Winter Wet and Management Considerations

After a dry start to Autumn on the back of El Nino, this last week of June has brought a significant rain maker to bed in the wet season.  Traditionally Hawke’s Bay receives most of its rainfall through June, July, and August and with soils now water logged, heavier soils are expected to remain water logged through to spring.  The wet season can’t be avoided; however taking a look at what measures are possible to set up for the best possible spring start should form part of the winter programme.

• Check your surface drains, sumps, pumps, and tiles to make sure all are in working order and undertake any necessary maintenance activities. Clearing and cleaning drains is simple and effective insurance for the next season – Wet feet can contribute to low fruit set, small fruit size, and sensitivity to disease alongside impacting nutrient availability so its integral to keep everything functioning well;
• Plan your winter works for both operational (i.e. pruning) and development (i.e. new planting) actions to make sure everything required is completed to set up for spring. Soil condition is an important consideration, remembering:
  • Soil fumigation against specific apple replant disease (SARD) is ineffective when soil is cold and saturated. Sil temperature and condition needs to be factored against timelines for when you want new plants in the ground and what timeframes are required to achieve all required tasks;
  • Augmentations such pan breaking should have already been completed when soils were dry. Wet soil means it will be ineffective, and unlikely to achieve its full potential so consideration should be given to what timelines should be followed;
  • Soil needs to be properly prepared to ensure good contact with new planting’s roots, but keep an eye on the weather conditions as heavy machinery can cause soil compaction issues that are difficult to remedy and if too wet, cultivators and power harrows wont achieve the desired result;
• Don’t forget about soil testing! Ideally, soil tests should be taken at the same time each year so scheduling these in for winter avoids any spring rush;

While growing is often at the mercy of weather conditions, careful planning across the winter season to balance each of the operational and development tasks leads to successful execution and builds a strong foundation for a successful season.

Tēnā koutou katoa,

Its great to have busy classes back at EIT – the Level 4s are suddenly half way through their study, after a busy month.  We expect their first three course assessments to be completed by the end of this month – if they are not, we will be contacting managers to discuss whether students should  start new courses this year.  

We have a large, mixed group of Level 3s: some started in August last year and will be finished by the end of this September, others didn’t start until after harvest.  They have completed the pruning and growing environment courses already, and move on to block development over the next month, with a two day workshop for propagation and block layout.  Attendance and participation has been really great from this diverse group, and we hope many will continue to Level 4 next year.

Certificate in Primary Industry Operational Skills students that started in January will be completed by the end of july, and there is the option to start straight into Level 3 fruit production with propagation as mentioned above.  We have two other groups starting this year for this introductory course.

The level 5 fruit production students have completed the Leadership and relationship management course and will be starting their level 5 crop protection course in July.  On the 28^th of August they will present their research topic and we are encouraging the students managers to come along and support their staff. We will send you details nearer the time.

The level 5 Post Harvest program starts at the end of July. Anyone interested in joining this program should contact Chris Thorman at cthorman@eit.ac.nz for more details.  Chris is happy to come out to meet anyone interested to talk through the commitment and work load.

Manawatia a Matariki nā

Clare, Chris, Steven and Warren.

We’re struggling to find middle ground with our rainfall this year.  We had three dry months near the start of the year, all receiving about half the monthly average.  Now we’ve had a flurry of wet months, with each receiving one and a half times their average rainfall.  Both May and June were very wet.  We recorded 187% of June rainfall across the region, while some areas, such as the Heretaunga Plains, were hit by more than double their June average.

Soil moisture at most of our sites is near or above median levels for the time of year.  Not a bad place to be.  Groundwater levels are near average levels for mid-winter, while river flows are higher than average.  June temperatures were about 1°C above average during both the day and overnight.

We are in a neutral phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and, as a result, the seasonal forecast models are featuring bland and variable predictions of sea level pressure patterns.  Near normal pressure over New Zealand seems the main outcome, while lower pressures possibly lie over the Tasman Sea.  Winds could be reasonably variable on that basis.

Sea temperatures around our region are near or slightly above normal and warmer than usual through the Tasman Sea and western Pacific Ocean generally. A La Niña could yet develop in spring, but while we are in ENSO “no-man’s land”, our rainfall over the next few months might reach closer to “middle ground” and temperatures hover near or above normal.

