Tātau Tātau Horticulture has welcomed twelve new cadets to its fledgling horticulture scheme, signalling the start of both their employment and the launch of an exciting new planting programme.
The pōwhiri at Kihitu Marae, Wairoa, was a joyous occasion. Unfortunately, the next day a case of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 was detected in the Auckland community and New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown.
TTH general manager Clare Easton says getting the planting program up and running has ‘certainly been a challenge’: “I started this job in February and like the rest of the horticultural industry, we have had a lot to overcome. But we are determined to get there.”
In the second week of October, the new cadets, along with a small army of extra hands, planted out the first development of Envy apples and a small trial of PiqaBoo pears. The plantings were spread over a ten-hectare portion of Ohuia Incorporation's Tara Block, just 15 minutes from Wairoa township.
“We had done months of preparation but there was definitely a sense of urgency in that Wairoa has experienced huge amounts of rain and we just had this small window of opportunity between weather fronts,” Clare says. “We put out a call for whānau to help our own workers and everyone pulled out all the stops. Agnew Transport Services left Hastings at 3.30 on the Saturday morning to bring over 22,000 trees and GPS planters, and the planting crews worked tirelessly through the weekend.
Source: hortnz.co.nz
