Week 7…Otago Polytechnic horticulture students hit the road!

What a great two days this week visiting the Waitaki Valley and Oamaru area, checking out the local horticulture and viticulture.

After enjoying the snow on the Lindis Pass, we saw a beautiful new winery near Kurow which is about to open, to process grapes from the Waitaki area. The new bottling plant will mean the winery is independent. The amazing purple timber on the winery floor certainly turned a few heads.Thanks to the Turners for our visit.

We learned lots from other visits to Oregon Nurseries and Headford Propagators. I especially enjoyed seeing  the tiny Pinus radiata seedlings being grown at Oregon Nurseries for their GF…(growth factor)and the organised seed storage area at Headford.

 

The tart cherries were the stars! Thanks so much to John Newlands for coming out and telling us about his unusual crop. It was great to try the freeze dried product and the frozen pitted Montmorency cherries- they disappeared in no time!

  

Back in the Nursery after our Field Trip, we checked all our seedling trays, thinned basil and coriander pots, and decided what was ready to prick out into punnets. We were looking for seedlings with their first true leaves appearing.So there were trays of geraniums, dianthus and pansies ready to go on to the next stage. Remember to lever the seedling out with a tool, handle only by one cotyledon and pop into a preformed hole in the punnet, made with a dibber.

We deadheaded our hanging baskets for the last time, as they need to start flowering now ready to go out into the township of Alexandra for the Annual Blossom Festival. Great effort for our local community.

In the afternoon we dug heaps of raspberry suckers to pot up. The variety was ‘Autumn Bliss’,which flowers and fruits on the tips of one year old primocanes late in the season.For autumn raspberries, after primocanes have finished fruiting, all canes are removed. The following season, new primocanes grow and bear fruit on the tips in autumn. The first crop can be harvested eight months after planting, so a return is achieved in the first growing season.

All for now…see you all in the nursery next week!