All the best,

Kathleen

HB Fruitgrowers Association Newsletter

June 2024

The Mystery Creek Fieldays have finished for another year with Summerfruit NZ having a presence on the HortNZ stand alongside NZ Apples and Pears, Potatoes NZ and some of the team from HortNZ. NZPPI (NZ Plant Producers Incorporated) and Zespri were there as well, giving a bit of a presence for Hort in the great big Ag dominated event. This was an opportunity to chat with politicians, industry organisations and potential growers. There were discussions on how warm it has been, which gave an excuse to talk about winter chilling – it is that time of the year.

Summerfruit has eight weather stations on the Portal where winter chill information can be viewed. There is also an explanation of how three models are calculated. The model that best defines deciduous fruit crops in a temperate climate is Richardson Chill Units (RCU), with the negative checkbox turned on.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have experienced some unseasonally warm temperatures, with 26°C reported on the news, so accumulation must be poor, right? But what is the data telling us? Actually, the winter chilling is as good as it’s been for the past five years, as of 18 June.

Winter chill accumulation across Hawkes Bay from 1 May to 18 June 2024

Winter chill accumulation is way up on last season and better than any of the past five seasons. Experience has shown that the earlier winter chill arrives, the larger the total is likely to be, as July and August are cold with normal accumulation the norm. There will always be a warm spell or two during winter, so the blips are nothing to get too concerned about.

Having a look at accumulation around the country, this pattern is being replicated, especially in northern regions. After all, we live in the same weather patterns. Central Otago always accumulates sufficient chilling. For reference, most of our crops require 700-800 RCU for good breaking of dormancy, which suggests that we are two thirds of the way there already. With a bit more rain to top up soil moisture, we could be looking forward to some of the metrics being in our favour. For apricot growers who use dormancy enhancers, decisions will need to be made soon with regards to application timing. Good chill accumulation will enable an earlier bud break in Hawkes Bay, meaning an earlier application of these products.

In other Summerfruit NZ news, we have a new team member, with Edwin Spenser staring a couple of weeks ago. Ed will be in Hawkes Bay for the tech field day on Tuesday 2 July, 1pm to 3pm, at Camelot Fresh Fruit Company Ltd packhouse and orchard, 44 Thompson Road in Twyford. Ed will also be at the networking dinner later in the day. Summerfruit NZ Mid Year Function | Hawke’s Bay Tickets, Tue 2/07/2024 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite.

For those that haven’t head, Kate Hellstrom, will finish working for Summerfruit NZ in September. The Board have started looking for her replacement. Kate will be at the field day and evening function.

Congratulations to all participants in the Hawkes Bay Young Fruitgrower Competition. Three of them have experience in stonefruit, which reflects the wide range of fruit and vegetables that are grown on the Heretaunga Plains. The quality of event reflects really well on HBFA and all those who make it happen.

Winter pruning with Metrics

By Meg Becker

Winter pruning is arguably the most important time of year on orchard as it provides the opportunity to start fresh, clean the block up and set the tree up for next season’s crop.

Manipulating the tree at pruning helps to achieve specific crop outcomes including fruit size, fruit colour and fruit quality, as well as allowing you to influence downstream costs such as thinning, summer pruning and harvest.

It is important to understand your longterm goal for each block, as well having a sound understanding of what steps you are wanting to achieve over the next 12 months.

What is your crop target?  Are you trying to increase fruit size? Are you trying to reduce thinning costs?  Do you need to manage vigour, or are you trying to drive canopy growth?

Understanding this prior to carrying out your pruning allows you to alter the timing of pruning, and set instruction to target specific bud numbers, wood texture, light optimisation, and vigour response.  Pruning allows growers to manipulate carbohydrate partitioning in the tree to achieve a common goal.

Now the important question… what Metrics can be collected to help support educated decisions that will ensure pruning is achieving specific block targets and taking any guesswork out of growing.

The Metrics in order of importance/ease of collection:

• Percentage full canopy (will allow you to decide on your blocks required vigour response and help guide crop loading decisions)
• Number of branches per metre (directly related to light distribution and therefore fruit quality)
• TCA (trunk circumference) for trees 7 years and under (to help guide crop loading decisions)
• Fruit bud counts (to help guide vigour and crop loading decisions)
• Viable fruiting buds (the percentage of floral vs. vegetative buds)

They key to data collection is understanding within block variability and selecting trees/areas that represent it.

