F
YOUR INDUSTRY
EA
AR
TUR E
TICLE
Feijoa ripen on the tree at Pounamu Orchards near Morrinsville
Plenty of challenges facing feijoa industry As the feijoa season ramps up, HELENA O’NEILL chats with Feijoa Growers Association president Roger Matthews about his experiences as an orchardist and the difficulties faced by feijoa growers.
Becoming an orchardist was somewhat of a baptism of fire for Roger Matthews. He operates Pounamu Orchards, a feijoa, chestnut, fig, and macadamia orchard on a 20ha block near Morrinsville. He has 1.5ha in feijoas, 1ha of chestnuts, a relatively small block of figs and 0.5ha of macadamias. When he took over the land in May 2017, it was a series of bare maize fields. His first fruit trees were planted just two months later. “I try to keep it at a size that I can handle the orchard myself. Picking has not been a huge problem. My feijoas are grown in the espalier form, on wires, which means they’ve got to be pruned every year. I have 34 rows and I can prune a row a day, meaning 34 days of pruning. That definitely keeps me busy.” Roger’s first few commercial feijoa seasons haven’t been easy, with lockdowns and other Covid-19 restrictions 40
The ORCHARDIST : APRIL 2022
COVER STORY
affecting both compliance and the market. “The first year of Covid-19 was my first commercial year and I was in a position where I was unable to sell anything because I couldn’t finalise my NZGAP (Good Agricultural Practice) audit because we couldn’t have anyone onto the property. I couldn’t sell to supermarkets, and no-one else was selling and buying, so I put a tonne and a half of feijoas into my neighbour’s pigs. Roger grows nine different varieties of feijoa across his 1,100 trees, with Anatoki and Kakariki the early fruiters, along with an experimental variety dubbed “Number 1.” Opal Star and Wiki Tu are his latest fruiters. “Generally, it’s a bit of a race between the final ripening and the first frost. Once you start getting frosts the fruit tends to deteriorate. Last year I got a front on 1 May. My season will go longer if I don’t get those early frosts.
