NZTCA Franklin Branch Sep 2015 Newsletter

NEW ZEALAND TREE CROPS ASSOCIATION FRANKLIN BRANCH NEWSLETTER

In this edition...

Volume 36, Issue 4 - September, 2015

pruning Nashi Pears

Forthcoming events...

Sat 19th September - Field day: Franklin Food Forest planting day.

Sat 17th October - Field day: Tree crops in Clevedon

Sun 6th December - Field day: Christmas function

Reminder All TCA members are welcome at other meetings so look at the web site to see Events coming up www.treecrops.org.nz Articles appearing in this newsletter may be reproduced in whole or in part provided that credit is given to the Franklin Branch of the NZ Tree Crops Association and the Author.

Conference 2016 update

Hard graft at Franklin Food Forest

Franklin Food Forest Planting day

Franklin Food Forest working bee. at Pukekohe High School orchard Glasgow Road (John Street end)

Come lend a hand and see what the Franklin Food Forest is all about Saturday 19th September - from 11 am distribute biochar, manure and compost - from 1 pm planting of trees, shrubs and perennials - at 3 pm Biochar manufacturing demonstration and talk Please bring your wheelbarrow, spades and rakes as well as green garden waste and garden worms - especially the worms. Contact John Allen 021 46 36 86.

Tree Crops in Clevedon

Saturday 17th October 2015 at 1.30pm

TCA Branch Newsletters

Each area Newsletter Editor receives a copy of the other branches Newsletters by email. If you are interested in getting these forwarded to you, please let me know at john@WJohnAllen.nz

Welcome to New Members: David Thompson (WAIUKU)

Jane Patterson, Waiuku College Stephanie Adams (Karaka) David Churchouse (Patumahoe)

Edward and Priscilla Dawson’s property at Clevedon.

494 Otau Mountain Road, Clevedon.

Our property is on the northern tip of the Hunua Ranges and at 300 metres elevation, the views are great.

We have planted many different tree crops: Mediterranean pine nuts, macadamias, plums, olives, citrus, Chilean guavas, Australian rose apples, camellia sinesis, pomegranate, blueberries, feijoas, figs, apples, pears, peaches, prunes, ginkos.

Franklin Treecroppers’ Christmas Do

Sunday 6th December 1:30 pm at Gilly and David Evans’ Jericho Road Orchard, 210 Jericho Road, Pukekohe East.

Come join us for a relaxed tour of this commercial orchard. Bring a Christmas plate for a shared afternoon tea, something to sit on and a story or two of your 2015 year.

Franklin TreeCroppers TCA Franklin newsletter

NZTCA Vacancies

The NZTCA is seeking a replacement National Secretary.

The job covers the secretarial duties of the National organisation, requiring the recording and preparation of meeting minutes and maintaining the business of the Association.

The National Secretary is appointed by Management Committee, and is a voting member of that Committee which meets on line every two months.

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Computer skills and an email connection are necessary.

Familiarity with the objectives and structure of the NZTCA would be an advantage, but plenty of support is available, and the workload is shared. Expenses are paid including attendance at the Annual Conference.

September, 2015

If you are interested, please contact the current National Secretary, Kate Jury (seaflowers@xtra.co.nz or (07 869 0428) to discuss the work and any transition arrangements.

NZTCA Web Manager This role is for someone who has an overall understanding and responsibility of the NZTCA web presence, and is able to maintain and develop systems to support the goals and objectives of the web committee and members’ needs. For example, enabling email addresses, renewing domains and making sure that WordPress is kept updated; making sure appropriate security systems are in place, etc. Currently we use WordPress, and therefore it would make sense to continue with this, but ultimately the engine that drives the site is at the web manager’s discretion.

Content Creator(s) This role is about entering, maintaining and displaying the information. There is a need for a number of different roles for people who can competently operate software, but not the need to have a technical understanding of how things work. For example, updating the current events, editing and uploading archival information, managing regional events, online presence, etc.

