily basis from five free-range hens and one rooster will hugely improve the growth of a lime tree.
We have about a dozen organic lime trees and, for a couple of years the chooks, eschewing their designer henhouse, roosted in one of them.
A seriously large pile of chook poo accumulated underneath it and that tree, three years down the track, has grown almost twice as much as the others.
I'm very proud of our limes. They've been neglected for several years but when we moved back on to the orchard earlier this year, we sprayed them with copper and gave them a decent feed, and they've bolted away. There are plenty of healthy-looking young fruit and the scent when you walk through the orchard is, well, sublime.
Friends always express envy (Good lord, these are $20 a kilo in the supermarket and you're mowing over them) at our supply and it doesn't seem to occur to them that they, too, can easily grow limes.
Ours are Tahitian limes and, to my way of thinking, they're the perfect tree, because unlike me, they're multi-taskers. First, they're a nice shape and they're not too tall. They're evergreen so they look great all year round. If you have to chop off dead or damaged wood, it seems like they've grown it back in a matter of minutes. They produce gorgeous, fragrant white flowers mainly in the spring (although ours seem to follow a somewhat random schedule) and from here on in they'll produce gorgeous, heavily scented, green fruit which turns yellow as it ripens.
There's nothing I like more than walking through the garden in the evening and picking limes for gin and tonic. The scent is as intoxicating as the gin, and the culinary opportunities are endless.
Tahitian limes do really well in subtropical areas, but there are other kinds which suit different environments.
Bearss limes (very appealing name) are appearing in the nurseries and marketed as being hardier to cold than the Tahitian. Evidently they originated in California as a seedling of the Tahitian, and they're said to be very reliable in their fruit set and heavy croppers. The fruit are good-looking, thin-skinned, virtually seedless, and is borne on young trees just two or three years old. They're said to crop from June till August, in November and February/March.
Another new kid on the block is Kusaie lime which has a particularly intense flavour. It's frost tender but reasonably cold resistant and it's a good cropper, with a main crop in summer and more throughout the year.
If we were to plant one of each we could have limes pretty much all year, but in some ways that won't suit me.
I enjoy waiting for ours to appear, ripen, fall on the ground and make a slushy, yellow mess. And I'd hate to give up the thrill of that first gin and lime of the season.
PLANTING TIPS
* Choose a warm, sheltered spot.
* Limes like good drainage, so plant into very well-drained, friable soil.
* Protect with frost cloth until they are established or if that's not practical, plant in a large container and wheel into shelter when it's frosty.
* If planting in a container, keep up with watering but remember to replenish nutrients.
* If you don't have five hens and a rooster, add slow-release fertiliser when you plant and feed monthly during the growing season.
* Offer adequate potassium and magnesium.
* Watch for yellowing leaves - it is often a sign of nutrient deficiency.