YOUR INDUSTRY
WOODHAVEN GARDENS CONTINUES TO INNOVATE Words by Andrew Bristol
John and Jay Clarke
Woodhaven Gardens – one of New Zealand’s major leafy green suppliers – continues to innovate, particularly in the environmental space. “Over the past season, we have been juggling growing in line with our new, self-imposed environmental compliance regime,” says Jay Clarke. “We’ve been using vastly different fertiliser rates than we have in the past, and have found areas where we have dialled use back too much. “The Horowhenua had an extremely wet spring that created growing challenges because we are trying to be tight on nitrate use. We’ve learned several lessons, the biggest one being the need for soil testing when you get a big weather event. It’s best to jump in and test straight away to see what has happened to nitrate reserves in the soil, to see if you have to correct or not correct the situation.” Over the past 12 months, Woodhaven has also been focusing on water use and discharge. “We’ve moved all our vegetable washing discharge to land and in doing so, have solved a problem in the Horowhenua,” says Jay. “We’ve got lovely top soil here but a big clay pan underneath, so you get to saturation point
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really quickly. But under the clay is a gravel layer. What we’ve done is dig some big soak pits so we can discharge directly into the gravel, which acts as a natural filter, trapping all the sediment. Through this process, we are essentially recharging the aquifer with clean water.” Jay says this solution is one that is replicable for everyone. “We’ve not chucked millions at a water treatment plant that no one can really afford to do. What we’ve done is develop a workable solution, no matter what the scale of growing. “We’re about to lodge a discharge consent, making us the first vegetable grower to take that step.” Woodhaven’s other innovation around water is to do with water reticulation. “We’re moving to two-stage vegetable washing: dirty wash, clean wash,” says Jay. “This change will enable us to use less water overall because you can reticulate your dirty water. “Reticulation is something that’s widely used with kumara but isn’t so widely used with leafy greens. We’re cracking on with a pilot project, which should be up and running in the next month or two. If it is successful, we will roll it out over all our wash lines, which will save us something in the magnitude of an 80% reduction in water use. “This frees up water allocation for use elsewhere so it will be a real win.’
