Hawke’s Bay orchardist plants sunflower mix to heal Cyclone Gabrielle damaged land

Hawke’s Bay orchardist Craig Wilson’s paddocks were once filled with apple trees until Cyclone Gabrielle wiped out 25 of his 50ha of orchards.

Wilson owns Meiros Orchard and when the cyclone struck the region in February 2023, he and wife Gill were stranded at home, while 14 of his Samoan RSE workers and son and daughter-in-law were stranded on their roofs.

“All we could do was watch from afar and watch all the devastation.”

Craig Wilson has planted 10ha of his orchard property on Dartmoor Rd in Hawke's Bay with a silt recovery mix that includes sunflowers.

His machinery and tools were lost and his trees were covered in silt and debris.

Now the redevelopment of the property is well under way and the trees still standing have produced apples.

His other silt-ravaged paddocks can be seen growing sunflowers and a mixture of soil-healing plants.

Wilson said the crop would never be harvested, but it served a purpose within the ground.

During the recovery, Wilson’s paddocks on Dartmoor Rd were driven over which compacted the soil and impacted the structure.

“When we cleared all this land there were tractors and trailers and diggers travelling over the ground for months, and months and months.”

What was left, he described as “dead soil”.

Wilson planted the sunflower mix crop in February, and October 2024, and said the benefits of the natural method were better than “putting artificial fertilisers on”.

“We are trying to do it naturally and trying to put the natural goodness back into the soil by growing good organic matter that we can work in.”

The crop includes a blend of Ikawai Annual Rye Grass, Persian Clover, Crimson Clover, Faba Bean, Vetch, Phacelia, Buckwheat, Sunflowers, and White Oats.

Each with a soil regenerating property to encourage the growth of bio-organisms and attract insects.

He said the faba beans and the clovers would put nitrogen back into the soil.

The ryegrass and oats were to create bulk green matter for the bio-organisms to start working again.

The sunflowers and oats were included in the mix for their roots and to establish new organic matter.

“There has been a lot of movements over this ground so the sunflowers are deep rooting to help with the compaction and when it’s all worked in everything helps with the earthworms and gets the fungi working.”

Wilson said the crop would be ploughed into the ground after it had begun to die off to create nutritious soil.

“It will look quite rank for a bit after the sunflowers die off and then we will work it in, in the autumn.”

He said this was all part of the process while he waited on the right apple tree varieties to plant and re-establish his orchard over the next two to three years.

Michaela Gower joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke’s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities.