UPBEAT MUSIC Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 Hello, and welcome to Rural Delivery. Fertco was formed by a group of farmers in 2000, and as its name suggests, it has a focus on fertilisers. This week we learn about the ongoing search for ever more efficient and sustainable fertilisers. We hear a young horticulturalist explain what was behind his decision to forge a career in the horticulture sector. And we find out about the association between certain trees and mushrooms and how a Nelson family is building a business based on those relationships. Since its beginning, Fertco has been seeking out fertilisers that are more efficient, effective and easier on the environment than existing alternatives. Their products are tested independently to give further assurance to end users. CEO Warwick Voyce introduces us to a new product that's showing promising results. Smartfert's a controlled-release urea, which is basically a urea granule encapsulated in a polymer coating. It turns it into an osmotic release of nitrogen. For farmers, the controlled-release urea is two-fold in its benefit, one being that you can mitigate loss, so mitigation of leaching and volatilisation, and the second one really is managerial. So ease of management. You can apply three months of urea in one hit. And you don't need to necessarily wait for desirable weather. You can pop it on any time you like. As far as the application of the product and the type of farming that people undertake, it can be any, really, from cropping, dairy, sheep and beef. In this case, it's gonna be in a equine situation. So it doesn't really matter. It's up to the farmer to marry up the feature and benefit to whatever their managerial system is. It has purpose across the board, really, particularly if you blend the material with other nutrient that you require, and that might even be other, faster-acting nitrogen. So phosphate, potassium ` it blends well with everything. Dr Doug Edmeades is heading up the R & D on the product. It, uh, is being practically trialled in pot trials ` so that's under glass, if you like. And now it's moving out into the field, where we're doing trial work on pastures and also crops. The material itself is coming out of Malaysia, and if you think about why Malaysia, well, Malaysia's got natural gas to make urea, and they've got the basis of the polymer ` it's a biodegradable vegetable oil that they're using ` palm oil. So the biodegradable nature of the polymer coating is quite important from a environmental standpoint and also from a mitigation of the risk of animal ingestion, really. At this stage, it's more expensive than urea, obviously, cos it contains a few advantages and some new technology. But we're hoping to drive that down over a period of time through increased volume, but also probably bringing the technology to NZ, as in the polymer, bringing the polymer to NZ and coat NZ ureas with the product here. Ease of management is a big point of view. It's one dressing type thing. When you got a property of this size with this many paddocks and set-stocked horses in them, like six horses in paddock type thing, trying to logistically put fert on the whole farm can be a bit of a nightmare. Where this way, we can just put the nitrogen on once, uh, for the winter type thing and not have to try and do two or three separate, uh, dressings, cos it's just such a big job to do that type of thing, so... And the environmental reasons as well. We try to go down that, uh, green path as much as possible. And we find this, you know, because of its slow release ` less leaching, less dispersal into the atmosphere ` we find that suits our ideals. We've got 120ha. The whole farm is harvest for grass. We make very little supplement on the farm. And it all goes in the vat. I'm really against large amounts of nitrogen going on, you know, and so I prefer, as I say, just to trickle it on and, um` Well, we really try here too to get our clovers to work and to get a benefit from that, so we try to complement our existing nitrogen system. We're not excessive urea users, but it works really well. In the spring, we use the Smartfert with sulphate of ammonia as well, and that's a really good combination too. It goes really really well through that early spring. The cost is always a bit frightening when you see the figures, but` but, uh, you know, the results are there. You know, we're really really happy with it, and it works well for us, and we'll continue to use it. This is the product itself. This is three-month controlled, so it's been double-coated with the polymer coating. To all intents and purposes, it's urea, but, um, you can tell it's a little bit shinier. So the polymer coating itself works on osmosis, as I said earlier, and osmosis` basically, when it gets wet, the product nutrient inside swells in the granule, and the` it forces itself out through the pores of the polymer coating. It's primarily a plastic, but it's made out of natural ingredients. Palm oil is the basis. It's been described as the holy grail of controlled-release nutrients, in that it's taken quite a few years to develop, particularly at an affordable level in bulk. Previously, this` People might be familiar with Osmocoat ` that's where the technology came from ` and it's been developed into, basically, an available agricultural product. This material's designed to break down over 90 days. You can get 120 or 130 day. We find that, um, 90 day works in the NZ situations best. When we return, we meet Karl Noldan, a finalist in the 2015 Young Horticulturist of the Year awards. 