These metrics help growers make educated decisions giving confidence that the instruction sets the canopy up with the optimum outcome. Backing up your growing decisions with informed data helps to minimise the ‘gut feel’ mistakes, helping you to maximise your production, profit and price for the upcoming season.

Kia ora koutou,

What a great event the Young Fruitgrower of the Year was!   Our congratulations to all the competitors and especially to Grace for her outstanding achievements, and Dani for the great speech.

Many heartfelt thanks and appreciation to HBFA for putting this event together – it is a huge amount of work, but hopefully you feel rewarded by the awesome turn out on Friday night as well as a great vibe on Thursday.  Time and effort put into celebrating and supporting our young emerging leaders, is the very best way to show them they are in a vibrant and future focussed industry, and hopefully inspire them to forge successful careers for themselves and their whanau.

The winter is a busy time for EIT, Level 3 students have completed the growing environment course and are working their way through botany, understanding plant structures and processes underpin the pruning courses.  They have soil modification practical to complete.   Level 4s have completed their first course as well, and are almost through sustainable crop production with Chris Thorman, our Diploma program co-ordinator.

The government has committed to funding the Apprenticeship Boost funding, but there are several caveats.  From 2025, apprentices will only be eligible for their first year (ie Level 3 fruit production), and only ‘key’ industries will be funded.  That information has yet to be released, but we will be working hard to ensure horticulture remains on that list.  Much like last year, we are not sure on course fees at this stage for 2025, but we will be starting a Level 3 cohort at the end of  July to pick up students that have completed Certificate in Primary Industries this year, whilst we know we have reduced fees.

Steven and I are out visiting managers this month, and really enjoy the opportunity to catch up face to face to discuss your workers progress, but our doors are always open to any suggestions about training you may have, at any time.

Noho ora mai,  Clare, Steven, Chris and Warren.

We were staring down the barrel of an extended dry period after April became the third successive month of below normal rainfall.  The region had less than half of average April rainfall and it had been a similar story in March and February.  Soil moisture levels were well below median levels for the month, particularly for areas south of Tangoio. The Bridge Pa site was particularly low and had fallen into the lowest 10th percentile of readings in the site’s record for the time of year.  April’s daytime temperatures had been above average and overnight temperatures near normal.  The lack of rain for three months meant that both river flows and groundwater levels were feeling the pinch.

Two-thirds through May and the picture was looking much the same.  The Heretaunga Plains had received less than 10% of May’s average rainfall.  How the tables turned in just a couple of days.  The Plains jumped to 171% of the long-term average and the region to 154%, with a few days of May to go.

We are exiting an El Niño phase and entering neutral conditions but there’s the possibility of us later transitioning into a La Niña phase.  Despite this, the seasonal forecast models still persist with a predominant westerly flow for winter, based on a prediction of higher than normal pressure across New Zealand and lower than normal south of the country.  Sea temperatures along our coast are currently near normal for the time of year.  All of this results in a rainfall forecast of near or below average rainfall for the winter season and temperatures that are near or above normal.  The recent wet few days might be a harbinger of what we’ll get from a La Niña to come – hopefully not.

All the best,

Kathleen

Sarah de Bruin

May 2024

Winter stocktake of costs:

Do you know what you have spent this season? Cost awareness is vital to grower success at a time when input costs are high, and market conditions continue to fluctuate.

Use this post harvest and winter period, to sit down and cast your eye over your orchard’s numbers. Be sure to compare how they are stacking up against previous years and industry resources such as the MPI Pipfruit Orchard Monitoring programme.

Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your own orchard business will help refocus for the new season and show areas or categories where you might be blowing out costs and others where you might be running well and efficiently. This then provides the background to enable good decision making and planning through the winter and into the next season.

Growers need to target quality fruit production, high yields of market targeted size, colour and high grade, in order to maximise available returns. Being cost efficient doesn’t necessarily mean cost cutting. For example, increasing productivity may sometimes involve increasing expenditure, however, ultimately this will provide you with more cartons to spread those costs over.

Some blocks warrant extra effort and potential cost, but in doing so can reward with a more profitable outcome. However, some do not. Understanding where your spending is going means you can make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck.

A chance to indulge the inner orcharding nerd

LandWise held its annual conference in Havelock North last week. Sally Anderson, Summerfruit NZ’s research manager, and I attended. The focus was primarily on cropping (tomatoes, peas, beans etc) but the ideas and technology available cross over to tree crops, more often than not. While the toys and techniques have cross over, the recognition that we are all playing in the same environment, be that physical, legislative or consumer spaces, is just as important.

