Berry production on Bob Teal’s Cambridge orchard increased by almost 50 per cent last year.
Bob Teal has grown award winning berries at Bruntwood Gardens near Cambridge.
Teal’s 1.8-hectare Bruntwood Gardens lifestyle block produced nearly 6000 trays of berries in the 2024 season for New World and Pak ‘n Save supermarkets, compared to 4000 the previous year.
Asked how he did it Teal, who described himself as a Second World War baby, said he had been doing some tweaking.
By that Teal meant he had spent the last few years planting hundreds of mainly Taranaki, Ranui and Karaka Black varieties of berry plants that align with early season maturity inside custom built tunnel houses with some plants producing up to a month before their unprotected counterparts.
The property was a dairy farm when Teal bought it 44 years ago and within five years he had converted it to horticulture.
The block produces berries from October until January, and Teal is already thinking about how he can increase demand for next season.
Teal won the Agri-Business Management Award and Innovation Award at this month’s Waikato Farm Environment Awards for his work and said he was “blown away”.
Judges were impressed with Teal’s 2.7-metre-wide and 100-metre-long tunnel houses, custom built from plastic piping, polythene and wood. They are narrow and spaced out enough not to require irrigation.
Teal has also converted pushchairs into picking trolleys, repurposed an electric golf cart so it can be used for spraying, and recycles cane growth for mulch.
Judges said Teal had demonstrated strategic business acumen to maximise opportunities, coupled with exemplary entrepreneurship and a willingness to take risks.
They were also impressed that he had adapted to changing situations and environments with resilience and vision and proactively addressed business challenges with practical, long-term solutions.
Teal said the operation turned over enough cash to employ a small season staff and “more than comfortable directors salary”.