1 Welcome back. Karl Noldan is enjoying his career progression in horticulture, despite being dissuaded from pursuing it when he was at high school. In 2015, Karl won a number of categories and prizes in the national Young Horticulturist of the Year awards. I always tell people that when I was, sort of, in third form at college, horticulture and graphic design were my favourite subjects, but long story short, parents and teachers at the time didn't see a real career path in that area for me. I was quite academic, so I really got pushed on to do accounting and economics and some quite academic subjects like that. And it wasn't really until I'd, sort of, been through university and, um, done a bit of learning about myself and had a few odd jobs with different people that I really found out that working in the outdoors is what I wanted to do. Uh, and I guess it wasn't till I was nearly 20, 21 years old that, uh, I ended up flatting with a good friend, and she really encouraged me to do what I really loved, which was horticulture. And, um, to sort of wrap up that nice story, I did end up marrying her, so, yeah, worked out quite well. I'm now the curator of the main gardens and looking after now nearly 18 plant collections. Definitely is my experience that horticulture hasn't had a good reputation, so it's very much seen as a` sort of, I guess, more of a low-paid job where it's quite monotonous tasks like weeding or maybe picking tomatoes or fruit, something like that. Obviously, that's not the case. I've found here in the last six years working at the botanic gardens that the variation's pretty much endless. You know, I'm never doing the same thing every day and certainly never get tired of the work, and it's something that you'll never, sort of, get to the end of. Last year in July I won the Young Amenity Horticulturist of the Year, which made me eligible to go through to the national competition, which is the Young Horticulturist of the Year, which is supported by the Royal NZ Institute of Horticulture through their education trust. So I got third in the competition overall, but I also won a multitude of sort of individual prizes. I got the best speech. I got second in the Agmardt, uh, Market Innovation Award. And I also won the Primary ITO Career Development Award, so that gave me a $3000 scholarship to spend on some training or development of some kind, which I, uh, haven't yet decided on. And also it makes me the Primary ITO career ambassador for the year, so hopefully I'll get some opportunity this year to encourage some young people to get into the industry. It's about 25ha altogether, so that includes the Wellington Botanic Garden itself, but also the Bolton Street Memorial Park, which is the original cemetery for Wellington. One of the unique things about it is the topography ` not much of it's flat land ` so stretching right from the top of the cable car all the way down, almost to Parliament Buildings. It's largely divided up into plant collections. So that could be living plant collections ` anything from, sort of, an Asian collection or` through to a fragrant garden or plants based around a genus, so it could be camellias, fuchsias, things like that. Uh, and between that there's lots of, uh, remnant bush areas as well that are sort of original, back from 1800s. And obviously the usual pathways and amenities and buildings that go along with that. 1868 was, sort of, the founding of the botanic gardens ` or that's when the act was, sort of, put in through Parliament. But earlier than that, sort of in the 1840s, it was already in the town plan, it was part of the town belt, which is pretty unique for Wellington as well. A lot of forethought there by the people at the time. And then, yeah, on through history, it's really the foundation of a lot of what's happened in NZ, so a lot of the economic potential for trees is looked at here. Uh, and, you know, think about those migrants ` it's a` obviously, it's a colony, there's lots of people coming to the country, lots of new people, sort of, you know, learning about our country and what they can do here. So, yeah, real place for migrants to come and learn about the place around them. And we're, sort of, still doing that now, still educating people and telling them about the world around them. Trial crops were done here, sort of, as early as the 1870s and the 1880s. So forestry was sort of the winner. The Pinus radiata's the key tree that came out of those trials. But at the same time, they tried things like sugar beet, I think sugar cane as well, trying to get, you know, those crops here. Plums, mulberries, all sorts of things like that. We've got about 20-plus staff here at the botanic gardens doing a range of jobs. I work in a team of four, so we have myself, a couple of gardeners and an apprentice. But we work pretty closely with the other teams through here. Right now we're at the, uh, botanic gardens nursery. It's a pretty cool place here. There's some, uh, pretty amazing plants, most of which, uh, supplies the Begonia House for the seasonal displays over there. We do some really cool stuff, like with the tradescantia beetle here. We're breeding up some populations of that to eat tradescantia, which is a really nasty weed around here. Some people might know it as wandering willie. So, yeah, like I said, breeding up some populations that we