Wairarapa harvest goes gold

The apple trees are heavier, the berries sweeter, and garden tomatoes are more popular than ever in a strong summer for fruit and vegetables in Wairarapa.
The region's two major apple orchardists are gearing up for harvest at the end of the month and expecting a normal or above-average crop.
John Van Vliet, owner of JR Orchards in Greytown, said early counts showed 10 to 15 per cent more apples this season compared to last season, despite the weather.
"It has been a struggle. It's been very dry and very windy. It's been a pain in the bum, if you don't mind me saying," he said.
However, the honing of their own practices and last month's "three inches of beautiful rain" meant they were on track for a good crop.
Rivers were flowing high again, which was important as farmers such as himself reached the regulatory limits of water they could withdraw for irrigation. An apple tree could require as much as 70 litres of water a day, but that varied depending on soil density.
Mr Van Vliet said they usually began harvesting six days a week from March 1 and word from other growers was that the season would run to schedule.
The royal gala variety would be the first to ripen along with some pears (about 10 per cent of JR Orchard's overall crop) and the last few apples would fall off by the end of May.
Stephen Meyrick, owner of Pinehaven Orchard, expected to begin picking his Turangi apples, a new variety for him, on February 20. He also expected a normal season and said diseases, such as blackspot, were mostly a problem for orchardists in spring.
He would finish picking in the middle of April, when late-season varieties such as royal gala, braeburn and pacific rose were coming off the tree.
While the lack of rain might have meant a tough ride for apple growers, it's been a boon for Dot Bissett, owner of the Wee Red Barn on Masterton's Opaki Rd. She said her strawberries, blackberries and blueberries loved the dry weather and that it appeared to be an above-average crop this year.
Last month's three-day downpour, which would have increased disease normally, came when their strawberries were in a "down" period when the fruit was recovering.
That meant the fruit got the best of both worlds and the strawberries were now coming up again beautifully sweet.
However, as apple growers found, the wind had been a problem, giving leaves "wind burn" and making conditions unpleasant for pickers.
Mrs Bissett said they had finished harvesting karaka blackberries, boysenberries and summer raspberries and were about to start on their autumn raspberries and loch ness blackberries. They were also beginning to pull out their agria potatoes and pick their tomatoes, numbering 900 plants, ranging from low-acid italiano to moneymaker varieties.
Mrs Bissett said she expected strong sales from her roadside stall this week as kids headed back to school and parents put berries in school lunches.
Beyond the commercial orchards, Lansdowne Nursery in Masterton has been dishing out seedlings to a surge of home gardeners this year.
Owner and manager Marilyn Hunt said demand for vegetables such as tomatoes was huge, and she suspected that was due to tighter economic times and a preference for domestic produce over chemical-laden exports.
Their sales were also boosted by better weather than the previous year, in which some vegetables such as zucchini had to be replanted as many as four times because of frosts.
She said tomatoes - surveyed as the most popular vegetable in New Zealand according to the latest Household Economic Survey - were a perennial favourite among home gardeners because they took little work to get great results.
The home-gardener demand for their seedlings was filling a hole left by three small commercial tomato growers in Wairarapa who had given up growing tomatoes this year.
Ms Hunt said tomato growers were thin on the ground in Wairarapa (with the exception of the Wee Red Barn) because growers couldn't compete with the rugby field-sized operations in Auckland or cheap Australian imports.