ZESPRI® GREEN ORGANIC Kiwifruit
You can look at Tim Oliver's orchard two ways. Standing above it, looking across a canopy of kiwifruit vines to glimpses of the lake beyond. Or from beneath it, underneath it really, 20 centimetres or a metre down through the dark topsoil into the sand and gravel subsoil.
Above ground is a typically peaceful rural landscape. Below, if you listen to Tim Oliver's descriptions, is a seething heaving mass of life packed more densely than Manhattan at rush hour.
Any tour of the Oliver's Waikato orchard includes a spade. It is over a decade since he started producing kiwifruit organically. The effects of that change can be seen in the wedge of soft dark topsoil he digs out of the ground beneath the vine canopy. "What we're doing is putting life back into the soil”, he says, breaking apart a clod laced with earthworms. It's the healthy soil - healthy food thing: healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people. Everyone eating up the chain is healthy. One gram of that healthy soil contains about 8 million bacteria, a few hundreds of thousands of protozoa and a few thousand nematodes”.
The real gold for anyone growing organically is humus, what Tim calls capital in the bank. It's the ultimately best thing you've got in the soil, the real life blood of the soil. That's what you're striving for. It's the humus that will give you these nutty little crumbs in the soil." The rich earth breaks up easily in his hands.
Above ground in dappled sunlight grow grasses and clover, dandelions, docks, forget-me-nots, thistles, wild strawberries and a whole range of other plants. Some are self sown and others companion planting Tim has done to help open up the soil and make deep-lying nutrients more accessible to the vines. They are all part of a living natural system that organic growers like him try to work with. He talks of harnessing the energy forces coming from outside to help grow healthy fruit and vines. "What we're doing," he says, "is we're trying to farm the sun”.
This combination of natural systems and energy forces has produced a new tranquillity and peace within the orchard ... and, he says, fruit of exceptional quality and goodness.