Striving for Top Crop

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Daryn Gardner has taken out this year's Dried Fruits Australia Top Crop Awards – but he’s not resting there.

The Cardross grower was the overall winner of the awards, producing 14.469 tonnes to the hectare of Carina currants.

His overall win comes after he won the currant category in last year’s inaugural Top Crop Awards with 13.644t/ha.

The Top Crop Awards were established to recognise growers who produce the highest value crop, based on their final yields, grades and any deductions and publicly known base level pricing.

Daryn grew up on a fruit block at Nichols Point.

A division one nurse by trade, Daryn and his wife Bernadette bought their block in 1994.

The pair slowly redeveloped the dried grape, citrus and avocado property, replanting dried grapes.

Daryn retired from nursing to become a full-time blockie – a lifestyle he says suits him well.

“At work you deal with people all the time, and in the block it’s just serene, you’re out there by yourself, with the radio,” he says.

“I think that’s why you buy a fruit block – you buy for the lifestyle.”

In a challenging season for many, Daryn achieved a strong yield on his currants.

“I was a bit surprised my currants did as well as they did. I’m very happy with the win.”

He says he is driven to achieve strong yields year-after-year.

The best he’s achieved on his 6ha property is 62 tonnes.

“I thought ‘well we got 62, now I want 70 – what do I have to do to get to that?’.

“That’s what I do – never sit on your laurels, always think 'what can I do to get better'.”

Daryn attributes his success to his irrigation management and his fertigation program developed by his agronomist Marco Retamoza, from Better Farms.

“He does some things I don’t fully understand, but I don’t need to, and the tonnages coming out of my currants prove that it does work. You’ve got to feed them,” Daryn said, highlighting that all the growers in the recent DFA 10 Tonne Project used an agronomist to better their yields.

Daryn’s entire block is on drip irrigation after he converted his property with the help of government grants.

“I was very sceptical of drippers in the early days, I didn’t think they’d work. I do everything now through fertigation, everything is through the drippers. I don’t do any broadcast fertiliser at all.”

Despite the strong result with his currants this season, the rest of Daryn’s property didn’t fare so well.

While 1ha of currants produced 14.469 tonnes, his almost 3.5ha of sultanas produced just 17.9 tonnes combined. He encountered the same problem many growers did this past season – downy mildew.

“I had a winegrape grower next to me who lost everything so didn’t spray much, and then it came across the road,” Daryn explained.

Daryn, who also does contract harvesting, says sultanas seemed to be the worst hit by disease this season.

“When things flowered had a big bearing on whether downy got them. Currants and sultanas flower at a different time.

“For me, my currants are behind my house, so they’re protected from the block across the road that had the downy. I’ve got a patch of sunmuscats right next to them, and they were protected as well.”

Daryn has made the decision to crop half of his sultanas for the last time in 2024 and will instead plant up more sunmuscats in their place.

“Sunmuscat appears to be a pretty bulletproof grape,” he said.

“Out of most crops I’ve looked at, it fared pretty well with the downy and when it rains they don’t go yuck like sultanas do.

“'I'm ordering my new vines now –they’ll go in September next year.

“I’ll probably minimally prune them (this year), leaving a lot more canes than I normally would just to try to get that last little bit out of them.”

Daryn has his own dehydrator set

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up and delivered the last of this season’s fruit at the end of June.

“I don’t get too stressed about it,” he said.

“Once it’s down to about 16 per cent, it’ll keep. Once it’s picked and in the shed, it’s safe.”

Looking ahead to the next season, Daryn is hoping for another strong harvest.

“From what I’ve seen in my vines, my canes are looking OK coming off last season,” he said.

“And for my currants, I can’t see why they won’t just keep doing what they’re doing.

“Some are happy to get 3 tonnes to the acre, but I want 4 or 5 now. You need to strive to get better, to improve again.”v