Hi, all
There are a few things coming up in August in Mauku you may want to put on your calendar.
Sunday, Aug 2nd – Weed working bee, St Brides, Mauku 10.00am to 12.00 noon 
Join us for the annual wild woolly weed control at St Brides. Come and see how the plantings are getting on. Meet up by the bridge over the Mauku stream. The target weed species are woolly nightshade and privet. Bring a sharp spade, boots and long sleeves. We will have some hand saws and loppers available, as well as a couple of knapsack sprayers for stump treating to prevent regrowth.
Tuesday, August 4th – Farm Environment Planning talk, St Brides Church, Mauku, 7.00pm This will be an interesting evening with a discussion on: “Farm Environment Planning, One Billion Trees and more” led by Leanna Birch from NZ Regenerate. Leanna will be discussing some of the projects she is involved in with local landowners and how things like One Billion Trees can work for you. If you are thinking about setting aside space on your land for a planting project be sure to be there. We will also see how our area is gearing up for pest control with the latest Trap NZ data. All welcome. A good supply of biscuits is guaranteed.
Saturday, August 29th – St Brides big day out Tree Planting, 10.00am – 1.00pm. We need your help to plant around 1,000 more trees at St Brides to support our previous planting. Tell your friends and neighbours to put it in their diary. Bring a sharp spade and sturdy boots (more details to follow). Lunch will be provided afterwards.
The 2020 drought proved hard on some of the species we planted previously – even some of the totara didn’t survive. Added to this we had a huge invasion of rabbits that took out many of the coprosmas, kahikatea and totara despite a rabbit repellent being used with the plantings. Some of the kowhai also didn’t make it through. On the bright side, the puriri have done very well apart from a few frost casualties, and we have had almost 100% survival of karo and flax. We are taking the approach of keeping it pretty simple for now on the species range and will continue to focus on puriri, karo, totara, kahikatea, flax and some coprosma repens until we achieve good cover. Fortunately we have kept some funding in reserve for “fill-ins” and Beca Group have kindly donated $2,000 to add to this. In addition, some of the staff from Beca will be joining us on the day to help out.
Has anyone seen kaka around lately? Landcare Research are keen to know, so please pass on your kaka sightings. They have been coming in to our place most evenings for the last 4 – 5 months and Andy Saunders has had them playing with the tui in the trees next to their house at Whiriwhiri. Entertaining.