Reusing & Recycling in the name of Olives at Harman Wines
Living Greener assists a local award-winning South Gippsland winery, Harman Wines with their property maintenance. The Harman Wines property is 10 acres with vines, a cellar door, veggie gardens, a fruit and olive orchard, a large paddock with sheep, and a bit of space to mow and brushcut. With the Harman Wines business growing in leaps and bounds the owners have needed to spread their attention in directions other than the grounds and that is where Living Greener has taken a load off.
David and Nicole Harman share the same philosophy as the team at Living Greener. Everything on the farm has a purpose, production, pasture protection, recycling materials lying around the property (sometimes with a little creativity) and reusing something in ways that is different to its original use. All of this combined with sourcing second-hand materials allows us to create a space that is not only environmentally sustainable but is also filled with second-hand materials that would have otherwise be burnt or would have found its way to landfill.
There are a number of olive trees that have been planted on the property to act as a protective barrier to the fruit tree orchard. This a really effective idea in theory as olive trees are extremely hardy and when grown in the right conditions have the potential to live for up to 200 years! Yep, that’s right……200 years!! They have the ability to grow into large trees with a wide thick canopy which is a perfect shelter, sending air movement skyward before hitting susceptible crops. However, with the recent wet South Gippsland winter, these olive trees have been struggling and were in need of a little bit of love. We needed to lift each tree 3-4 inches up from their original position making sure the roots sat level with or slightly above the natural gradient of the land. Olives don’t really like wet feet, it is important to make sure water will freely drain away from the root system. It is also important to make sure the roots are kept warm without being dried or cooked from the Spring/Summer sun so a heavy mulch is needed as well as watering the trees in. If we use a native bush mulch, it needs to have been rested for a month or so. Super fresh mulch draws the nitrogen out of the soil and nitrogen helps with root development, if we take that away from a plant that is trying to re-establish itself it will only struggle more. Any straw is fine (lucerne, pea, sugarcane) however sugarcane mulch has the highest nitrogen content and may be preferred. And with the annoying not even hungry just going to break and leave the plant Hares, we needed to protect the trees and tie them off to help stabilise them against the prevailing SW winds.
Our first thought before undertaking any project is always what do we have on the property that we can use? The topsoil was sitting in a massive pile that had been dug from a dam (veggie plots, garden beds, and olive tree lifting sorted). We had straw bales leftover from a wedding that was held at the winery the weekend before, let’s use a bale of that to tuck the little olive trees in! I can see a few small rolls of ring lock fencing wire sitting by that gate, that would act as a perfect guard. Hang on, the Hares will be able to fit through the wire squares? That’s ok, I can cut the original plastic netting guards in half and wrap it around the bottom half of the ring lock guard, done. Unfortunately, I ran out after completing 4 guards and there was none to be found anywhere else on the property. So what else could I use? I remembered there was a plastic drum full of bamboo stakes sitting in the storage container and wondered if threading them vertically through the wire would be effective, two stakes per wire square, and bang it worked perfectly.
A project that had the potential to cost a few dollars ended up costing $11.50. We needed to purchase a roll of jute webbing, I couldn’t find anything that was appropriate to tie off the trees to the stakes to help stabilise them (a material that should have been quite easy to source and get creative with however I could not find anything!) A few hours later, some hammering and a bit of tie wire we had some very happy olive trees.
If we are not fussed with complete uniformity and perfection, then reusing and recycling what we have already is a really effective way of helping us move closer to living sustainably and living greener! For us at living greener, reusing and recycling is perfection!
Seed you soon!
