Waitekauri Valley Landcare Group. First Planting!

On Tuesday morning 19th June HELP Waihi will be supporting a fledgling local group, the ‘Waitekauri Valley Landcare Group’, who will be carrying out their first major native planting as a group, at the old gold mining township area of ‘Waitekauri’.

The beautiful Waitekauri Valley near Waihi contains the Waitekauri River and tributaries, all of which originate in the bush of the Coromandel Forest Park, that bounds it on three sides. At the southern end the valley widens out onto the Waihi Basin, and the Waitekauri River tributes to the Ohinemuri at the eastern edge of Waikino village.

The site chosen is a stream/wetland area that contributes to the Waitekauri after running over farmland, and the planting will help further improve water quality. The river won an award last year for ‘Most Improved in Region for E. Coli’, monitored over the last ten years, thanks to the efforts of the farmers, a great result.

 

 

http://www.cawthron.org.nz/foundation/nz-river-awards/

The project will be a combined community effort, with some riparian landowners, (who make up a large part of the group), volunteers from Waikino village, some from Waikino School, HELP Waihi Inc., an HDC Councillor, WRC, some French travellers, even Paeroa StreamCare if they can make it. Bring some friends!

Gathering at 9am, we aim to have close to 500 plants, trees, shrubs, flax, and native sedges, in the ground by around 11, and then share a BBQ brunch and hot cuppa. Bring a bit of food to share, good boots and gear for the wet, latex gloves available. Most holes will be drilled, spades optional. Site is about halfway up the Waitekauri Road, a couple of hundred metres before Scheltema Rd.

The Day! Team talk;

Getting stuck in;

 

 

 

 

Potting Mix Bin Upgrade

With a bit of final digging out by Tim, volunteer from Germany, and a quick trip to Goldpine with the big trailer for timber, the strengthening of the back wall of the potting mix bin was advanced. The new wall extends out to start forming a storage bay for odd fencing materials, and various bits and pieces we accumulate from time to time in the course of site preparation for planting mainly. The storage bay will help toward good housekeeping at the HELP Inc. nursery, and the new top approach for trucks to the potting mix bin will work much better than tipping on the flat from below.

The various ‘volunteer’ diggers had had an interesting time getting down through the rocks and old concrete fence posts that had been buried with the original back filling, but the gnarly job has finally been done. Tim and Jasmine from Germany in the background.

Next job, damp proof layer, drainage, and back filling……

Major Groundworks at HELP Nursery.

Well the day finally arrived when however many cubic metres of soil that had for various reasons been stored ‘dumped’ in the vicinity of the nursery would finally be sorted and put to better use. 8 am on January 11, Waihi Bobcat Services, aka Miles Hoffman, arrived with Truck and rubber tracked BobCat excavator. By 3pm when he left, he had filled and recontoured around

the new stand out area extension, scraped out for an ‘odds and sods’ compound to be built beside the Potting mix bin, scraped and metalled of a new top approach to the bin for the truck, and sorted and cleared away the two large heaps of excess soil that had become weed colonies. An amazing amount of barrow and shovel work completed in less than a day! Now it just remains to do the follow-up construction and installation work so we have an increased irrigated plant stand-out area, direct and level pathway from potting shed through new and to existing enclosed standout. Also to fit retaining wall, fence, and gate to new compound, box and pour tipping pad for potting mix bin, and fence and gate to enclose same.

Waihi Bobcat Services will return on 24th January to work with Waihi College’s farm unit manager on revamping their garden beds using soil sorted and stockpiled for the purpose during this operation.