Pistachios Need Potassium

Low Potassium Leads to Low Yields

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

Potassium is a needed element in pistachios, so keep that in mind for the next season’s production.

Phoebe Gordon, Orchard Farm Advisor from Madera and Merced counties. She explains how low potassium can lead to low yield in pistachios.

“Aside from nitrogen, potassium is needed in the highest concentration of plants compared to all the other essential nutrients,” she said. It may be hard to diagnose a deficiency, especially if leaf samples are not taken. Low yields are a symptom of this deficiency. That’s why farmers need to make sure that they are taking their yearly or bi-yearly leaf samples from their trees.

Applying potassium is specific to the grower’s preference. “I would say the source doesn’t really matter as long as you pick what works for you and your situation,” she said. But there can be differences. Growers might want to pick a higher soluble fertilizer if they like to fertigate because they can put more in over a shorter period of time. Banding works as well. It fixes soils where potassium can be trapped in clay particles. The bands saturate the soils and leaves the potassium available for uptake.

Applications of potassium are needed year-round. “About 29 pounds of potash is removed per thousand kernel yield and about 27 is needed to supply tree growth,” Gordon said. You want to be able to replace what was lost in previous years. Potassium is a little bit easier because growers are not going to lose it because it is not negatively charged. Potassium sticks around in the soil.

California Ag Today2019-08-16T08:17:57-07:00August 20th, 2019|

Pedestrian Orchards Will Reduce Injuries

Pedestrian Orchards in the Making

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

California Ag Today recently spoke with Becky Phene with the University of California out of the Kearney ag center. She’s working alongside Kevin Day, UC tree fruit advisor in Tulare County, on development of pedestrian orchards.

“My background is irrigation. I got asked to participate in the pedestrian orchard with Kevin because he wanted to demonstrate multiple technologies that would be beneficial not just now, but in the future,” Phene said.

Day has combined his pedestrian orchard with subsurface drip irrigation. The pedestrian orchards are by design kept short so that there is no usage of ladders. Eliminating the usage of ladders can help prevent on the job accidents.

“The pruning lets the tree grow quickly and fill in as quickly as possible in the first couple of years, and then he develops the shape of the canopy and the shape of the leaders,” Phene said.

Photo by Kevin Day, UCANR Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor, based in Tulare County.

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:05:13-07:00March 14th, 2018|

Growers Face Fire Damage on Avocado Trees

Avocado Growers Should Not Cut Down Trees With Only Fire-Damaged Canopies

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

Avocado growers should not make quick decisions on what to do with fire damage on avocado trees. There are right decisions and wrong decisions.

Wildfires in Ventura County have burned over two hundred and thirty thousand acres, and avocado growers are among those affected by the fires; many orchards have been burned. We spoke with Ben Faber, a UC cooperative extension farm advisor in Ventura County. He told us about this devastation, and how it’s affected avocado orchards.

“I’ve been out looking at burned orchards, and it’s really too early to look. It looks worse than you see, so you see the burn canopies and it looks devastating, but they’ll come back,” Faber said. “It’s when you look at the orchard and see the green canopy and and you say, Oh gosh, I’m saved. But if you get down on your knees and you see these pustule, or boils round the base of the tree, that means the tree is gone.”

“This is tree sap underneath that’s boiled out,” Faber explained. “The cambium is damaged, and you may think, ‘Oh, everything is looking fine,’ and then you get a nice dry wind and the tree collapses all of a sudden because the can’t carry enough water to meet transpirational demand. Oftentimes, that means it was a crown fire and burned around the base of the trunk.”

“Some of the trees that looked the most damaged actually might be much better off than those showing little signs of damage. That’s why it’s important for growers to wait to assess the damage in their orchards,” he said.

In trees showing canopy burn, you’ll have to prune the tree. It’ll come back fine, according to Faber.

“What we are afraid of is that growers will respond in the wrong way. They’ll probably start cutting down trees that have lost their canopies and leave the ones that have a green canopy, and it might be the other way around,” he said. “We’re telling people, don’t do anything. Water if they need to and let nature take its course.”

