F
YOUR INDUSTRY
EA
AR
TUR E
TICLE
Orchardists in Hawke’s Bay have been waiting to see how their affected trees would perform
Cyclone affected trees give mixed spring performance Hawke’s Bay growers have been waiting in earnest to see what spring would bring. Would trees flower and thrive in a glorious return, or wither and die?
COVER STORY
Bonnie Flaws Photos : Florence Charvin Turns out, the result is a completely mixed bag. There are a lot of dead trees across the region, but the impact of the flooding and silt affected them differently even if, as in some cases, they were only separated by a few rows. Taylor Corporation, a family business, has blocks all over the area, and while hit very hard by the flooding of the Tūtaekurī and the Ngaruroro rivers, has other blocks that bounced back fine. Cameron Taylor tells me that the impacts for blocks by the Ngaruroro was much worse due to the clay type silt that was deposited.
14
The ORCHARDIST : DECEMBER 2023
“So we’ve seen more deaths there. More suffocation. It’s only a small block, 2.5 hectares, but we have had to walk away from it. About 60 percent of the trees flowered and then curled up and died. They didn’t have the energy, the roots were buggered.” And this was a block on which there was very little silt buildup, about 100 millilitres. Another block about one kilometre down the road had 200 to 300mls of silt, and only a middle strip in that block died. Yet another block lost nothing at all, but the block right beside it on his neighbour’s property, planted with the same rootstock, is losing trees.