Spring Fruit

Grow Your Own Beautiful Blueberries

If home-grown, freshly picked blueberries sound tempting, then it’s time to find a spot at your place for a blueberry bush or two.

Growing Tips:

• Blueberries generally prefer warm days and cool nights. Some varieties require higher levels of ‘chilling hours’, so choose one that’s suited to your local climate.

• Blueberries prefer an acidic, well-drained soil. In areas with alkaline soil (with pH higher than 7), applications of Yates Soil Acidifier Liquid Sulfur each month will help lower the soil pH, gradually.

• Blueberries can be grown very successfully in pots. Choose a good quality potting mix, like Yates Premium Potting Mix, and a large 40 – 50 cm diameter pot to give them enough room to grow.

• Blueberries will benefit from regular feeding with a complete fertiliser during spring. Yates Thrive Strawberry & Berry Fruit Liquid Plant Food is ideal for blueberries, as it’s fortified with extra potassium to encourage lots of flowers and delicious berries.

Magnificent Mandarins

As the main mandarin season draws to a close, one of the last varieties bearing fruit during early spring is ‘Richard special’ mandarins. They have large sweet juicy fruit that are easy to peel, as well as being packed with vitamin C goodness!

‘Richard special’ mandarin trees have lovely bright green foliage and grow to around 3 m tall. They prefer growing in warm spot (though will tolerate light frosts) and need a sunny location with well-drained soil. You can also try growing a ‘Richard special’ in a large container (a 500 mm pot is ideal) filled with good quality potting mix such
as Yates Premium Potting Mix.

Early spring is an ideal time to plant a new mandarin tree, along with all the other fantastic types of citrus.

When planting a new citrus tree into the ground, mix some Yates Thrive Natural Blood Bone with Seaweed into the bottom of the planting hole. Yates Thrive Natural Blood & Bone improves the quality of the soil and supplies the newly planted mandarin with gentle, organic nutrients as it establishes. It’s also boosted with root promoting New Zealand seaweed.

Growing Tips:

• Keep the new tree well-watered, particularly during its first summer.

• Applying a layer of mulch, such as bark chips, around the root zone will help keep the soil moist and protect the top soil and shallow root system.

• Keep the mulch around 5 cm away from the trunk, so that the trunk itself doesn’t stay moist.

• Mandarins, like other citrus, are heavy feeders and require lots of nutrients to support all the foliage, flowers and developing fruit. From spring until the mandarins are harvested, feed every 1 – 2 weeks with Yates Thrive Citrus Liquid Plant Food. Dilute 2 capfuls into 9 litres of water and apply around the root zone.

Home Grown Bananas

Kiwis love their bananas! Per capita, we're one of the world’s largest consumers of bananas. It's easy to see why: bananas are one of Mother Nature’s best pre-packaged lunch box fillers, great for muffins, cakes, smoothies and fruit salads, and they’re packed with vitamins and fibre. Ever thought about growing your own?

Growing up to 4m tall, banana plants are lush, leafy and add an instant tropical feel to a garden.

Backyard Banana Tips:

• Find a warm, frost free wind protected spot with well-drained soil that preferably receives at least 6 hours of sunshine a day. Lady-finger type varieties like 'Misi Luki' are a excellent choice for the NZ climate.

• Mulch well around the base of the banana plants. It’s important to keep the soil consistently moist.

• Banana plants are nutrient-hungry. To help promote flowering and fruiting apply a rich source of potassium, like Yates Thrive Natural Sulfate of Potash, around the root zone during early spring. Gently mix it into the soil.

• Mature banana plants will produce a long flower stalk, along which hands of bananas will develop.

• The entire fruiting stem of bananas can be covered with a large open-ended bag once the fruit moves from pointing downward to upward-facing. The bag will help deter birds from pecking at the fruit.

• You can harvest individual hands of bananas before they’re ripe and ripen them indoors. This can help spread out the harvest season.

• Once a banana plant has fruited it will die, but there should be smaller suckers waiting to take its place. Bananas only need 2-3 of the strongest suckers, so thin them out periodically.

• To help keep the plant looking tidy and attractive, you can cut off any dead or damaged foliage.