Newstead Orchard
Frequently asked questions
What do you grow?
Newstead Orchard is a stone and pip fruit orchard growing mostly plums, pears and apples. We have nearly 50 fruit varieties ripening across the summer and autumn seasons, including a few peaches, and nectarines. We also have market gardens and supply seasonal vegetables from our orchard shop.
How’s your fruit different to the supermarket?
More varieties (including for specific purposes)
Fruit in supermarkets is limited to firmer tougher tougher-skinned varieties that can withstand transportation and storage.
As our fruit is grown close to market and picked as fresh as possible, we offer some more flavourful and delicate varieties. An example is the incredibly refreshing, light and flavourful Sunrise apple (our first apple of the season, available in early January ahead of most supermarket varieties).
We also have varieties designed for specific purposes, such as the heirloom cooking apples Gravenstein or Ballarat, which “fluff” when cooked and are fantastic for making apple sauce (as opposed to Granny Smith, for example, which is great for slicing or baking).
Great quality
Most of New Zealand’s top-quality fruit goes for export, not into New Zealand’s shops and supermarkets. It is often picked early so it keeps for the long haul.
Tree-ripened fruit, select picked when it is at its peak, is sweeter and often lasts longer as well as tasting better.
Fresh, tree-ripened and naturally flavourful
Unlike supermarket fruit which is often ripened with the addition of ethylene gas, our fruit develops its flavour naturally on the tree and is picked when it’s ripe. Sometimes early in the season, fruit is picked the same day it’s sold. We do store fruit in a chiller for a short time to hold it well at its best quality (depending on the type of fruit).
Do you use pesticides or sprays?
We use natural methods as much as possible, including integrated pest management, which balances the ecosystem so pests are controlled naturally by predators. Many pests have found a natural balance in the orchard and don’t cause a fruit quality issue.
Some pests, such as the Codling moth, don’t have natural predators in New Zealand, so we need to control them. They eat the apple from the inside so the damage is hidden until you cut the apple open. We monitor their numbers (using pheromone traps) and spray them in a targeted way only when there is an issue. We also use spray as a protective measure against fungal issues as the Waikato is a challenging climate for growing stone and pip fruit. We are having success with spays allowed in organic orchards and will continue to move in that direction.
Is Newstead Orchard organic?
We currently use many regenerative agriculture practices and are having great success with trialling organic methods on part of the orchard (where most of the vegetables are grown) and our focus is reducing spays as much as possible. Organic stone and pipfruit is especially difficult to grow in the humid conditions of the Waikato region.
The regenerative practices we currently use include:
minimising use of synthetic inputs (no nitrogen fertiliser)
legume cover crops over winter to supply nitrogen to the summer crops
diverse species of cover crops that host pest predators (such as the wasps that control woolly aphids)
minimising soil cultivation, experimenting with no cultivation and reducing the use of heavy machinery that compacts the soil
growing cover crops over winter to make mulch for summer. We roll and crimp it at the right stage of maturity to kill the plant without chemicals and then plant summer veggie crops straight into the mulch.
building soil organic matter and increasing soil carbon
practising agroforestry by growing vegetables in and amongst the fruit trees.
Allowing nature to return and flourish with ongoing native planting in the gully and areas around the orchard and controlling wildlife predators.