The Web Manager role will report to the NZTCA Management Committee. However, the appointed person/s would report directly to the Web Committee, which is a group set up to implement the recommendations in the national strategy. They would be expected to work with the Web Committee to create a web system that reflects the needs and purposes of the NZTCA. As such the actual copy for the web site may come from multiple sources, i.e. Web Committee members, TreeCropper editor, archivists etc.

Expressions of interest are invited for this role, and can be made to: NZTCA National Secretary, Kate Jury, 168 Thames Coast Road, RD 5, Thames 3575, or email seaflowers@xtra. co.nz . A job description will be available for anyone interested in applying for one or both positions.

Franklin Food Forest a Tree Crops project

Australian permaculture guru Geoff Lawton once said “You can solve the problems of the world in a garden.”

As a therapy, many understand the truth in this when a solution to a problem comes to mind as we work in our garden.

On a world-scale, productive food gardens are helping solve other problems we face, problems like the sustainability and resilience of our food supply, as well as assuring natural, healthy foods.

There is no more productive garden than a food forest garden, Lawton argues. He sees food forests as the most sustainable, healthiest, easiest and most fun way to grow food.

It was with this in mind that the Franklin Tree Crops Association created the Franklin Food Forest project. The aim is to establish a community learning and demonstration food forest in the Pukekohe High School orchard.

In a working bee scheduled for this Saturday, September 19th, two of a planned four food forest areas are being started.

First is a productive shelter belt, demonstrating that wind shelters do not need to be a mono-culture and can instead provide a diverse ecology for insects, including bees, and beneficial plants as well as a supplementary food source for communities.

Second is a suburban food forest, utilising a subset of the regular seven layers of trees, shrubs and perennial plants.

Later, a lifestylers’ food forest will be established.

This will cover the full seven levels of a food forest and is aimed at lifestyle block owners.

The final area will be a growers’ food forest, demonstrating that commercial cropping on a small scale can be more productive than mono-culture crops.

There will be two shifts to the working bee on Saturday. The first, between 11 am and 1 pm is to distribute layers of biochar, manure and compost around the planting areas.

The second, from 1 pm to 3 pm is to plant the range of trees, shrubs and perennials we have for the food forest.

This will be followed at 3 pm with a biochar manufacturing demonstration and short talk by Simon Day from local company Stardust Earth. Biochar is simply charcoal that is used for biological purposes including as a soil conditioner, a filter medium, and as animal bedding.

Other local Franklin companies assisting in the project include GreenRose Garden Centre and BioCosmo Technologies. BioCosmo have supplied fertiliser from their innovative process that turns household, horticultural and animal slaughter wastes, in to a dry, concentrated biological fertiliser.

So come, lend a hand and see what the Franklin Food Forest is all about from 11 am or 1 pm this Saturday. Please bring your wheelbarrow, spades and rakes as well as green garden waste and garden worms - especially the worms. For further information, contact John Allen 021 46 36 86.

Field trip report

Pruning Workshop 25th July 2015

Franklin TreeCroppers TCA Franklin newsletter 3 September, 2015

Held once again at the Pukekohe High School orchard, this handson session provided a great help in sorting out what to prune and how to do it.

With the development of the Franklin Food Forest at this site, all of our future pruning workshops will be held here. One of our goals is to establish a full range of trees, shrubs and vines so that we can offer pruning directions on a complete range of crops.

Treecrop branches’ & Tidbits Into Facebook?

Have you joined the Treecroppers’ facebook group?

Have a look at https://www.facebook.com/groups/treescrops/

The Hawkes Bay branch are happy that their application to the NZTCA INNOVATION FUND, for their TREES FOR BEES project has been successful: “Bee Research; Hawkes Bay flowering-time We are delighted to tell you all that our Bee Research subgroup application to the NZTCA Innovation Fund to help with expenses involved in the research into the flowering time of bee friendly plants in Hawkes Bay”

The Nelson branch are heavily in to apple cider making and have a lot of expertise around the apple varieties to use and how to make the delicious liquid. I suppose they also have some expertise around make apple cider vinegar which I seem to have a particular proficiency at.