Editor’s note: Photos by Ben Faber

California Ag Today2017-12-14T14:37:53-08:00December 14th, 2017|

Cover Crops Help Bees and Soil

Flowering Cover Crops Stimulates Bees

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

California Ag Today recently interviewed Billy Synk, director of pollination programs for Project Apis m and manager of the Seeds for Bees Project. The Project Apis m mission is to fund and direct research to enhance the health and vitality of honeybee colonies while improving crop production. He spoke on the benefits of cover crops for honeybee health.

“It’s an amazing project and an exciting project to work on and manage because it’s doing two good things at once. It’s a win-win situation. It’s helping out the soil and helping out bees,” Synk said.

When Synk speaks to growers, he mentions those two good reasons.

“Do it to help the bees that are in your orchard become stronger, and do a better job pollinating, but then also help your soil with organic matter and improved water infiltration.”

There are about two million beehives, coming to California from every corner of the United States, and the bees are very hungry.

“Not only are they very hungry, they’re the hungriest they have been all year, and their most important job is to pollinate almonds. Well, if you can have a cover crop blooming before those almonds bloom, you can stimulate them a lot better and create a positive feedback loop,” Synk said.

Synk explained that as more pollen comes into the hive, they rear more bees.

“That brood has a pheromone that tell the adult bees to leave the hive and go collect pollen. That stimulation is just going to make that hive excited and strong and ready to go the day that those almonds bloom,” he said.

Contact Project Apis m for more information and to possibly get cover crop seeds to plant this season.

https://www.projectapism.org/

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:05:14-07:00December 12th, 2017|

Sharing Secrets to a Successful Bowl of Cherries

Weather and Pruning Make Life a Bowl of Cherries

By Laurie Greene, Founding Editor

Clark Goehring, a third generation Kern County farmer, produces cherries and almonds. He summarized his cherry harvested as “good compared to the other years when we have had rain. Some people in our area still had rain during harvest, but we were able to harvest and bring our cherries to market in good condition.”

“Of course, it rained a lot this winter and spring, but you do not want rain when cherries are maturing on the tree; they don’t like rain.”

Goehring explained that when it rains beyond the point when cherries start coloring, they split, making them unmarketable. “But while it may take some rained-on cherries off the market, the price of the marketable fruit goes up,” he said, benefiting those growers who had a quality crop, like him.

Goehring’s farm workers train the cherry trees to keep them low—approximately 8 feet tall. “We have tried to have them bush out instead of being more of a central leader. Actually, it’s called Spanish Bush style or, in modified form, KGB.”

Kym Green Bush designed the KGB training method in Australia to use multiple leaders and have them fruit on the leaders themselves. KGB simplifies pruning so less experienced farm workers can learn the skill more easily. The trees are replenished every five years.

Goehring said the method saves money on the farm, cuts labor and increases workers’ safety because it requires no ladders and the harvest is quicker. Harvesting without ladders also gives Goehring an advantage of attracting farm labor over other orchards that require ladders.

“In California, if farm workers have their choice of picking your cherries without using ladders, which is usually piecework, or someone else’s crop with ladders, they are going to want to come to you,” he explained.

California Ag Today2017-08-02T16:14:04-07:00August 2nd, 2017|

Huanglongbing is causing concern in California

Increase of Huanglongbing in California Causes Concern

By Brian German, Associate Broadcaster

Southern California has seen a concerning increase in the amount of trees that are infected with Huanglongbing, or citrus greening disease. California Ag Today discussed the news with Beth Grafton-Cardwell, an IPM Specialist and Research Entomologist for the UC Riverside Entomology Department stationed in the San Joaquin Valley. She agreed that there is an increased concern surrounding HLB.

“It kind of exploded this fall, and it’s kind of continuing. And, that’s not unexpected. The Department of Food and Ag removes only the trees that are polymerase chain reaction – positive. And sometimes, it takes one to two years for a tree for you to be able to detect the bacteria using that method,” Grafton-Cardwell said.

Beth Grafton-Cardwell

There is no cure currently available for HLB, so once a tree is infected, it will eventually die. Researchers continue working to find a possible cure for HLB, or at the very least, a more effective means of diagnosing infected trees. “Most of the techniques that are going to help us cure or prevent the disease from being transmitted are five to ten years away. Yet, I think we’re going to see a rapid expansion of the disease in Southern California in this coming year,” Grafton-Cardwell said.