can release in the wild. We released one last December, and in some subsequent monitoring, we've actually noticed some juveniles, which means they're breeding, so that's really good news for us. So hopefully in the future, we'll have some more populations to release, and we'll see some significant damage done to that weed species. The whole reason for IPM, and especially for this breeding programme, is really about reducing, sort of, the toxicity that we put into the environment. So obviously if this is successful, it's an alternative to weed spraying or sort of manual removal, which is, yeah, either a impact on the environment or a huge labour cost for us. This is the standing out area. This is largely where all the plants are for the outdoor collections, so the ones I look after, so we've got a big section here. And largely what you see here is things that we can propagate that may be hard to find through nurseries these days, or little sort of special things for rockeries. Uh, yeah, just that sort of unique stuff that we can't just buy off the shelf. I'm pretty passionate about shrubs. Things like camellias, I just love that you can, sort of, look at them one day and they're sort of maybe neglected for 10 years, no one's ever pruned them, and you can, sort of, stand in there, and after sort of a couple of hours' work, they look like just an amazing specimen that is sort of, uh, worthy of being in the botanic gardens. So that's something I really enjoy. We have a botanic gardens management plan, which, sort of, looks 10 years into the future. So we're doing a little bit of planning that far ahead, but most of it's an annual planning for the following year. So we just submitted a large plant order for all of my collections, and hopefully those plants will be turning up later in the year. Otherwise, we're still planting out plants that we've propagated or maybe ones that we've grown on that we brought in from the previous year. So this is sort of the time for all that action, which is a, yeah, really cool time of year. We largely deal with exotic plants here at the Wellington Botanic Gardens, and Otari-Wilton's Bush, which is very closely aligned with us, deals with more of the native plants over there. I did a course at WelTec which sort of gave me the theory, but I really had to come here to learn the practical side of things. And I reckon you can teach anyone horticulture. It's sort of the skills around that that you bring to the place that really makes you unique. And we've actually had a few people, sort of, come from other industries, like IT or marketing, that have come here and learnt horticulture, and they really have a great asset, sort of, behind them to bring to the skill set as well. We like to do sort of multiple types of education. We have volunteer guides that come here and take people for walks about certain themes or certain plants. We have a botanic gardens educator who's taking more formal programmes with students. And as the children's garden becomes up and running later this year, there'll be more of that happening. There'll be schools, sort of, coming on location a lot more and doing that kind of work. In the long term, I'd love to stay here at the botanic gardens. I've sort of found something I really love here. Uh, I love the interaction that we have with the public, that it's not just about growing the plants, it's actually about telling people about them and teaching them about the world around them through the medium of plants. Uh, so long term ` I always tell the boss this ` I sort of want his job one day, so I'd love to be the manager of the botanic gardens. But, I mean, there's so much between, sort of, now and then to conquer that, uh, yeah, I'm pretty happy where I am. We'll be back soon to talk about trees and fungi at Neudorf Mushrooms. 1 Hello again. Mycorrhizal mushrooms grow in a symbiotic relationship with living plants. The mushrooms provide their plant hosts with access to trace elements for healthy growth, and in turn the fungi receive the sugars they aren't able to produce for themselves. A Swiss couple now resident in Nelson has a business growing and processing mushrooms as well as teaching visitors to their property about these fascinating fungi. When we came to NZ, we had a look around for a lifestyle property a bit. And coming from Switzerland, in autumn it was our big hobby to go foraging for mushrooms. And, yeah, we had this property with the old man pines to grow a few, um, slippery jacks or pine boletes. And, yeah, we got all excited about mushrooms again, because it's not much around here in NZ. We've got 53ha, and about a third of it is planted in trees. We have planted about 2500 trees for the mushrooms. And we started with the Motueka Market and then Nelson Farmers' Market. The word went round, and we had few magazines who had articles about us, and then the first chefs came in and asked what we were doing, and now they go all over NZ, really. Good morning, Michael. Good morning. How are you guys doing? < Oh, good, yeah. Good. How are you? Last year, we had, um, 800kg, and we sold out too early. So this year, um, our goal is a ton, really, and even more, if we can do it. It's clay, it's Moutere clay, which is roughly around 4.5 to 4.9 pH. Those mushrooms, they actually love that. They are used to grow with pines, so they actually acclimatised themself on to that type of soil. Nelson and the Upper Moutere around here is actually a good place to grow