Saturday, 21 June 2014

Winter in Melbourne

A beautiful day in Melbourne today with great light levels. Growers in Europe would love  their winter days to be like this!

 June in the Chisholm Greenhouse.....

Thursday, 19 June 2014

Out with the old - before in with the new

Like many growers, we are curently busy with pulling out our old Tomato crop, and will be frantically preparing for the arrival of the new plants in a couple of weeks time. 

Our fantastic Certificate III Horticulture students put in an amazing effort today to clear our larger compartment of all of the old foliage and growing slabs, before we commence the cleaning process tomorrow.

The task commences!

The green waste has all gone to a recycling depot, and we will be milling up our old growing slabs for secondary use as a mulch.

Getting there.....

Preparing for washing....

Our new crop will feature a wide range of De Ruiter Tomato varieties as we continue to develop the 'Living Prooof Centre' concept with De Ruiter Seeds. We'll update the blog with more pictures when the new plants are in!
 


Thursday, 5 June 2014

Haifa Coffs Harbour Seminar Report

This week we ran the Haifa Fertilizer seminar in Coffs Harbour. The event itself was staged at the Woolgoolga Bowling Club which provided a first rate venue for the seminar.



Haifa's Shaul Gilan explains the issues relating to balanced fertiliser mixes

The event was well attended with 21 delegates from a range of enterprises that included Tomato producers through to Berry producers, 

The main delivery of the course was made by Shaul Gilan and Peter Anderson of Haifa, and the seminar focused on the technical aspects of fertiliser choice and use, and in particular, the need to formulate recipes that not only meet specific fertilizer values, but also provide a 'balanced' recipe in terms of +ve and -ve ions.

Chisholm's Tony Bundock provided an overview of the use of technology and equipment that is now available to growers for fertigation purposes in both protected and open crop growing.



Chisholm's Tony Bundock shows how EC rates in drip irrigation can be reduced via a radiation influence using a computerised control system

Further events are planned for Virginia, SA, Bundaberg, QLD, and a repeat seminar in Melbourne, VIC later on in the year. 

These events will be advertised via this blog site and our mailing lists.