Farm updates. Courtesy of God of Rain.

We have succeeded in "beating the rain" and all the work that might have been delayed by rain is done.

Carpenter - A weed strip spray is applied, replant sites have been backhoed, the pruning is finished and the brush has been chipped. All that remains for the near future is to fumigate the replant sites.

Whitmore - Ground preparation is completed, including ripping, leveling, fumigation, putting up the berms and marking the tree sites. The only remaining task to be done before planting is to install the irrigation system.

Cleaning up inter-row space - Carpenter ranch:

Clean row middles:

Whitmore ranch:

Laser leveling tripod:

Wanna make some berms?

This is how they are made..

When you drive by any orchard,  you might have observed that they feature row after row of trees straight in symmetrical beauty. You might have wondered how they planted those rows so straight, right? Well, using a GPS controlled tractor, like in the pics below.

They use a guidance system to first measure the field and program into the computer the row spacing as desired by us. Once they input the field coordinates, they use GPS and satellite imagery to put markers all over the ground, with a precision of 1-inch. 

Here you just see the GPS controlled tractor making berms. Once it is done, it will go install markers where new plants will go.

Berms at Whitmore

A berm is simply a mound of earth with sloping sides. Berms or mounds may serve one or a combination of the following functions:

• Moves water down and away from the tree's root system
• Effective fertilizer usage
• Create more aeration in the soil so leading to rapid rooting of developing tree

This is the almond field. Straws will be inserted at each tree location for the almonds and the candycots tomorrow.

Orchard visit..

Delicately grooming our Bride of Ground!

In anticipated arrival of those green groom-lings. Can't stand the dramatic flair? All right. We are preparing the ground for almond tree planting!

Someone drove off the road, took out the power pole and 80 foot length of the fence!

First of all, I hope that nobody got hurt! 

But, come on people! Watch where you are driving. This is second time this kinda thing happened at Whitmore. 

We only came to know of this when Lane first saw TID replacing a power pole along Whitmore Ave. He immediately notified me. Yes, fence was my idea! And I'm still big on maintaining a fence around the ranch. I will probably ask Rafael to fix it if he can.

For now, we contacted the police and was instructed what to do. Lane will go in and request a police report. It will include the information about the driver unless they drove off, and hopefully they will be insured so we can make a claim for the fence repair.  We'll see how this goes!

Finishing up soil fumigation is not being as easy as I expected..

I guess I spoke prematurely. The primary soil fumigant, Telone, is in short supply. Looks like we need a lot of it to cover all the open ground. There are very few suppliers of fumigation services. I wonder why we cannot consider alternatives like methyl bromide.

We are talking to Chris B, who has a relationship with TriCal, a primary supplier, and has asked them to be sure that at least the Candycot blocks are fumigated. We will see what happens. Rumor has it that supplies may loosen up soon.

Fumigation in progress at Whitmore

Fumigation is one way of disinfecting the soil and help control certain harmful nematode population. 

The fumigation rig started its work on Whitmore ranch. Hooray! Since there is a school on the other side of the road on West side, we have to be careful. Yes, it's far enough that county laws allow us to fumigate it while school is in progress, but we decided not to do it, instead to save it for when school is out.

We pulled a "float" with a roller behind the rig to seal in the fumigant.

This stimulation of crop growth resulting from soil fumigation is important to assure maximum crop yields. I actually read somewhere about an alternative called, "soil solarization". In solarization, soil will be heated to 99 degree F for 2 to 4 weeks. I am not sure if it is effective enough.

What's all that smoke about fumigation?

OK. Here's how fumigation works..

Fumigation disinfects soil with a chemical called fumigant. Fumigants are volatile gases like methyl bromide or Telone. Soil fumigants typically are applied below the soil surface through either tractor-mounted shanks. Within a few hours of application, the gaseous fumigant disperses through soil pores from the area of high concentration near the injection point to areas of lower concentration. In most cases, the soil surface is mechanically compacted or covered with plastic film to slow fumigant emission to the atmosphere. 

Soil fumigation is used to control a wide range of soil borne pests including many root and foliar disease pathogens, plant parasitic nematodes, and weed seeds or vegetative propagules. Soil fumigants are usually applied several weeks or months before the crop is planted to reduce the chance of crop injury.

Happy ending at the end of a windy storm..

We came through the Tuesday wet and windy storm without any tree losses. Thank God!

Carpenter Ranch Almonds. The Monterey were hulled over this weekend and the last of them will be delivered to Monte Vista today. By the end of the week we should have our crack out results and know how many pounds we have to sell. Anxiously waiting!!

The ripper is continuing to work at Whitmore ranch. Getting very deep.

Deep Ripping increases soil drainage by opening up the soil and allowing water to infiltrate at a faster rate. This helps reduce erosion by getting the water away quicker. In other words, it results in soil aeration which helps break down organic matter and provides plant roots with plenty of oxygen.

