What beautiful days we have had this week! Highs in the 70's and puffy white clouds. Not to worry though, we will be in the 90's by this weekend. Nice to have a break though.

             Bob Curtis, Danielle Veenstra, Robbie Commens

Today, Bob Curtis and Danielle Veenstra of the Almond Board of California hosted several farm visits for Robbie Commens, Productivity Development Officer of the Australian Macadamia Society. His intent is to find practices used in almond production that might apply to macadamias. I found it very interesting to hear of their production challenges. He stated that the California Almond industry is admired worldwide for our nutrition and production research and our information transfer to the farm level. He is right, we're the best!

FARMING IN THE FOOTHILLS
No Easy Task

Recently a heavy disk loosened the soil. Here, Ernesto is doing some skilled tractor driving to scrape the soil flat behind the disk. He had to deal with sideways drift of the scraper due to side-fall on the hillsides.

Eduardo is following the scraper with our heavy roller to push the cobbles down into the soil and create a flat surface. The roller will be used repeatedly because cobbles tend to "float" to the surface as the clay in the soil expands and contracts with moisture.

The end product is a flat surface that is satisfactory for nut farming. Rock removal will be an enduring project on this land. In this picture you can clearly see that we are dealing with different soil types. Unfortunately, cobbles are characteristic of both soils.

This is Alex McCloud of Band It Spreading Service. He is a local entrepreneur who designed a machine to place precise amounts of dry fertilizers around the base of young trees. The steady growth of the tree fruit and nut industries has kept his small fleet of machines busy for many years.

We used to scatter fertilizer in young trees by hand, but the scarcity and cost of labor created an opportunity for Alex. Here he is scattering fertilizer at the base of each tree. He also has machines that will place the fertilizer in bands at the tree base. Our next irrigation will dissolve the fertilizer and carry it into the root zone.

Almond orchards provide habitat for many species of wildlife. Here is a dove nest in the crotch of a tree. Did you know that doves mate for life and have a life span of up to 10 years?

Just 2 days ago I mentioned hail as a potential threat. At 5 PM yesterday (3/26) hail came down heavily in the Ballico area. This morning I went to evaluate an orchard we tend in that area and found that the storm missed us by 1/4 mile. This is hail still present on the ground 15 hours after the storm. Neighbors say the hail was peanut sized and covered the ground like snow. A peach orchard was badly damaged, but the almonds I saw looked like they were probably OK.

Monterey varitey

8th leaf trees

It is early in the season. Drought, frost, hail, insects, mites, diseases, and surprises nature may throw at us, have yet to take their toll, but at this point, I have to say the crop looks very good!

4th leaf trees

With the weather forecasters giving us good hope for some badly needed rainfall, we are applying fungicide (in many cases for the first time this year) to protect the trees, and nuts, from an array of diseases that can afflict them. Serious threats in the early season come from Shot Hole, Jacket Rot and Scab.

Here is a young block of Tulare walnuts ready to be pruned. While we are already guessing at the production of almonds, which are well past bloom, the walnuts (and most other plants) are just beginning to stir from their winter sleep.  This explains why almonds, very susceptible to frost during and immediately after bloom, can be grown here and not many other places. Our early warm springs (most years) make almond growing possible.

Anderson Nascimento of Spensa Technologies was on hand today to help install their "Z-Trap" which is designed to provide real-time insect trapping data. When insects attracted by a pheromone enter the trap they are electrically "zapped" and a count is recorded. The data is accessed via the internet. My hope is we will have more timely information for setting biofix dates which will enable better spray application timing. We will continure trapping by traditional methods (sticky traps) to compare to this new technology.

At this time, Nonpareil nuts that have not yet split the jackets are likely going to fall off.  With the number of nuts that are sizing up my guess is the crop in our area will be a good one. Frost is the biggest threat which could change that outlook.  No cold nights are in the immediate forecast.

Every year I am amazed at how quickly the nuts begin to grow after bloom. Bees are still active with blossoms to forage on, yet there are also nuts that have split and shed their jacket (the calex).
This is their most frost-sensitive period. Fortunately, cold nights are not in the forecast...for now.