“We already have two orders for entire banana plantations. People are realising that they can make $60,000 per hectare of bananas, while they can make $1,500 per hectare with dairy products or beef, that is, jerky.

“There’s a guy who has a whole banana garden down in Taranaki and yes, he has to protect them from frost in the winter, but they grow and bear fruit all year round.”

McCloy has supplied a temperate papaya variety to a grower in Invercargill and pineapple to a tropical fruit lover in Whanganui. He says there is also demand for the actual fruit.

“We had a buyer fly in from Queenstown to find out which orchards we supplied and to bring supplies of New Zealand-grown papayas and bananas from New Zealand to Queenstown and Wānaka for our customers there.”

The gardening is a side business for McCloy, a science and horticulture teacher at Taipa Area School, where he encourages students to grow tropical fruit in an old community garden they are revitalizing.

“We noticed that the temperate species up here weren’t producing fruit as well anymore. And so we thought, well, we have to adapt to the increased temperatures.”

A stroke accelerated his transition to commercial fruit tree farming.

His partner, Elle Montgomery, plays a big role, potting, weeding and marketing the plants while he is busy teaching. Selecting the plants he grows in a 5-acre greenhouse overlooking Doubtless Bay requires a lot of research.

“I ask myself, ‘Okay, can it grow in New Zealand? Is it good for our environment? Will it become a weed?'”

McCloy collects seeds and cuttings from orchards in New Zealand because he has found that imported seeds of tropical fruits do not have a high germination rate.

He has acquired a wealth of knowledge about growing tropical plants, which he passes on to his customers, including how to deal with weather, different soil types and pests such as pūkeko, which like to dig in the trunk of banana plants.

“A few Pūkeko will cut down a full-grown banana tree. They just scratch at the base until it falls over. They’re like little lumberjacks.”

McCloy loves the idea of ​​New Zealanders like him enjoying locally grown tropical fruit. In the middle of winter, he has a pineapple tree bearing fruit just waiting to be picked.

“You try it, you grow it, and you say, ‘Not only does it work,’ but it works year-round.”