With the focus at our grafting workshop on cider apple (and an intention to get in to perry cider next year), who is interested in developing a special interest group on cider?

If so, please drop a line to john at franklin@treecrops.org.nz

Franklin TreeCroppers TCA Franklin newsletter

Field trip report Grafting Workshop 23rd August 2015

Ian Cooper describing the “how to� of grafting.

A good turnout of Franklin branch treecroppers took away a wide selection of self-grafted trees from our 2015 grafting workshop.

Ian Cooper led the way with expert tuition on the various grafting techniques before participants took up their knives.

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Raewyn Jarkiewicz purchased quality root stock and the pear and apple scion wood came from branch members.

The focus was on cider apples but, as the chart below shows, we had a wide variety of dessert apples and pears.

September, 2015

Of interest to many was the Chinese-made grafting tool brought along for demonstration purposes. It made the process easier and quicker and so ended up being used by many. A supply of this tool is on the water from China - see the Notice Board if you would like to purchase one ($35 ea).

Many thanks to Ian Laing for the use of his barn - it is always a good and spacious venue for us.

A wide range of cider and dessert apple plus pear scion wood was brought along by members.

Lo st & Found

Set of secate

urs left at Gra

fting worksh op. e contact Hea H ea th er @ co th er D o uglas at ld o u g .c o m Owner pleas

Franklin TreeCroppers

Trust we will see most of you joining us for the 2016 Conference.

Great chance to attend without having to travel very far. We are looking for many of you to volunteer to help us over that weekend.

Two features of every conference are the Auction night and the plant sales.

Franklin: Fertility...Food...Future More of our speakers have confirmed their attendance and this issue, we introduce our Keynote presenter, Graeme Sait

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Both of these are crucial in helping your branch in fund raising.

We haven’t had the usual two years to plan for this conference so are appealing to our members to assist us in getting some plants ready for the sale table. So for those with the time and/or plants that can be grown for selling, please do contact us to let us know what you have or what we could do together.

September, 2015

For our Auction and sale, we are looking for any items, be it equipment or jams, chutney, anything at all, so please contact us so we can include it into our planning.

We would also like to offer personal hosting of attendees so if you are happy to billet someone (Thursday to Sunday/Monday), please let us know (email: franklin@treecrops.org.nz).

Look forward to hearing from you soon Heather Douglas TCA Conference 2016 Organising Committee Heather@coldoug.com 09 232 1103 - 021 320 828 Pukekohe based scientist, innovator and business owner, Stephen Ford is our Franklin Speaker. A qualified plant pathologist with a Masters of Science, Stephen has worked extensively as a consulting phyto pathogenic disease specialist in various capacities within New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea for 16 years.

For the last 6 years Stephen has been the Technical Director for Millennium Microbes Ltd and Biotelliga Ltd leading the research and development of their novel pesticides. One of his major strengths is his ability to take proven science, and translate that into practical working solutions that growers can quickly adopt and implement.

Stephen has been invited by industry groups to provide input when developing integrated pest management strategies for the vegetable growing industry in New Zealand and is a regular guest speaker.

TCA Franklin newsletter

Dates: Friday 22nd - Sunday 24th April 2016 (Anzac Weekend) Venue: Wesley College, Pukekohe Theme: Franklin: Fertility...Food...Future

Conference 2016 Organising committee report

Graeme is an internationally acclaimed author and educator and is co-founder of Australian-based Nutri-Tech Solutions (NTS).

He has written hundreds of published articles and a popular book “Nutrition Rules!”.

Graeme has formulated many of the soil health and human health products for which NTS are renowned and he has developed all of the nutrition programs that are the keystones of the company’s proactive management approach.

Graeme is also the founder of the Radiance Festival, a six day Wellness Conference held between Xmas and New Year in conjunction with the Woodford Folk Festival. Radiance attracted 16,000 people in 2009.

