Orchards

Walnuts Australia manages 620 hectares of walnut orchards in Tasmania and 1,615 hectares in the Riverina, N.S.W. In total, this orchard area represents over 700,000 trees. These orchards are a combination of joint venture, investor funded, private ownership and company owned orchards. When mature these orchards will produce over 11,000 tonnes of in-shell walnuts. Of the Riverina orchard area, 1,365 ha is owned by Walnuts Australia Pty Ltd and of this approximately 950 ha is leased to Growers under 3 Managed Investment Schemes, and 250 ha is owned by a private owner, Motspur Park Pty Ltd.

Walnuts Australia has adopted the latest growing techniques and varieties from California and France, the recognised world leaders in walnut production. The varieties chosen are modern, lateral bearing varieties, which have been bred to bear early in their life and produce higher yields. Normally it will take 4 to 5 years for production to commence. Most orchards are established on a high density (300+ trees per hectare) spacing to allow for hedgerow management - this will allow mechanical pruning after year 5 to 7 years and reduces the cost of pruning. Mechanical hedging involves machines equipped with circular saws pruning one third of the orchard each year (both sides of every third inter-row). Walnut trees respond vigorously to pruning and this maintains the trees in a healthy state. A short term downside to pruning is that yield is sacrificed, however with a closely planted orchard the trees would soon become over-crowded resulting in dropping yields if pruning was not performed. Prunings are mulched and left in the orchard as organic matter.

All orchards are irrigated using state of the art mini-sprinklers (Tasmania) or drip line (Riverina) and during the growing season, the trees are fertilised via the irrigation system (fertigation).

Soil and leaf tests are performed regularly and any aberrations in nutrient levels are corrected appropriately. Weeds on tree lines are chemically controlled and trees are sprayed with fungicide in spring as a preventative against walnut blight Prior to the first harvest, the orchard floor is smoothed to produce a smooth surface to harvest from.