Growing Lili Pilis ( Syzgium Luehmannii) to Create a Hedge for the Sea Winds
Alejandro and I, with the help if his cousin Jose are trying to create Lili Pilis hedges across La Finca.
This is an easy task but it’ll take time for the Lili pilis to grow. The first time I knew about this fantastic plant was through my brother, who already grew Lili pilis to protect the avocado trees from the sea winds we get in La Finca.
These winds are not necessarily strong, but they do carry with them a lot of sea salt which damage the plants, particularly my brother’s avocado trees.
You can see above the Lili pili hedges my brother has already grown in the past couple of years (not sure how long but I know it hasn’t been that long).
Lili pili is an evergreen plant I believe and it has a peculiar little fruit. When chewing it it feels like Polystyrene although it has a nice sweetness to it.
The idea would be to eventually build Lili pili walls along the end of our ‘bancales’ where we will be growing the mango trees.
According to Alejandro it’ll take around 1 or 2 years for the hedges to be fort of fully formed. Here’s Wikipedia on Lili pilis:
Syzygium luehmannii is a medium-sized coastal rainforest tree native to Australia. Common names include riberry, small leaved lilly pilly, cherry satinash, cherry alder, or clove lilli pilli.
Wikipedia
I’m planning on making jam out of the berries since I quite like the taste.
We potted about 20 or so plants and will need another 20 for the next ‘bancal’. Each ‘bancal’ will take around 20 Lili pilis so we can grow a nice protective hedge. We have another 4 bancales to go but we’ll take it slowly as we need to make sure each Lili pili will pull through when repotted. A nice little project I’d say!
