When the Carbon Positive project began, most of the Operations Advisory Group probably thought “six years = six crops”. Certainly, the focus for the operations group has been on the summer crop(s). A lot of energy has been put into getting the operations right for each treatment. Our winter cover crops, initially thought to be just…
Category: Weeds
Pots to Plots
Microshock Weed Control Is an Effective and Energy Efficient Option in the Field This is a summary of Dan’s work published under the AgResearch led “Herbicide Resistance Management” project, of which LandWISE was a small co-funder. The full paper was published open access in the Sustainability journal, and is freely available to everybody here> Abstract:…
Non-Chemical Weed Management Workshop
Presented by Dr Charles ‘Merf’ Merfield. 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Friday 26 July 2024 PIA Event Centre, Pukekohe, New Zealand. In person only, there is no online version. The purpose of this workshop is to give a complete overview of non-chemical weed management as part of Integrated Weed Management (IWM) and will include addressing…
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…
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…
Roller Crimper Demonstration
We were invited to attend an impromptu field walk at Villa Maria looking at a Braun Roller Crimper (ActiRoll) in action, hosted by Cam at Villa Maria and Dave Forward from TRS. Alex and Olivia were able to attend and brought back news and pictures. In the vineyard every twelve rows a planted strip of…
Robots and shocks
Emerging non-herbicide weed control options for vegetable and arable cropping This is the first post with details of Dan’s research into ultralow energy weeding using pulsed micro-shocks. It is an introduction by way of a comprehensive literature review, that was published in the New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research as part of the AgResearch lead…
Ultralow energy electric weeding
Micro electric shocks control broadleaved and grass weeds This is the second post with details of Dan’s electric weeding research. It is a bit “sciencey” because it is a formal research paper, but there is interesting information in it! The research was published in the Journal of Agronomy and is published Open Access, so anyone can download…