The Star: November 09, 2017

The Star Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi
Thursday November 9 2017 29
Gardening
Local
News
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Fire rages, homes at risk
GARDENING
ADVICE with
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z
QUESTION
My garden has a hedge of olive trees. Last year I harvested some of the olive fruits and processed them.
They were tasty but very small. What can I do to make the olive fruit fleshier?
Today’s winning question came from Maree. Congratulations!
ANSWER
In a perfect olive season (e.g early rainfall followed by a hot,
dry, late summer then an early autumn), it is possible your
olives may be marginally larger. But the answer to the size
of olives lies in the selection of a particular variety. If your olives fruit
heavily and regularly, then do retain the existing trees regardless
of the size of the fruit. Not all olive varieties crop well in differing
parts of New Zealand. Therefore, there is no guarantee that
known larger fruiting olive varieties will produce heavy crops in
your area anyway. Talk to other olive growers in your local area
and/or experiment with a few additional trees of other varieties.
Remember, fertilising your trees will not produce larger fruit,
rather an enormous amount of vegetative growth.
For more information and expert advice, check out How to Grow
Guides www.daltons.co.nz/how-to-guides
Product to try: Daltons Enriched Compost with Extend Complete
• Daltons Premium Lawn Fertiliser
• Daltons Lawn Patching Gold
• Daltons Premium Lawn Soil
• PLUS a pair of comfortable,
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(www.omniproducts.co.nz)
BE IN
TO WIN!
Send us your
gardening
question to be
in to win!
$80
PRIZE
PACK!
Email your question
and glove size to:
chchstar@daltons.co.nz
Entries must be received
by 17 th Nov 2017
Hedging your bets
• By Sue Witteman
I HAVE many favourite things, but
near the top of my list would be the
hedge.
It is one of the most useful
horticultural things you can plant
for not only does it divide your
garden neatly, it also provides
sanctuary for bird and beast, acts
as a windbreak, provides privacy,
produces fruit, flower or foliage
for floral work, and adds a colour
dollop of green, red, grey or purple
to your landscape.
I have, however, often noticed
an initial reluctance to the idea of
having hedges as there is the belief
they are a huge amount of work.
True you have to plant them, and
true you have to look after them, as
you do with any plant, but they give
back so much more than they ask
of you.
Apart from trees, they are the
most important structural element
you can have in your garden and
they just grow better with time,
adding an elegance that is hard to
achieve any other way.
Begin with ground preparation.
As is often the case with gardening,
it’s the effort you put into the
‘unseen’ that can make all the
difference to the final outcome. To
avoid losing money on a sad little
hedge that never got going, set
aside a realistic amount of time to
do it – then double how long you
think it will take. By doing this
you minimise the taking of short
cuts and the building of possible
resentment.
Sort out where the hedge is going
to go – use string lines or dazzle to
get this right – and spray the area
if needed (you may have to do this
more than once). It really pays to
get the soil as weed-free as possible,
particularly in the case of perennial
weeds, as the hedge is going to
be there for a long time and it
gets progressively harder to weed
amongst it. And then start digging.
INTRICATE: Layers of escallonia and buxus hedging
add structure to a formal area. The cones are variegated
buxus.
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Saturdays
11 th & 18 th November
10:00am to 4:30pm
Sundays
12 th & 19 th November
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(under cover if wet) (sorry, no Eftpos)
Ph: 342 1160 • 389 Buchanans Rd, Yaldhurst
(Just past Pound Rd roundabout, heading west)
NOW THROUGH
SHOW WEEK
Christchurch Garden Centre
Open daily 9:00 am – 4:30 pm
478 Marshland Road, Marshland
Telephone : 03 385 9008