Graeme is a powerful presenter who speaks at conferences and seminars around the globe. His inspiring presentations are often described as “life changing”.

Franklin TreeCroppers TCA Franklin newsletter

Franklin Branch Committee Chair Raewyn Jarkiewicz 09 292 5051 Email rjarkie@gmail.com Hon Secretary franklin@treecrops.org.nz vacant - want to help? Contact Raewyn.

Hon Treasurer Ian Laing Ph 09 236 3796

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Vice Chair Heather Douglas Ph 09 232 1103 Email heather.douglas12@gmail.com

September, 2015

Newsletter Editor John Allen Ph 09 238 1357 Email John@WJohnAllen.nz

Field Day driving directions.

Tree Crops in Clevedon Saturday 17th October 2015 at 1.30 pm

Edward and Priscilla Dawson’s property at Clevedon.

494 Otau Mountain Road, Clevedon.

From the Papakura motorway interchange, head east on Beach Rd (go 1.3 km), continue on to Settlement Road (go 1 km),. At the roundabout, take the 1st exit onto Marne Rd (go 0.5 km), At the next roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto Clevedon Rd (go 2km), Continue onto Papakura-Clevedon Rd (go 6.6 km). Turn right onto Tourist Rd (go 3.7 km), Turn left onto McNicol Rd (go 0.7 km), Turn right onto Otau Mountain Rd (go 5 km) destination will be on the left.

Franklin Treecroppers’ Xmas Do

Sunday 6th December 1:30 pm

Gilly and David Evans’ Jericho Road Orchard, 210 Jericho Road, Pukekohe East.

From the Bombay motorway interchange, Head west on Mill Rd, (go 2.1 km), Turn left onto Harrisville Rd (go 250 m), Turn left onto Jericho Rd (go 2 km), Destination will be on the right

Membership Coordinator Stephanie Coles 09 236 3554 rosscoles@xtra.co.nz Field Day Convener: Stephanie Coles 09 236 3554 rosscoles@xtra.co.nz

The date on your NZTCA newsletter label shows the renewal date of your membership.

To log on to the membership section of the web site http://treecrops.org.nz, you will need your membership number which is also given on the newsletter label.

SAFETY DECLARATION. For the purpose of Field Days, the properties we visit are designated as work places. As there are multiple hazards, please take particular care.

Parents are responsible for their children.

A Field day at your property?

This can be useful if you have something you would like to show us, some problem that we can discuss and help with, or you need ideas of what to plant.

Please have a chat with someone on the committee or just let us know that you would like us to include your place, and the best time of year for you.

Fr a n k l i n T r ee C rop p ers Not ic e s Buy Se ll & Swap

Franklin TreeCroppers To ad ve rt is eh C o n ta ct H ea er e, fr ee to m em b er s, th er D o u g la s at H ea th er @ co ld o u co ld o u g .c o

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Grafting Tool for sale

$35

on RadioNZ Listen to Stefan Sobkowiak’s interview This is a . ram National’s Saturday morning prog . very interesting 34 minutes

Member web sites: Do you have a Web site that we can put a link to on the Newsletter? Please email us and we can add it on the next Newsletter. Include a short note on what the web site is about.

RuralConnect.org.nz Assisting rural people and businesses in the broadband society

September, 2015

Delivery in 2 weeks. To order, call John on 021 46 36 86.

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Chinese made. Quality construction. Supplied with 3 double-edged cutting blades that are easy to change (replacement blades available).

g .c o m

TCA Franklin newsletter

Used food-g rade 20 litre buckets - $5 contact Hea each ther at H ea th er @

In this edition...

Report on July and August field days

NEW ZEALAND TREE CROPS

Advice of Field Days in September, October,

FRANKLIN BRANCH

+ Christmas function Snippets from other Branch’s newsletters Franklin Food Forest 2016 NZTCA Conference organising committee

NEW ZEALAND TREE CROPS ASSOCIATION FRANKLIN BRANCH NEWSLETTER Secretary: P O Box 1200, Pukekohe 2340