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The last month of winter is a delightful combination of continuing to enjoy cool-season flowers and home grown produce and preparing for one of the busiest seasons on the gardening calendar . . .
Strawberry planting time
If you love sweet fresh strawberries or enjoy a strawberry cheesecake, pavlova or trifle, it’s time to grow this delicious fruit at your place.
Strawberry crowns, runners or potted strawberries can be planted during August. Find a sunny, well-drained spot and mix some Yates Thrive Natural Blood & Bone into the soil. This will help improve the soil quality and provide gentle organic nutrients to the strawberry plants as they establish.
Strawberries are also perfect for growing in pots, hanging baskets and troughs.
Keep the new strawberry plants well watered as they settle in and once new growth emerges, start feeding each week with a complete plant food like Yates Thrive Strawberry & Berry Fruit Liquid Plant Food, to promote healthy green leaf growth and lots of flowers and juicy berries.
Last chance to prevent leaf curl
Sometimes the months just seem to fly by and before we know it and as spring approaches there are promising buds starting to swell on our deciduous fruit trees such as peaches, nectarines and plums. Lying in wait around those leaf buds are spores of the disease leaf curl, which leads to irreversible discoloured and distorted foliage and reduced tree health and fruit yield. Leaf curl is a disease that needs to be prevented and late winter is your last chance to act, before the leaves are permanently infected and damaged.
To prevent leaf curl developing on stone fruit trees like nectarines, peaches and plums, Yates Liquid Copper Fungicide can be sprayed over the trees between when the buds start to swell and within one week before the buds open. Timing is critical. This is your important last chance window to prevent leaf curl disease, so keep an eye on your buds and get spraying.
Yates Liquid Copper Fungicide is a broad spectrum fungicide and has the added benefit of also preventing the shot hole disease on stone fruit, so you’ll be multi-tasking your fruit tree protection in one spray.
To help refresh your stone fruit trees and get them ready for spring, cut back any dead or damaged stems or branches and remove any stems growing from below the graft.
Many dwarf varieties don’t require any pruning beyond this. Older or larger varieties will benefit from removing some of the branches that are growing towards the centre of the tree. This opens up the canopy, creating a vase shape and allowing more light and air into the middle of the tree. This helps to reduce disease and improve fruit yield.
Seville oranges
If you love the idea of spreading tangy homemade marmalade on hot buttered toast, it’s time to grow a Seville orange.
Sometimes called a bitter or sour orange, Seville oranges (Citrus x aurantium) produce aromatic, intensely-flavoured sour fruit with a thick rind. They’re ideal for making marmalade as well as zesting and juicing for use in both sweet and savoury dishes.
Seville oranges are hardy trees that will grow in all but the coldest areas. Reaching 2-4m tall they prefer a warm sunny location with well-drained soil. They’re fast growing attractive trees with deep green leaves, fragrant white flowers in spring and decorative vibrant fruit that ripens in winter.
When planting a new Seville orange tree into the ground, mix some Yates Dynamic Lifter Organic Plant Food into the bottom of the planting hole. Yates Dynamic Lifter improves the quality of the soil and supplies the newly planted orange with gentle, organic nutrients as it establishes.
Oranges, like other citrus, are heavy feeders and require lots of nutrients to support all the foliage, flowers and developing fruit. Feed orange trees from spring until the end of harvest every 1 to 2 weeks with Yates Thrive Citrus Liquid Plant Food. It’s a complete plant food that contains a special combination of nutrients to encourage healthy green leaf growth and is high in flower and fruit promoting potassium. — Courtesy of Yates