Early detection is one of the most important things. Grafton-Cardwell noted that many farmers are “helping to get the research accomplished and, for example, helping to get early detection techniques tested, and things like that so that we can try and stay on top of the disease.”

In California, production trees are not required to be screened, but many nurseries are now shifting towards putting all of their trees under screening in an effort to be more proactive in guarding against the spread of HLB.

Biological controls like Tamarixia are used as a means to reduce the number Asian citrus psyllids, which cause HLB, but that type of control method is not designed to completely eradicate insects.

“They’re starting to release the Tamarixia Wasps in Bakersfield. So we’re getting them up into the San Joaquin Valley so they can help out in those urban areas,” Grafton-Cardwell said.

Dogs are also used as a means to detect infected trees, but there is still a need for more effective techniques. “A large team of dogs can do maybe 1,000 acres a day, and we’ve got 300,000 acres of commercial citrus. So I think we need a multitude of techniques,” Grafton-Cardwell said.

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:01:59-07:00April 27th, 2017|

Innovative Biomass Conversion to Help Ag

New Biomass Conversion Idea Could Help Ag Industry

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Editor

A new biomass process will convert woody ag waste, including almond hulls and shells, into ethanol, which has a demand and makes the conversion possible.

Eric McAfee is Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Aemetis Inc., a Culpertino-based industrial biotechnology company producing renewable chemicals and fuels using patented microbes and processes.

The current bio-generations and biomass plants are shutting down left and right because they have lost their profit due to low electricity prices.

Eric McAffee is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Aemetis

“The fundamental problem that we have is that the biomass energy business makes electricity, and that electricity is being replaced by solar energy and wind energy, which is funded by a 30 percent federal tax credit,” McAfee said.

“When the cost of energy is 30 percent lower because the federal government has supports, of course the biomass energy producers are challenged to compete with that lower cost source of energy,” McAfee explained.

Data shows that about 70 percent of the plants in California are already shut down, and more are shutting down each month.

That’s where Aemetis steps in. “Our view is that biomass in the form of orchard waste, vineyard waste – even forest waste, actually – has a very valuable opportunity to become the fuels that could go directly into California automobiles,” McAfee said. “Converting the biomass into fuels rather than biomass into electricity has been the missing link.”

Doing all the conversion work is a proprietary microbe. “It’s a little organism that acts sort of like yeast in that it takes in these wood molecules, and it converts them into different molecules in its body, and then it excretes ethanol as one of the products it makes,” McAfee said.

It’s similar to the wine industry, where the yeast takes sugar from the grape juice and converts it to alcohol.

“We’re taking orchard wood, and we’re producing liquid fuels that are very valuable in California because they’re high in oxygen, so they burn more cleanly than gasoline, and they’re high in octane, so they make the engine perform sort of like a high performance racing engine would. It’s very valuable as a fuel and good for the environment. The plant that will do all this is currently being built in Keyes, CA. We’re actually in initial engineering right now. We expect to have it up and running in … approximately 18 months,” McAfee said.

And McAfee noted that the conversion process is not just a theory. “This technology has been actually produced in six different plants around the world. Over 200 million dollars of investments have been made in the development of the technology,” he said.

“We’re essentially taking an agricultural waste, and we’re adding the additional volume of ethanol that’s mandated under California law. It’s a 10 percent blend in California, but the federal government has approved a 15 percent blend. I do expect over time that California will be at not only 15 percent, but even higher blends,” McAfee said.

“There’s a lot to work with – literally hundreds of thousands of tons of agricultural waste produced every year in addition to the removal of the orchard wood itself after its useful life of 20 to 30 years,” McAfee said.

And while several UC Cooperative farm advisors are working on orchard chipping and leaving it in the orchard – as well as bringing almond shells and hulls back into the orchard, which could be beneficial to the orchard soil – McAfee noted that the industry will figure out a balance.

“What we’re going to see over time is the right balance of the biomass that needs to go back into the field verses really true waste biomass that needs to be removed,” he said.

“There’s about a million acres of almonds in California, and over a 20 to 30 year lifespan, it means 40,000 to 50,000 acres a year of almonds gets removed. That’s a tremendous amount of biomass that has to be put somewhere, and right now, turning it into electricity in these large plants has been a solution, but we certainly think that turning it into liquid fuels and supplying California motorists is going to be an exciting future for these farmers,” McAfee said.

