By Andy Wilson

Anthony Rullo had little experience in producing his own cherries (despite growing up surrounded by a cherry orchard) until three years ago when he embraced the opportunity to plant his own trees and simultaneously trial some cutting-edge technology.

He has not looked back, planting out 1000 Royal Tiago trees which he grafted himself in July, 2022. 

But first, we needed to deal with Anthony’s media shyness which hardly impresses as he darts away from the camera between trees, forcing Tree Crop to resort to stealth.

He might insist he is not in this for the attention, but at an open day to show off the orchard, a voice calls out: “Everyone can see you trimmed your beard for this, Anthony”.

At which he relents, and then confesses “and it cost me $43”.

“How may cherries is that, Anth’?”

“This morning in the market, about two kilos.”

He finally poses for the camera.

The family business, The Happy Orchard, is nestled on 5ha outside Kyabram in northern Victoria and features regenerative farming practices, focusing on drought mitigation.

Anthony has set up about half the orchard with a new technology in the form of rectangular blocks buried to sub-surface between the trees.

Irrigation pipes head down into the middle of the blocks.

These are Hydrorocks, an innovation from a Brisbane company founded by Marco van Velzen, who has been savvy enough to obtain a Dutch government grant, garner the input from one Dutch and two Australian universities and run a trial under date palms in the middle of the Dubai desert.

“We know we save 70 per cent of water compared to traditional growing in the desert,” Marco says.

Anthony Rullo believes he is making about the same savings in water and is aiming to push it up to 75 per cent without skimping on fruit quality.

“This is going to give me prime cherries; they’re going be cleaner, they’re going to be stronger and there’s going to be less splitting,” Anthony says.

“It seems to me that they’re a more consistent crop too.”

Hydrorocks are made from basalt melted to more than 1800°C and then spun into ‘stone wool’ fibres which Marco then forms into blocks which can carry 95 per cent of their volume as water.

“It’s originally designed for catching storm water,” he explains.

“It slowly releases the water the next day, then it is ready for the next downpour; you want the water in the soil for the trees and the habitat and not just flushed away.”

Despite no experience in establishing an orchard, Anthony did master the fine art (or black magic) of pruning cherry trees.

“I don’t let anyone else prune them except me,” he says adamantly, having spent since childhood to get it right.

Pruning is widely regarded as the challenge for cherries, and the healthy scars of secateurs past reveal his orchard is indeed very young for its tree size.

An oddity is the retention of some towering branches among the finely formed ‘wine glasses’ of about nine branches; but I’m convinced he knows what he’s doing.

(For those in the know, he ‘headed’ some longer branches three times before this year – whoa.)

Both halves of the orchard are looking healthy (he has not neglected the ‘control’ group), but the difference between them is noticeable: the Hydrorock trees have been watered just three times this growing season (this was late October) compared to 12 waterings for the control.

The treated ones are slightly taller.

Anthony points out the control group is also slightly water stressed.

“Look at that – they’ve been watered at the same time yesterday; and they are about to start wilting, but the other ones, well, I can’t get them to stress.”

“Because everything is so well-maintained, I can see there is more crop on the Hydrorock trees.

“The fruit is set much better and I can see there’s not as many duds.”

The orchard has seven sensors inserted to a depth of 1m in the soil and attached to an app which tells Anthony when to water again.

Soil tests are done twice a year by soil microbiologist and carbon farming specialist Paul Storer who is also heavily involved in the project.

Anthony said he intended to fertilise the trees this this year.

“So I sent my soil off to Paul and he said ‘no – don’t fertilise this year’.”

This saving is likely due to several nutrient practices: spraying the foliage with a microbe powder, planting the trees above Paul’s unique fertiliser and covering the surface with a mix of fertiliser and fibrous stone wool to hold it all together.

On top of that, he sows a sub-canopy of foliage cover – mainly grasses.

The fertiliser is based on natural minerals, and the beneficial microbes eat the fertiliser passing it onto the plant, thereby reducing the need for synthetic water-soluble fertilisers.

As the produce market moves towards sustainable and healthy products, Anthony thinks the timing is right to grow his fruit without chemicals and conventional fertiliser.

By the third year the family is hoping to get between 5kg and 10kg of fruit per tree, which is far ahead of the typical time needed of five years, and his trees look like they will reach that target.

Out the back there is a 6ha ‘patch’ of sweet and hot chillies, watermelon and rock melon which the family grows commercially in addition to the orchard.

Who should be using all this sustainable technology?

“A small farmer who wants to produce the best quality fruit that can possibly been grown.”