Doing the Groundwork

Some people have been surprised at us receiving our first batch of macadamia trees in February, and we weren't expecting them until March either. However another person who had ordered some for a November plant just was not ready for them and so we were asked to take these early. Just as well well were able to prepare our land in time. Last year when Leaderbrand had finished cropping they cultivated the land and sowed grass seed which we paid for, for this hectare. We had quite a lush spring and Duncan was mowing with his fancy zero turn mower all the time and the decision was made to let the paddock go to hay which we would then use as mulch. After our holiday at Christmas time in Ohiwa the hay was cut and turned and then baled.

Then we had to stack and cover it. With my hernia I couldn't do much of this but I could drive the car and trailer

Our next project was to measure where the holes went. I suggested we use twine and the Theorem of Pythagorous, but we hadn't counted on the string stretching in the sun and we ended up with  some wrong positioning! You may be able to see where the peg is and the pink spray painted hole where it ought to be.

Back to the drawing board. And board was the correct word. Duncan brought a piece of wood, precariously poking out the window of the car. Brought is correct because we didn't may anything for it. Which may have been a mistake as it had two knot holes which became week points.

Then Duncan went and dug a little square out where we wanted the hole to be bored, but even when this was done to help get the handheld post hole borer get started it was too hard for it to drill.

Back to the drawing board. We hired a man and this nifty little machine to put in the holes. It took him 12 sec to drill a hole, and a little longer to move to the next position. It worked out at about $1 a hole and we can't help but think we had a lucky escape from trying to do this ourselves

The holes were quite deep and some of the loose material feel back into the holes. Duncan went and cleared this out. We found when we were planting that sometimes you had to chuck some back in.

We got our watering system sorted. To start with we had to small a hose and the pressure was not sufficient to push the water out at a reasonable rate so we got a very wide one and it works very well - but you are prone getting wet between holes when the tank is very full.
Some days we would sit down together and work out a plan, and within 10 minutes of being in the field we would change the way we operated! More on Planting days next time.