Again, the conversion plant should be operating by mid-2018. “We’re excited about it. It’s very good for the air quality in the Central Valley, because we don’t want to go back to the 1960s and ’70s and end up with these farmers basically having very few choices, and deciding that paying an air quality fine is the best of worst choices,” McAfee said. “I would suggest that, frankly, turning it into fuel in a very clean process, such as what we run, could be a big part of maintaining improved air quality in the Central Valley of California.”

Patrick Cavanaugh2017-04-06T03:48:06-07:00March 29th, 2017|

Fighting to Protect Family Farms from Water Diversion

In Face of Water Diversion Threat, Ag Industry Experts are Speaking Out

By Laurie Greene, Editor

California Ag Today has been reporting on the California State Water Resources Control Board’s (SWRCB) proposed plan to divert 40 percent of the surface water from the Tuolumne River and two additional tributaries of the San Joaquin River between February 1st and June 30th every year. The SWRCB plan is designed to increase flows in the Delta in an effort to help the declining smelt and salmon populations. Yet, these water diversions would severely impact not only the farm industry, but communities in the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts as well.

Michael Boccadoro, president of West Coast Advisors

Ag officials say this is yet another threat to family farms in an attempt to protect the smelt and salmon. Farmers would lose a major portion of their surface water and be forced to pump more groundwater.

“Farming is not just a job; it’s a way of life for many of these families. And that livelihood, that way of life, is being threatened,” said Michael Boccadoro, president of West Coast Advisors, an independent, nonpartisan public affairs and advocacy firm that specializes in complex and often controversial public issues in Sacramento.

Boccadoro said the farm industry in the region is not sitting still while all of this is happening. There is a website, worthyourfight.org, that addresses this new assault on agriculture.

WorthYourFight.org

“It is worth fighting for,”said Boccadoro. “I was born and raised in agriculture, and I still think it’s a wonderful lifestyle. We need to protect it at all costs. This is starting to border on the ridiculous in terms of just one issue after another. . . This is not a “Mother Nature” issue; this is government putting these obstacles and these problems in front of agriculture, and that’s troubling.”

“We produce much of the fruits and vegetables and nearly all the nut crops for the entire nation. So, of course, we would expect to see significant amounts of water being used by farming in California,” Boccadoro said.

“It’s just reality, and for whatever reason, I think people have been misled and don’t understand this is just part of growing food. Like I have said, if you are concerned about it, all you’ve got to do is quit eating. It’s that simple.”

Links:

California State Water Resources Control Board’s (SWRCB)

West Coast Advisors

worthyourfight.org

California Ag Today2016-11-22T22:11:51-08:00November 22nd, 2016|

Initial Walnut Irrigation Can be Delayed

Walnut Irrigation Research Update

By Brian German, Associate Broadcaster

First springtime walnut irrigation can be delayed, according to a UC Cooperative Extension team in Tehama County working on some fascinating research regarding irrigation practices. Allan Fulton is an Irrigation and Water Resource Advisor who covers Tehama, Colusa, Shasta and Glenn counties. “We actually just finished one of our irrigation experiment harvests this weekend. It was looking at early season water management decisions, basically deciding when to begin the irrigation season,” Fulton said.

Allan Fulton, UC Cooperative Extension Irrigation Specialist

Growers typically begin irrigating their walnuts sometime between late April and early May. In order to be as thorough as possible in their experiment, Fulton and his team have been pushing the limits beyond what most growers would ever consider. “We had some treatments that got no irrigation until almost the end of June,” Fulton explained.

Now in its third year, the research experiment is generating information that will provide a variety of benefits. “The whole motivation is to avoid possible injury to the trees from irrigating too much, too early, from lack of aeration and damage to the root system,” Fulton said. Delayed irrigation, while having no impact on yield or nut size, can also provide a bit of water savings. “We’re trying to look for the sweet spot,” with less intensive early season irrigation in favor of root health, tree health and disease prevention.

