Re-vegetation

On Friday we went to Moturoa (Rabbit Island) to do some re-vegetation planting. Two people from the council met us there, they are responsible for overseeing a huge planting project on Rabbit Island. 

The island is used for pine forestry, these pine trees were previously planted right up to the water's edge. Now we are realising that this is not a good practice so a 30 metre buffer of native bush is being put in place. This project is part of the One Billion Trees Programme. More information about this government programme can be found here- www.teururakau.govt.nz/funding-and-programmes/forestry/one-billion-trees-programme/

We used cardboard guards produced locally.

Planting a manuka tree, it was very sandy which made it easy to dig!

It was a lovely day out in the sun. We planted totara, manuka and ngaio. There were 6 of us planting and we managed to plant 184 trees in about 3 hours, an average of about 10 trees each per hour.

Hinewai Reserve

We are starting a re-vegetation part of the course this week. My biggest re-vegetation inspiration is my Great-uncle Hugh Wilson. He is the manager of Hinewai reserve on Banks Peninsula (near Akaroa). He has done a huge amount of work to re-vegetate the large valley but his main legacy is that he allowed gorse to grow (to the horror of local farmers). Gorse is a nitrogen-fixing plant so it is great for improving soil conditions, it also provides the right amount of shade for native seedlings to survive and eventually these natives grow taller than the gorse and shade it out, killing it off. Hugh allowed nature to work through this process and has achieved a large native forest regeneration without a huge amount of human intervention.

Stop everything and watch this short documentary right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZSJKbzyMc

Hugh is incredibly intelligent and creative. He also puts together a biannual newsletter called Pipipi. Hugh hand-writes the newsletter and includes a number of his own beautiful drawings of plants and wildlife. He also adds a few cartoons and his writing is often amusing as well as interesting. I have included subscription information below for anyone interested, it is free but donations recommended!

You can also visit the reserve on foot, or check out their website here: https://www.hinewai.org.nz/

Bare-root trees

Last week at work we had a delivery of bare-root fruit trees from Waimea nurseries. A lot of the trees had been pre-ordered by customers so it was interesting to see which trees were popular. We spent the morning putting together orders. The trees were placed together in a recycled plastic bag with damp pea straw covering the roots and were labelled with the customer's name and number. We then put aside a selection of varieties to be potted up into PB 60s, the remaining trees were put in a sack with pea straw and taken to the shop to be sold bare rooted.

The boss kindly said I could take some pea straw and a nectarine tree home (I've been meaning to get one for ages!). I dug a hole about 3 times the size of the roots. It was a larger hole than recommended but the last time I planted a fruit tree it took a long time to settle in so I wanted to give this one the best start possible! Our soil is also very stony, so I filled the hole with compost and added some slow release fertiliser for good measure. While doing this I had the roots of the tree sitting in seaweed tonic to reduce transplant shock. Finally, I planted the tree, covered the soil with pea straw and gave it a good watering.

Hopefully it will be happy and grow well for me!💚