Designing Home Fruit and Nut Orchards

Hosted by the Central Districts branch of the NZ Tree Crops Association
Free for current NZTCA members, including those joining up on the day
Non-members by koha, all funds benefit the branch
Arrive 10am for a cuppa and a prompt 10.30am start

This whole day site visit/workshop delves into designing and planning new plantings of tree crops in a rural setting. Mostly the focus is on edible crops, fruit and nuts, at household or local community scale. There’ll be some brief discussion about other trees, mostly in relation to shelter and biodiversity.

It will be of interest to anyone who wants to start planting food trees or who is scaling up or converting a new area into food production. This property is in an early phase of development: fruit and nut trees were first planted a year ago (aside from a six-year-old block of pine nuts) and will continue for several more years. It’s a great site to stimulate thinking about how to plan your plantings and create conditions for your trees to thrive. Useful for those on smaller urban properties too.

This is an exposed, steep site on heavy soils that are prone to waterlogging but dry in summer. Multiple rounds of earthworks plus erosion has left some areas with little or no topsoil. We’ll start with discussion about recognising and responding to constraints, such as wind exposure, slope, frost, invasive weeds and risks like fire—and how to respond to these. Bring your own list of challenges and gather some ideas to try out at home.

We’ll talk about techniques for growing
- soil
- carbon crops
- fertility
- understory and companion plants
- shelter
- fruit, nut and berry crops

with reference to various techniques drawn from
- permaculture
- syntrophic agroforestry
- biodynamics
- Grow Biointensive
- organics

and discuss making compost and biochar and choosing compatible livestock. Plus there’ll be talk about great hand tools: where to find them, what to look for, how to use them and look after them.

There will be an opportunity toward the end of the day to either get hands on with making a large, free-standing compost heap or have a tour around the forestry plantings and native restoration area.

Bring:
Your lunch, a water bottle and mug and wear sturdy closed-toe shoes. There are multiple hazards present on the property and it is not safe for small roaming children. Please no dogs, including in cars.

Parking is limited and carpooling/shuttle may be needed. YOU MUST REGISTER your interest in attending, so we can provide more information and contact you in the case of postponement due to very bad weather. Email martinsfarmhouse@fastmail.com.

About the site and hosts
The owners bought this 28ha property over six years ago and have lived here since 2021. They established forestry plantings (alternative exotic species managed under a continuous canopy regime) now entered in the ETS, helped build their strawbale Passive House home, grew a lot of their own planting stock, are restoring an ephemeral wetland and protecting regenerating bush. They are now focused on developing infrastructure and plantings around the house and pruning their plantations.