Summer Fruit!

Growing Your Own Delicious 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. Blueberries generally prefer warm days and cool nights however in warmer areas, look for ‘Southern Highbush’ and ‘Rabbiteye’, which have lower chill requirements.

Blueberries prefer an acidic, well-drained soil. In areas with alkaline soil (a pH higher than 7), applications of Yates Soil Acidifier Liquid Sulfur every month will help lower the soil pH. Blueberries can also be grown very successfully in pots. Choose a good quality potting mix, such as Yates Premium Potting Mix, and a large 40 – 50 cm diameter pot to give them enough room to grow.

Blueberries will benefit from regular applications of a complete plant food from Spring to Autumn. Yates Thrive Flower Fruit Soluble Fertiliser is ideal for blueberries as it’s fortified with extra potassium to encourage lots of flowers and delicious berries.

Beautiful Boysenberries

Boysenberries are a delicious type of ‘brambleberry’ with rich dark purple fruit with a sweet and slightly tart taste that resembles a combination of raspberries and blackberries. They’re rich in vitamins C and K, as well as being a good source of dietary fibre.

Boysenberries (Rubus ursinus x idaeus) produce soft, juicy fruit from early to mid-summer. The berries are amazing in desserts, crumbles, cakes, ice cream and drinks, with a special affinity for making rich-coloured jams. Of course, they’re also delectable fresh; you might find that not many berries make it into the house! They're ideal for growing in backyards, all the more so because they’re hard to find in supermarkets, as the fruit don’t transport or store well.

Boysenberries prefer a slightly acidic, moist, rich soil and perform best in a full sun position, in cool to warm temperate zones. Growing on canes up to 2m tall, an boysenberries produce pretty, white bee attracting flowers in mid to late spring.

To make maintenance easier (and promote a better harvest), boysenberry canes can be trained up between 2 wires on a T-shaped trellis. During winter, while the boysenberry plant is leafless, cut back to ground level the canes that have borne fruit, leaving fresh, newer canes to grow and provide fruit next summer. Do this each year to avoid the canes getting messy and out of control and encourage the best possible berry yield. Also pull out any suckers that have emerged out of your planned boysenberry patch. A word of caution is that boysenberries produce thorns, so a good thick pair of gloves and long handled pruners can really help!

Bare rooted boysenberry canes are usually planted while they’re dormant (during winter), but potted plants are also available at other times of the year. Before planting, improve the soil with a concentrated source of rich organic matter like Yates Thrive Natural Blood Bone with Seaweed and then reapply around the root zone every 8 weeks from spring to early autumn. This promotes lots of healthy cane growth, a strong root system and encourages masses of plump, juicy berries.

Fruit protection tip: birds will enjoy boysenberries just as much as you, so some bird netting may be required to protect your developing crop.

Summer Strawberries

Sweet, juicy bright red strawberries are one of the most Christmassy things we can think of. Chilled strawberries are a perfect summer holiday snack. And, don't forget all the delicious baking, desserts and salads you can include them in!

It’s easy to grow your own strawberries at home, if you have a sunny garden bed or pot.

Growing Guide:

• Before planting strawberry plants into the garden, enrich the soil with some Yates Thrive Natural Blood Bone with Seaweed. For potted strawberries, use a quality potting mix like Yates Premium Potting Mix.
• Keep the soil or potting mix moist and pick your strawberries regularly to help promote an extended harvest. Feed each week with Yates Thrive Strawberry Berry Fruit Liquid Plant Food. It’s a complete plant food that’s boosted with additional potassium, the nutrient that encourages flowering and fruiting.
• Snails and slugs love chewing into berries, but they’re easy to control with a light sprinkling of Yates Blitzem Snail & Slug Pellets around the plants. You may also need to cover your strawberry plants with netting to protect them from hungry birds.

Christmas Cherries

Cherries are the quintessential Christmas treat, with delicious shiny red fruit becoming available in summer. A big bowl of chilled cherries is hard to resist, let alone fruit and savoury salads with cherries, cherry glaze for ham, cherry puddings, cakes, tarts and cheesecake. We’re going to need a lot of cherries!

You can grow cherries at home if you live in a climate where you receive enough ‘chilling hours’. So, cherries are best suited to areas with cool or cold winters. A dry spring and summer also help to reduce the risk of disease. They need a spot with at least 6 hours of sunshine a day and well-drained soil.

Cherry trees vary in size from around 7m tall down to more compact varieties that grow to around 3m, the perfect size for smaller gardens. A big bonus for cherry trees is pretty blossoms in spring; the autumn foliage is also a treat.

Cherry trees are most commonly available in winter as bare-rooted plants, but potted trees can be available at other times of the year. Choose a variety that’s suited to your climate; also check to see whether that variety is self-fertile, or if it needs pollination from another cherry planted nearby.

Pest tips:

Pear & Cherry Slugs can attack and rapidly skeletonise cherry tree foliage. They can be controlled by spraying trees thoroughly every 7 days with Yates Nature’s Way Organic Citrus, Vegie Ornamental Spray.

During periods of wet or humid weather, cherries and other stonefruit like apricots, peaches, plums and nectarines can be prone to Brown Rot. Apply Yates Nature’s Way Fungus Spray every 10–14 days to help keep this destructive disease under control.

Summer Citrus Care

Small fruit developing on many varieties of citrus trees during summer heralds what we’ll be enjoying during the cooler months.

We can help nurture those promising fruitlets by taking a few simple citrus care steps over summer:

Sooty mould

If you’ve noticed a black ash like film over citrus leaves or stems or ants crawling up and down the tree, it could indicate the presence of insect pests like scale.

Scale are sap sucking insects that can be covered in a waxy white, brown or pink coating and appear as small raised bumps on foliage or stems.

Scale deplete plants of important sugars and nutrients and excrete them as honey dew, a sweet sticky substance that ants eat, and sooty mould will cheerfully grow on. If the scale insects are controlled, the sooty mould and ants will gradually disappear.

Control the scale insects by spraying leaves and stems with Yates Nature’s Way Organic Citrus, Vegie Ornamental Spray. It’s based on natural pyrethrin and vegetable oil and is certified for use in organic gardening. Yates Nature’s Way Citrus & Ornamental Gun will also control aphids, which are another contributor to sooty mould attracting honey dew.

Watering and feeding

Deep and thorough watering of citrus trees, particularly potted citrus, will help reduce water stress, which can cause citrus to drop their developing fruit.

It’s also a good opportunity to apply or top up mulch around the root zone, which will help protect the shallow root system. And regular feeding of hungry citrus trees will really help to promote a fantastic harvest so it’s important to make fertilising citrus trees a priority. Fortunately, it’s as simple as diluting 2 capfuls of Yates Thrive Citrus Liquid Plant Food into a 9L watering can and applying over the root zone weekly.

If you’re lucky enough to have your own potted Tahitian Lime tree, some of the best tangy fruit will be ready from January. Limes can be harvested whilst still green, when they’re around 6 cm in diameter. Perfect for summer drinks and cocktails as well as marinades, cakes and desserts.