mushrooms. Management around here is pruning the trees so we actually can go underneath. And, um, it's just cutting the grass so you can actually see the mushrooms when they pop up. On some places, we also have to take the needles away, because you won't see the mushrooms underneath. Because they live in a symbiotic relationship with a tree, they live on the tree. As long as the tree is alive, you'll have the mushrooms. Field mushrooms, they're saprobic mushrooms, so they don't live with trees. They live off of cow dung and things like that, just on those places where it's an ideal environment. And the ones we grow, they need a tree to grow. It's no way around. I think I'm gonna put it... In the middle. ...somewhere round here, eh? (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) The growing season is from end of March till about middle of June, but we have sometimes flushes, especially after big rains, um, before Christmas or just after Christmas, where we get a surplus crop, actually. It's actually quite nice to get a bridge between that and when we start with the big harvest. We just went for a walk this morning, and we saw that after the rain we had, we saw actually here little ones coming up. And because it's still summer, it's probably about 28 degrees at the moment, they need some moisture, so we're gonna put an irrigation in for here, a temporary one, because that's gonna be` probably in, uh, three or four days, that's gonna be up to about 10kg of mushrooms. Those ones here are pine bolete. They're very very small at the moment. Um, they got a sponge underneath and quite a slimy top. It's very nice dried, and we use that in our dried mushroom mix we do. We are in the lot we planted first with the infected trees. That's the saffron milk cap. It's a bright orange mushroom. The name comes from the sap. It's a very firm, meaty texture. Vegetarians, they like it a lot because it's a good meat substitute. And you can't overcook them. They always stay firm. We have got a fly agaric. It's poisonous, but you wouldn't die of them. But, um, it's not recommended we eat them. You'll get quite sick. We have five different varieties from the bolete family. We dry and mix them together and sell them as a wild dried mushroom mix. And we have got a risotto mix. With the saffron milk caps, if we have too many, we pickle them with, um, white wine vinegar, and this year we smoked them before pickling. So gonna see how that goes. We propagate our own trees now. Those ones are a two-year-old. They're still together. And before we plant them out, we will inoculate them with the saffron milk cap. Those, uh, stone pines, they actually love those mushrooms. We've got an old one here. And as you see, that white stuff, greenish stuff here, that's actually the mycelium, which is still attached to the mushroom. We cut that off, and then we have a little bit of compost in here. You see all the roots are already here, so we just loosen it up a little bit and put them right on top... in here. This one here is a one-year-old little stone pine. You see that's the` the shell is still here. It just popped out. This one is already inoculated with the saffron milk cap. You see that white stuff is mycelium, and you see around here some orange-y knobs coming out. That's where it actually penetrates right into the root system. This one here will go out this year, and it needs a strong protection for hares, rabbits and possums. We ordered 200 silver birches from Appletons Nursery, and we will intersperse them with our inoculated ones that produce that kind of mushroom, birch bolete, really earthy, and with these ones here, we also` we just use the bottom here. You see that's the white stuff on it again. That is, um, the mycelium. That will still grow as soon as it will touch one of those, um, roots. So we'll do the same with those ones. We take them out and, um, yeah, they will grow. They're one year old. They're doing actually quite well. Some of them even better. Sometimes you can see that's, um` the inoculation, um... This one here's probably better inoculated than this one, so we've got more support from the mushroom through` for the growth. That mushroom here, the birch bolete, will only grow with silver birch. If you put it into stone pines, no chance. Over millions of years, they're so specialised to grow with them. With this one here, it'll take probably another five years. They're very slow growers, but those pine knots actually date like the saffron milk caps on it. It's a really strong host for that kind of mushroom. It is quite a wait, but as the Japanese say, you plant a tree for yourself and you plant a forest for the next generation. So we're probably just caretaker of what we do here, and hopefully one of our kids will take over. For more information on these and other stories we've brought you, visit our website. You can get there via tvnz.co.nz Or if you've missed an episode, you can watch it again on TVNZ OnDemand with the keyword Rural Delivery. Next week ` we find out about trials around the conversion of dairy effluent to fish food in the Bay of Plenty with NIWA and the Raglan EELS Company. We visit Long Bush Pork, a vertically integrated breeding and finishing operation of free-range heritage breed pigs. And we travel to Mahinga Oranga, an organic garden and horticultural training ground in Northland. Thanks for watching. We hope to see you again next time. Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016