GREAT SOIL, BUT WAIPĀ FLOODS FORCE RETHINK

Pirongia vegetable grower Tony Cato is looking for a new piece of land.

After Januaryʼs Big Wet and his seventh flood in the past 18 months, heʼs had about enough of water.

Tony runs Pirongia Mountain Vegetables, a family-based small-grower enterprise which supplies the Farmersʼ Markets at Tauranga, Cambridge and Hamilton.

He leases 16 hectares of ground up from the Waipā River. You couldnʼt ask for better soil. Its deep rich loam is rocket fuel for anything with roots and leaves.

But the Waipā is a fickle creature, and to be honest, Tony admits, some older locals had looked a bit sideways at him when he started growing there.

On 1 February, after days of rain, the Waipā was in flood. Again. Hedgerows appeared like islands. The harvesting equipment was marooned. The late potato crop was boat access and ranks of broccoli march into a lake.

Some cheeky locals had even turned up with jetskis to take advantage of a de facto recreation opportunity offered over what used to be gardens.

Over several years and previous floods he had marked out ʼhigh tideʼ marks – furrows in the soil that show how far he could plant down the slopes, but this year has sunk the newer one cut even further up the slope.

The bottoms had been used for hay, but the repeated inundations have destroyed the grass and reseeding is too expensive.

Late January was his first flood for 2023 after six such inundations last year. Tony has leased for a certain period, so that means finding something else to do with the land. But he also needs to move somewhere else.

ˮI pick the seedlings up from the grower every two weeks so I have to find somewhere else to put them.ˮ

Finding new land is not made any easier by recent changes to land-use rules.

ˮIf I wanted to supply the big supermarkets Iʼd have to go through the resource consent and land-use changes.ˮ

Originally a motor mechanic with a background in the construction industry, Tony took the whole growing business over from his dad Richard about five years ago, and since then the business has been rebranded from Catosʼ Potatoes to Pirongia Mountain Vegetables.

Tony says when it comes to vegetables, the big thing is flavour. Thatʼs what keeps bringing the buyers back – the chance to experience fresh produce with taste.

ˮTo keep the flavour we need to keep the soil moving. In large-scale farming the soils often become depleted. As long as we can keep the veges growing and our vans full, we canʼt get enough product.ˮ

Of the 16ha about 4ha is in vegetables – yellow-fleshed Anuschka potatoes, broccoli, cauliflowers, cabbages, silverbeet, cos lettuce, garlic, kumara, pumpkins, sweet corn and a couple of varieties of Chinese cabbage.

In a recent innovation heʼ has been supplying Hamiltonbased fermented foods maker GoodBugs with 300 kilograms of spray-free cabbages a fortnight.

Tony prides himself on a sparing use of chemicals. Weeds are kept to a minimum with a lot of tillage. Drawing on his mechanical aptitudes, Tony modified an existing machine to create a soil vibrator which loosens the weeds, aerates the soil and annoys the heck out of the bugs by turning their homes upside down.

ˮIt was a bit of foresight. An alternative market. We grow cabbages almost all-year-round but not so many over summer, but with the weather changing itʼs worth the risk. It doesnʼt matter what the cabbages look like, and itʼs a relationship that works well.ˮ

Meanwhile, the Farmersʼ Markets are doing well due to the growing public appetite for quality produce, and a more flexible production period compared to bigger growers, Tony says.