LandWISE 2024 – Rebuilding Our Soils Havelock North – 15-16 May 2024 We are looking forward to our annual conference this week. We will report on our current work with industry, researchers and growers seeking out and trialing best ways to rebuild soil.Our invited speakers will present alternative practices and novel ideas, some perhaps fringe,…
Category: Process Crops
Alternatives for Crop Protection
Presentations at the LandWISE Conference “Rebuilding Our Soils” In the summer of 2023-2024, the LandWISE MicroFarm grew process tomatoes for Heinz-Wattie’s using three alternative management systems: conventional, regenerative, and a hybrid taking from each. One of the principles for a regenerative system is to build natural resilience rather than rely only on a chemical-based crop…
Carbon Positive March 2024 Update
March has been a busy month for the Carbon Positive Project, and has included harvesting the tomato crop, finalising the plan for what happens after harvest, and planting our winter cover crops. Hand Harvest Yield was measured by both hand-harvesting sub-samples, and machine harvesting each plot individually. The hand measurements were taken from four 0.5…
Soil Recovery After Cyclone Gabrielle “Building Back Better”
Baseline Sampling Project It has been over a year since Cyclone Gabrielle caused devastation to many parts of the North Island, however the impact of the flood is still being felt by many, as people rebuild homes and businesses. As the water subsided, a group of us began a baseline study, sampling soil and sediment…
January 2024 Tomato Update
The Carbon Positive tomato crop has now been growing for 13 weeks. Our estimated harvest date is the 5th March, so just under six weeks remaining until harvest. All treatments have had a good fruit set and are reasonably disease free (minus a small amount of bacterial speck). We are on track for a good…
Carbon Positive at the MicroFarm – February 2024 Field Walk
Please register at Eventbrite Once again, we are opening the gates and doors to the public for a Carbon Positive at the MicroFarm field walk to view and discuss the Heinz-Wattie’s process tomato crop. We’ve been making nutrient, irrigation and crop protection decisions – come along and discuss our strategies and apparent effectiveness! Please register…
December in the MicroFarm Tomatoes
Our tomatoes have now been planted for eight weeks and we have seen a lot of growth since the November newsletter. Since our last update, the Watties operations team have mechanically weeded the interrow and Andy Lysaght has mechanically weeded in between the tomatoes. We have applied several sprays, side dressed, and irrigated. It is…
Biocontrol at the MicroFarm
Our Carbon Positive project is comparing conventional intensive process crop production with production applying regenerative farming principles. One of the aspects we are focusing on is the “softening” of the pest and disease control programme. In the regenerative treatment, we are particularly looking at a range of biocontrol agents. In effect, these are also playing…
Olivia, our 2023-2024 Summer Intern
We are delighted to have Olivia Webster working with us as our Callaghan Innovation Summer Intern for 2023-2024. The Callaghan Innovation internship is intended to enable students to experience research and development in a workplace, so we have her engaged in our Carbon Positive regenerative cropping trials and helping out with some weed electrocution research….
November in the MicroFarm Tomatoes
The end of November marks five weeks since the tomato crop was planted at the MicroFarm. Key challenges include rabbits (which chew the top of the plant off) and soil moisture, particularly for the regenerative treatment. At planting, the regenerative treatment soil was much drier than the other two treatments. While both conventional and hybrid…