Sunny days for growers?

The dry has encouraged good colour in fruit and allowed for ideal harvest, Horticulture New Zealand communications manager Leigh Catley told Rural News.

“The dry conditions have had a positive effect in slowing the progress and incidence of some pests and disease in some regions, which means better yields, better product quality and less use of crop protection [chemicals],” she says.

HortNZ president Andrew Fenton says provided bores and water supplies hold up then most growers will not be too badly affected.

“The apple industry is having a great clean harvest, the fruit has coloured up superbly so there will be good colour, good taste.” Onions are drying super quickly with no fungal rot.

“Spray requirements for fungal diseases are down,” he says. “But anyone who is relying on water for irrigation, greens crops or new planting of fruit trees would be having major worries. Most [horticultural] people irrigating have a bore supply like a groundwater take as opposed to a rural reticulation system. 

“If it continues much longer I suspect we might see some increases in the prices of some vegetables – the green lines.”

The hot dry and still weather is just what the kiwifruit industry needed with vine-killing disease Psa thriving in just the opposite – wet and windy conditions, Fenton says.

Catley says horticulture has a high proportion of people who irrigate over summer. But it will become critical when vegetable growers shift their production to land not irrigated, the usual practice at this time of year because they expect it to rain.

 “That’s when things will get interesting: if they can’t plant out, it’s hard to plant out or if the products  go in the ground and don’t get any water.” Production will slow and the effects will be felt three or four months down the track, she says.

The dry is great for harvest; she has heard comments such as “at least the tractor is not getting bogged down”. But it’s not so great “if you can’t till because the ground is so hard”.

But overall right now she says “we would like it to rain just as much as anybody else right now”.