Secret hi-tech edge means berry lovers cop it oh so sweet

FINAL HARVEST: Tony Boswell has his new tunnel houses to thank for Windermere Gardens still having strawberries in June. PHOTO/ BEVAN CONLEY 080615WCBRCWIN04

Businessman Tony Boswell is sinking lots of money into a high-tech approach to berry farming at Wanganui's Windermere Gardens.

He and wife Michelle bought the gardens in August 2011. For the last season they have been managing and working it themselves, with help. Mr Boswell sold his investment in Quest serviced apartments in New Plymouth, and is using the money to intensify growing at the 10ha farm on the Westmere flats.

At last season's peak he had 90 staff. Next season it will be about 65, because more plants will be grown in tunnel houses, where picking is faster. Pickers are paid an hourly, rather than contract, rate.

Mr Boswell expects to break even this year, but should do better when new tunnel houses are in production.

Last season Windermere had 20,000 strawberry plants growing in a coconut husk soil substitute, in containers set on benches in tunnel houses. New tunnel houses are going up and next season 200,000 plants will be in them.

They will be strawberries mainly, but he is also trying raspberries.

About 80 per cent of the property will be under crop, with 12 varieties of raspberries, five of strawberries, three of blackberries and multiple blueberry varieties.

Numerous changes have been made since the property was bought from the Walker family in a mortgagee sale.

In future, strawberry plants will be kept just a year. Plants can last five years but get harder to manage. Growing them on benches will make picking easier.

Mr Boswell said he needed fit young men to pick strawberries grown on the ground. Up high, anyone could do it.

The plastic tunnels extend the strawberry season to nine months. The gardens has its last day of picking in the tunnel houses today. For ground plants, picking ended in March.

Next season, most of the property will be under bird netting or tunnel houses, and the gardens' bird scarer will not be needed.

A central computer controls the whole operation. It takes information from the gardens' own weather station and matches it with advice from a London agronomist on what the plants need. The nutrients are supplied in water from the property's spring, in a mixture that matches what they would get from the elite Westmere loam soil. The soil's exact nutrient levels are a secret - one that other growers would like to learn.

"People from other countries have pinched soil and water and had it analysed. I don't know how they got it through the airport."

Even analysis would not yield the full secret to growing berries of Windermere's quality, Mr Boswell said. The Westmere climate was a factor no one could duplicate: "Our weather here is different to Wanganui. It's almost a boutique climate."

Windermere water is also special. A spring on the property produces 200,000 litres a day and the gardens may use 184,000 of it.

The Boswells make an effort not to waste it. Water seeping through the soil is stored in underground tanks and reused to water the plants, in a system that may halve their water requirements.

Windermere berries are sold fresh and frozen in Wanganui, Manawatu, Taranaki and Wellington and through Foodstuffs stores.