LandWISE has three pilot projects being run with Te Ahikawariki, the Vegetable Industry Centre of Excellence based in Pukekohe. The projects include cover cropping, soil stability testing and use of a device to read nitrate test strips more accurately. Te Ahikawariki/VICE is a government-funded project that is setting up a cutting-edge vegetable research farm in…
Category: Research
Cyclone Gabrielle Project Updates
Since Cyclone Gabrielle hit in February 2023, LandWISE has been capturing data from impacted sites. Our aim has been to increase knowledge of flood and sediment deposition on highly productive land (HPL), particularly the Land Use Capability (LUC) Class 1 – 3 land that dominates the Heretaunga Plains. The initial project captured data from 110…
Bye & ka kite for now!
After a fun couple of years, I am leaving LandWISE. My partner Mitchell and I are taking a big leap and moving to the Netherlands to start the next chapter of our lives and careers. I spent a year studying in the Netherlands in 2016 and I am very excited to be heading back! I…
February 2025 MicroFarm Update
McCain Foods Green Beans Planting Dwarf green beans for McCain Foods were planted in all treatments on the 28th of December. All treatments were planted in beans, Conventional and Hybrid treatments ex. peas, and the Regen treatment ex. cover crop/fallow. All treatments were disc ripped and rolled one month before planting and regrowth sprayed out…
Vegetables Big Day Out
Going to the Vegetables Big Day Out in Pukekohe was an amazing opportunity for me to meet people and to learn more about the research and innovation taking place in the vegetable industry. Being able to see the biodiversity strips, native plant pods (insectaries), and cover crops that are a part of “A Lighter Touch”,…
2024 McCains Pea Production
Peas were planted for McCain Foods on the 3rd of October as part of our Carbon Positive trial. This was a week after the target planting date due to wet soil conditions at the end of September. Planting Winter cover crops in both the Conventional and Hybrid treatments were sprayed out early, and the soil…
2024 Pea Harvest Results
Our McCain Foods peas were harvested on the 26th of November, one week ahead of schedule. The dry spring meant the peas were ready sooner than expected. You can read more about this year’s pea season here. Ahead of the machine harvest, in each plot we hand harvested all of the pea vines from four…
Biodiversity at the MicroFarm
Earlier this year we learnt of an interesting project focusing on increasing biodiversity on vegetable farms. The aim of this joint project between A Lighter Touch, Vegetables NZ and Onions NZ is to reduce pest insects in crops by increasing the abundance of beneficial insects on vegetable farms, therefore reducing the need for insecticides. Two…
Earthworm eDNA at the MicroFarm
Hill Laboratories announced a new commercially available soil test for earthworm eDNA this year. The new quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) test quantifies the amount of earthworm eDNA for the New Zealand’s most common earthworm species, Aporrectodea caliginosa. The current approach to assessing earthworms is through field visual assessments, which can be labour intensive and…
Cover Crop Update
In the above picture, you can see our McCain Foods pea crop planted into cultivated (Conventional treatment) soil on the left, and into sprayed our mixed cover crop (Hybrid treatment) in the centre. The golden patch is mixed cover crop residue in the Regenerative treatment plot that was mulched on 1 October. Some of the…