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Ian and Margaret Woison, Orchardists, Tauranga |
Quality fruit for quality market
Ian & Margaret Woisin have been orcharding since 1978, the last ten years at their Pyes Pa address. For the first five years at Pyes Pa they were using Ravensdown’s fertiliser in combination with Attwood’scompost. Over the last 5 years they have been using Agrissential’s Rok Solid fertiliser as the base dressing and Organic 100 throughout the canopy for the last three years. The canopy floor is soft and spongy with masses of worm castings.
 Extra pollination is done within the orchard, the canopy floor has excellent clover cover, and there are no issues with scale, Sclerotinea is very minimal and only 2 plants have been lost to Armalleria. The pack-out reject rate runs between 8-10% with a crop average of 18,000 trays per annum with an average size of 36 count.
Ian and Margaret have recently appeared in the “Kinari” Japanese Supermarket promotional paper that has a circulation of 600,000 copies throughout Japan. The Japanese enjoy the fact that the fruit is naturally produced (Bio-Gro certified) and are impressed with the size, look and colour of the fruit, and that the orchard is managed and run by the Woisin family, with no additional outside help.
Overall, both Ian & Margaret are very happy with the performance of this Agrissential’s fertiliser programme. They are not having to cut the orchard grass as often as a more uniform pattern is emergingwith growth. Replacement wood on the leaders has been excellent.
The fruit is holding up well in cool storage conditions (76 trays only lost in a total 0f 18,000) and a reductionin input fert costs since the implementation of Agrissential’s fertilisers.
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