Citrus planting and Poormans Orange Willunga Farmers Market

The Spring rains grow our hope for a good season. Budburst is well underway, the start of the grape growing cycle. The enthusiastic soft new leaves grow before your eyes, I can't resist plucking them and wrapping them around new season's goats cheese, flashing under the grill makes meltingly delicious mouthfuls.

We started our stall at Willunga Farmers Market a few weeks ago. Getting out of bed pre-dawn was the hard part, regardless of romantic notions that farmers are up before the sun I'd rather snuggle in a warm bed than put up a tent in drizzling rain. After that it was all joy. We packed up the ute with old fashioned home made lemon curd, candied citrus peel, lemon syrup, fresh mandarins, grapefruit jelly and marmalade; bottles of fresh pressed olive oil, brown bags of almonds, cartons of chooks' eggs, a bowl of chinese dates and a basket of jerusalem artichokes launching ourselves into the marvellous Market world.

This was firsthand experience of the true Farmers Market contract between stallholder and shopper - this is not passive consumption, these are our co-producers! I was the green one, seasoned shoppers told us what we should grow, how we should make things, what they do with their own. It was delightful to hear all the stories and so many comments of 'used to make curd' or knew someone, or had an aunt that made the best marmalade. Ethusiastic debate arose on what chinese dates taste of - try black tea, persimmon, date, cabernet grapes, straw and tar. And the part that money can't buy is the appreciation, how deeply pleasing it is when a return customer confirms these are the BEST eggs they've ever eaten and that our lemon curd is superb. I'd always wanted to write a book on our Farmers Market, now I think I'd like to write one on the shoppers, what a wealth of information.

The enthusiastic response to our citrus laden stall gave us great inspiration for planting, the warm damp soil made it irresistible and we headed out to Perry's for more citrus. The greatest discovery this season is Poorman's Orange... with all the punch of Seville with a touch more complexity to the bitterness.

Perry's don't recommend that you put chook poo direct on your citrus trees, however if you have free ranging chooks fossicking around the trees it is just the right amount of food for the trees.

I've just finished an article for Sumptuous about how chooks are great as Citrus feeders. Try yarding chooks around your citrus for your own experiment. Scratching chooks are good gardeners anytime, tilling the soil and keeping pests down, but when it comes to citrus trees they deliver a daily gift of growth boosting fertiliser.

There are so many reasons to keep chooks, fertiliser is only one. Chooks make living a low-waste life simple with their enthusiasm for recycling your food scraps. Think of the binfuls of landfill averted as you are enjoying the luxury of fresh poached eggs.

Tips on growing chooks try www.planetpoultry.com