| Progress Report from Tim Oliver – Koko Trust |
Another year on and our organic Zespri Gold and Hayward kiwifruit orchard has continued to make good progress under BioAg programs.
This season (2008-09) the fruit was high taste (all Y band), of good size and yield and was all harvested relatively early.
The leaves seemed thicker with a healthy green appearance. The buds on the canes to be retained for this season seem more pronounced than we can recall.
This is important as all the early growth, including the flower buds for the next crop, rely on the nutrients/energy stored in them.
Those vines worst affected by the summer drought of 2008 had the poorest growth and crop this season. The vines have clearly kept improving significantly and look to be very well set for the 2009-10 crop.
We intend to load them heavily and look forward to reporting on continued improvements. We have lost no more Gold vines to Armillaria and have in fact seen recovery in vines we thought we would lose.
Visually our soils look alive –tonnes of worms, nice smell and texture and masses of fungi. In summary – pleasing progress!
Tim Oliver
Koko Trust
Organic Kiwifruit Orchard
Cambridge |