The research is being conducted in the northern Sacramento Valley primarily using the Chandler variety of walnut trees. Fulton has spent some time working in the San Joaquin Valley as well and understands different weather conditions can be a significant factor when applying their findings to other regions. “Our spring rainfall is quite a bit different than other walnut growing areas. Usually we’ve got an added source of water that sometimes you might not have in the southern San Joaquin Valley,” Fulton noted. From his experience, he suggested growers could usually wait until “the first week of May in most years, before really getting pressed for irrigation.”

The location of the research exposes groves to the opportunity to receive “more rain during the dormant season with a better chance at a deeper profile in moisture before you ever break dormancy,” Fulton said. More regional rainfall is possible in the spring as well, while the trees are growing.

The information gathered so far indicates growers should not jump the gun on springtime irrigation, particularly if there is still any kind of standing water issues. “The data is starting to suggest that you’ve got some room. You don’t have to irrigate at the first sign of heat; you can use a little bit of the stored moisture coming out of winter,” Fulton said. He also noted “It’s a lot more difficult to recover from a damaged tree with a sick roots system,” than it is to recover from a lack of early season irrigation.

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:05:46-07:00October 11th, 2016|

ACP Spread in Bakersfield Area, Ingenious Research Proceeds

Ingenious Research Effort to Fight ACP Spread with Natural Predators

By Joanne Lui, Associate Editor

Beth Grafton-Cardwell, Cooperative Extension specialist, University of California, Riverside Department of Entomology

As we have reported in-depth before on California Ag Today, the Asian Citrus Psyllid (ACP) is a tiny, mottled brown insect that poses an ever-increasing threat to the state’s robust citrus industry, as well as to residential citrus trees. The pest can spread a bacterium known as Huanglongbing (HLP) that is fatal to citrus trees. The disease has nearly shut down Florida’s citrus industry.

Beth Grafton-Cardwell, cooperative extension specialist in integrated pest management, UC Riverside Department of Entomology, explained the significance of the recent ACP spread to Bakersfield. “That is really problematic because it’s mostly in the urban areas. It’s very difficult to find, to control and to stop that spread. It’s going to move out from that region into the local citrus orchards, and so there are lots of meetings and discussions right now to mobilize growers to get treatments to help protect their citrus orchards against the psyllid.”

#CitrusMatters

To contain the ACP problem, Grafton-Cardwell stated, “There are traps everywhere, but the traps are not terribly efficient. So, we really need to carefully examine groves and flush [new leaf growth] for the nymph form,” she said.

According to Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California’s Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program:

Adults typically live one to two months. Females lay tiny yellow-orange almond-shaped eggs in the folds of the newly developing “feather flush” leaves of citrus. Each female can lay several hundred eggs during her lifespan.

ACP (Source: ACP UC IPM)

The eggs hatch into nymphs that are wingless, flattened, yellow or orange to brownish, and 1/100 to 1/14 inch long. Nymphs molt four times, increasing in size with each nymphal stage (instar), before maturing into adult psyllids. The nymphs can feed only on soft, young leaf tissue and are found on immature leaves and stems of flush growth on citrus.

The nymphs remove sap from plant tissue when they feed and excrete a large quantity of sugary liquid (honeydew). Each nymph also produces a waxy tubule from its rear end to help clear the sugary waste product away from its body. The tubule’s shape—a curly tube with a bulb at the end—is unique to the Asian citrus psyllid and can be used to identify the insect.

Grafton-Cardwell and other experts are concerned because once the ACP becomes established in urban areas, it is difficult to eradicate. “It starts spreading into the commercial citrus, and we’re off and running,” she commented.

In a ingenious effort to control the spread of the psyllid, trained teams of entomologists have imported Tamarixia radiata, a tiny wasp that naturally preys on ACP, from Pakistan to research and release in California. A cooperative effort of the University of California Riverside, Citrus Research Board, United States Department of Agriculture and California Department of Food and Agriculture, researchers are also exploring the effectiveness of another beneficial insect called Diaphorencyrtus aligarhensis to assist Tamarixia with control of the Asian citrus psyllid. To see where Tamarixia and Diaphorencyrtus have been released, visit this University of California’s website map at, “Distribution of ACP, HLB and Parasites in California,” and turn on the parasite layers.
Grafton-Cardwell said, “They’re going to inundate that area,” with natural ACP predators, “so hopefully that will push back a little bit.”