Whekei Ponga Dicksonia fibrosa

We have some good specimens of Wheki Ponga Dicksonia fibrosa at the gully base off Sexton Road. This tree fern is readily distinguished by its massive fibrous trunk and by its thick skirt of dead fronds that stay attached. They have been added to the Existing Flora page on the right hand side of the Home page.

Car boot sale

We had a small stand at the Tree Growers Associations annual plant car boot sale held at the Hamilton Gardens. The day was brilliantly fine. We had a selection of plants and flaxes that were not suitable for planting in the gully for sale. We made $77.60 after the rental for the site was deducted. We were very happy with that. That was the first deposit into our Trust bank account!

Ongoing Pest Control Trials

While we are happy with the rat trap design we are finding that mice are continually eating the peanut butter bait. This has become quite frustrating. We reviewed all the poisons available on the market. Our major concern of using poison bait was the chance of poisoning a pet puss when it ate a half dead mouse or rat that was dying of poison. Our research has come up with “Natural No Rats”, a bio gro certificated product marketed by Kiwicare. You can check out the spec by clicking on this link http://www.kiwicare.co.nz/index.cfm/1,103,0,0,html/Natural-NO-Rats
This product will be trialed over the next few months.

Working Bee this Saturday 16th July

The monthly working Bee will be in the gully at the end of Sexton Road. (The road Odering Nursery is in). We will be weeding in preparation for planting.
8.45am to 12 noon.
Bring, if you have them: secateurs, a spade, gardening gloves and something for your morning tea.
It is not too wet so boots or gum boots should be fine.

Lots of seed trays planted out / Keep 1Lt milk bottles

Looking to the future we have a large number of seed trays sown in targeted native species that will be required over the coming years. There are a wide range of germination times from four weeks of the Kawakawa, Macropiper excelsum to one year or more for things like the Pokaka, Elaeocarpus hookerianus. These will be required to be potted up when the seedlings are big enough. This is why we have applied for funding for potting mix. We have a large collection of 1Lt pots that we have kept from all our planting out this winter however we will be short of the 500ml size which are ideal for the first potting from the germination trays. The 1Lt budget plastic or waxed cardboard milk or yoghurt cartons cut down make ideal pots for this purpose. If you, your mum or granny uses them it would be really helpful if you could wash them and put them aside for us. If you let us know when you have enough that they are getting in your way we will arrange for them to be picked up or for you to drop them off.

Long Tailed Bat Survey Oct

I caught up with Darren Le Roux (the Hamilton’s bat man) on the DOC stand at the Agricultural Field Days and had a good discussion about the likely hood of bats being in our gully. He felt there was a good possibility as they have been found at Taupiri and he has records of them roasting in willow trees. He has secured funding for a Hamilton wide survey to be done. This is going to be in October when the bats are more active and, rather than hand held monitors which rely on you and the bat being at the same place at the same time of the night they will be using fix positioned ones. These will be installed and left in place for about five nights then moved on to another location.
He is interested in working in with our group when he is doing Hamilton North.
For information on the Long Tailed Bat click on this link: http://www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/Projects/Project-Echo . It makes good reading.
The photo our thanks to Kerry Borkin

Trust AGM

For a full AGM report please click on the page link at the right hand side of this page.