One of the free tools that was discussed is called Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ), developed by Cornell University. This is a grower support tool for measuring the overall impact of the sprays that are applied. It does this by assessing and giving a value to the potential effects on people and the food we eat, as well as on animals and the general environment.

The last A-Lighter-Touch (ALT) gaps meeting highlighted the huge amount of copper that stonefruit growers apply annually, in comparison to other product groups. As a result, this type of tool will help in understanding where we are at, and what then might be changed to help meet consumer expectations.

Other presenters spoke of the increasing global interest in products that induce, or up-regulate, plants’ own natural defence systems. We see this reflected in the global agchem companies buying biotechnology companies, thus integrating the knowledge of the smaller innovators and giving the innovators global reach.

A reflection of an integrated approach for bacterial control might look something like Actigard, followed by copper, followed by a bactericide, followed by AureoGold. During the LandWise presentations, we were told of the commercially available predators that are now available. To be fair, most of the progress has been made in the greenhouse industry but I suspect that it won’t stay there for too much longer. One of the lessons that’s been learned is that releasing two or tree species at once gives better control – much like using two fungicides to protect the efficacy of both.

The theme of the LandWise conference was Rebuilding Our Soils, a reference to Cyclone Gabrielle and the regenerative ag movement. Regen ag falls to some extent into the what the consumer wants type thinking. Regan ag has been in the pastoral/broadacre space for a while, with process crops now thinking about how the philosophies might be adopted. For permanent tree crops, we’ll need to think even harder about what changes could be beneficial. Of interest, McCains is now trialling paying growers a bonus for product that meets a number of biodiversity and environment markers. This circles us back to the EIQ tool, I talked about above.

Cyclone Gabrielle soil recovery work was reported on and a series of stonefruit orchards were presented as case studies. Much of this work is yet to finally tidied up, with one of the big questions being where to store the lessons learned so that they are readily available for the next time a storm of that nature comes visiting.

For the outside demonstration part of the conference, there were drones spraying crops, robots pulling weeders and sprayers, fancy lawnmowers, nozzle technology for travelling irrigators, and crimping rollers that might be used instead of mowers.

So as an industry, how are we fairing? Probably not to badly compared to some but we have a few areas that need attention. Many of these are being picked up by the ALT-Summerfruit NZ collaboration looking at softer chemistry, sorting out which bio stimulants might be efficacious, the understory plantings, and keeping a weather eye on market requirements. Keeping a weather eye on other product groups seems like an easy way to get some wins too.

In the vein of sharing ideas, we have a visiting expert in Hawkes Bay on Tuesday 2 July and an industry get together that same evening at Black Barn. Please see Prunings for more information. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible there.

Richard Mills

Just as the harvest season winds down, so EIT ramps up.  We and your students have a busy six months ahead.

Level three fruit production students are back in class with Steven studying soil, and moving on to botany.  This class has been split into two groups to ensure we can run effective practical sessions.  The level 4s have completed their first of six courses, and will be starting Crop Protection with Chris Thorman in next few weeks.  

You should be receiving a monthly Trainer Update that lists exactly what assessments they have, and what support they may require from the workplace.  

We have a small group of first years, who will be working on fruit support structures here at EIT, as we are putting in a micro-orchard in the front paddock, with a small range of trees and structures.  This will give us a space for tractor and hydro practicals, as well as some trees to play with. Much appreciation to Goldpine for donating the posts, and Genesis nursery for plants to fill the trellis.

EIT professional development Level 5 Management Programs  

 A reminder that the level 5 programs are made up of individual courses and anyone can join the classes for a single course at any time. Contact nhartley@eit.ac.nz for delivery schedules. 

The level 5 Fruit Production students are working through the research topic module with Steven where they are carrying out a small trial and will report on their findings as part of their assessment. Their managers will be invited to hear the report.

The Leadership Qualities Module starts on Wednesday 22^nd of May. Students will be discussing what makes a good leader, reflecting on their leadership styles and working through the components that help make good leaders. Anyone interested in joining us should speak to their managers or get in touch with Chris EIT now. 

The 2024-2025 Level 5 Post Harvest year begins in July, anyone interested in joining this program should contact nhartley@eit.ac.nz 

Finally the Post Harvest 2023 – 2024 students need to be getting any outstanding assessments in by the end of June.

Chris, Steven and Natalie