A harvest for all seasons
A Horowhenua produce company is hoping to master the art of growing strawberries.
Levin’s Tendertips, part of Lewis Farms, has been growing asparagus for 37 years but now has branched out into growing strawberries in an effort to keep its staff employed all year.
Tendertips sells 500 tonnes of asparagus to the New Zealand and Japanese markets. Now it has built a hectare of tunnel houses for 100,000 strawberry plants, grown hydroponically.
Managing director Cam Lewis said by adding strawberries the business could employ staff 10 to 12 months of the year.
He said with a constrained labour market it was too risky to cut staff loose for a season, and growing strawberries was a good fit.
‘‘We need to keep more skilled people for asparagus,’’ he said. ‘‘Historically, we had no way of holding them beyond asparagus, so we needed to diversify to keep our key staff as close to yearround as much as possible.’’
It wasn’t expected to clash with the bread-and-butter operation of asparagus, which runs from September to December.
Tendertips will harvest strawberries until the end of May, so while asparagus winds down in December, strawberries should start ramping up.
‘‘We’re diversifying, which is exciting for us. For the last 30-odd years we’ve had this big tin shed [the asparagus packhouse] sitting empty for nine months doing nothing. It’s just a test if we can do it.’’
The strawberry plants are placed in bags with coconut husks, then fed water and fertiliser hydroponically.
Lewis said when it’s done right there’s more yield and less disease and, using a tunnel house, meant pickers could work in the rain.
‘‘The challenge of it is there’s no room for error. You don’t have the luxury of soil there buffering any mistakes you make.’’
Lewis said the hydroponic plants would be able to make a kilogram of fruit per plant, while plants grown outside made about half of that.
He believed the Horowhenua climate was perfect for growing in a tunnel house.
‘‘The plan is to to start with 1 hectare, then see how we go from there.’’