Hi all
Welcome to the Spring edition of Hardyards water delivery and lifestyle property services newsletter – aka Hardyards Nelson
The idea of the newsletter is to help you with what you should be thinking of doing with your lifestyle block or water supply for the current season. If you do not wish to receive our newsletter please reply stop and you will be removed from the newsletter email list
Quite a lot has happened since the last edition. We - Hardyards Nelson have entered the Nelson Tasman Chamber of Commerce business awards in the emerging business category. The awards dinner is 1 November so the summer edition will have how we fared. If you are interested the link to the awards page entrants is below and it links through to some of the other cool stuff the chamber offer. We were also exhibitors again at the Nelson Home and Garden show for the second year. It was great to meet those of you who we have helped out over the last year and for Michelle to put a name to some of the faces.
We would love your feedback on the newsletter and any ideas on topics you want to know a bit more about so feel free to send us an email.
Water and tanks
As noted above hopefully you have thought about the health and cleanliness of your tanks and ultimately your water supply. We are happy to help you with this should you need some advice. We are also looking into various options for indicating water levels in your tanks, to help you know exactly what you have in your tank and help prevent you from running out during the dry summer season. There are a number of options and obviously cost variance. The cheapest is not always the easiest but for some it is no problem to simply climb a ladder take the top of your tank and look in. The mid cost point option is a float gauge where a plastic ball on a pole sits inside your tank while another ball extends outside the tank and the higher the orange ball is the more water you have in your tanks. This is a very simply way to monitor your water supply. The top cost option is any one of a number of electronic gauges. These come with apps to your mobile, wifi to yours (or possibly our) computers using the cloud and some even have leak detectors. These are are certainly very effective, particularly if your tank is not in easy sight of your day to day living areas or you would like us to monitor the level remotely for you to advise you when your level is getting low. We are looking into the pricing of the different models and will keep you updated. It would be good to know who may be interested in installing a gauge of some sort and if going the electronic method who may want us to monitor it for them.
Spring pastures and weeds
Spring is the time to feed that growth in your pastures and control the weeds that are actively growing. When using a systemic weed control product, the best and quickest kill occurs when the plant is actively growing as the active ingredients travel through the plant fully including the roots and in a quicker time frame. Gorse is a big problem in the Nelson/Tasman region, particularly on the clay soils where the soil has been disturbed (as in the building/landscaping phases) and little else can compete against the gorse seedling. Gorse seeds can live in the ground for at least 35 years and on gorse infested land it is estimated that there could be as many as 20,000 seeds in every square metre of the top few centimetres of soil.This is why constant control is necessary. Every year that the gorse gets to grow and re-seed it is contributing to this number of dormant seeds collecting in the soil. If the gorse is sprayed every year the plant doesnt get to maturity to spread more seeds and while the gorse will re-grow you can be satisfied its another seed being used. The other thing we want to discuss here is the application of liquid fertiliser's. The benefits of it are no leaching and it doesnt contaminate waterways. Because it is applied as a liquid it is immediately available to the plant through its foliage, it stays where its sprayed - it doesnt run off so more nutrient to the plant immediately. We prefer a seaweed based fertiliser as it stimulates natures own soil processes and improves pasture mineral content. Because the soil is full of billions of micro-organisms which break down minerals, the dead plant or animal matter, as well as proteins, sugars and other substances, the natural stimulation of these microbial organisms naturally improves your soils health. A plentiful supply of soil micro-organisms and earthworms is fundamental to to healthy high producing soils. Liquid fertilisers means the amount applied to the plant is relatively small but the amount used by the plant may be as much as 95%.