They don't call it Ripper for nothing..

Yes. Ripper is doing a great job at Whitmore!

He is able to completely bury the shank and slip-plow. So far he has not brought up any hardpan (if he does, then he has to go again and break it up!). Slip plowing also displaces and cracks more soil than ripping (and requires a correspondingly higher energy input of course). 

Check out the pictures!

Ready for harvest, I think..

Yellow cling peaches are considered ripe to pick when there is no green left on the fruit. They should come off the tree with only a slight twist. The fruits found on the top and outside of the tree usually ripen first. Selection of picking dates is as much art as it is science.

Carpenter Irrigation and water usage overview..

While we are researching a new irrigation system for Whitmore ranch (the winning choices emerging are micro-sprinklers and drip), it is worth looking at what we are doing at Carpenter and how much water the orchard uses right now.

The water is pumped from a TID irrigation canal and passes through a filtration system into the low volume sprinkler system.

About 38 acre inches of water per acre are applied to the orchard from April to October averaging one irrigation per week over the 25 week period. 

Irrigations early and late in the season may be less than once per week, while during the summer period the irrigations will exceed once per week. 

Taking a break after a day's work!

Spraying CAN-17 (Calcium Ammonium Nitrate) for the peaches

It's more for adding Nitrogen to the soil although it contains calcium carbonate.

CAN 17 fertilizer contains 8% calcium and 17% nitrogen. The nitrogen is one-third ammonic form and two-thirds nitrate form. This has two advantages:

• Fast acting nitrate form (nitrate-nitrogen) is available immediately to trees. 
• Long lasting ammonic form (ammonium-nitrogen) is held in reserve for later use.

The calcium in CAN 17 is water soluble and readily available to plants. Calcium assists in formation of new cells. If I am not mistaken, calcium also increases fruit quality (bright color, sweetness and shelf life).

Another cool use of CAN:

• Its dissolution in water is endothermic, so it's widely used in instant cold packs.

Not-so-cool use of CAN:

• It's used in explosive making. In fact, it is found in 80% of explosives in North America.

Irrigation problems at Carpenter

PROBLEM: The irrigation station filters were plugging up within a minute or two of being backflushed.  Here is how it works: The system takes in water from irrigation canal, passes it thru a filter to trap debris, and clean water goes out to the orchard floor.
As debris in a filter increases, backflush is initiated. During backflush, the trapped debris which is flushed out.
But here, the filters are clogging within a minute of backflush.

OUR APPROACH: Disassembly of the filter station revealed no obvious problem. The plugging of the filters forced us to irrigate by opening only 2 of the 6 valves for each set instead of the normal 3. This reduced the flow through the filters to 1300 gpm instead of the normal 2100 gpm. 

Of course, the filters could handle the lower flow without a problem. The problem with irrigating this way is that it took 3 days to irrigate instead of only 2. Thus there would be a 50% increase in pumping costs and irrigation labor. 

CALLED IN HELP: We had the representative from the manufacturer (Netafim) out to evaluate the problem. He thought that cleaning the filtering elements (small grooved disks) with strong chlorine would correct the problem. After two tries, It did not. Perhaps, the filter elements had worn down and the resulting "mesh" was too fine for the canal water to pass through. The well water had no problem passing through the filters without causing plugging. 

PURCHASED NEW: Finally last week we purchased new elements and changed them. Went with an 80 mesh set of elements (it had been 120 mesh) which will be plenty small enough to prevent problems in the field and which will last much longer. 

The first irrigation with the new elements has gone very well, I sure hope the problem is corrected.

Carpenter trees

Canopy is racing to close in the inter-row space! At this rate, we may have complete shade between rows in two years, or three I think!

Spray schedule for Peaches: PART II

Here it is:

ALTICOR -- Oriental Fruit Moth (these moths are hard to get rid of, apparently!)
PMZ Plus -- Foliar Nutrient/Buffer (yep, this would be a second application)

It's not all. In case it rains before harvest we keep Orbit on hand, if it is not used it is returned to Mid-Valley.

ORBIT -- Fruit Brown Rot (See pic)
PRO 90 -- Spreader (It helps the spray "spread" properly. Just an anti-foaming agent that improves wetting of foliage).

Spray schedule for Peaches: PART I

Finalized spray schedule with Elsa. It was a lot to process for me. I highly respect her for her passion and knowledge. She knows  her peach farming. Lots of new stuff that I didn't know before..

PART 1:

1. Silencer - Oriental Fruit Moth
2. PMZ Plus - Foliar Nutrient/Buffer
3. Micro Sulfur - Mildew control
4. Potassium Nitrate - Foliar Nutrient

Here is a pic of the major pests of cling peaches (which is all what we grow).  Oriental fruit moth in the upper left, and peach twig borer, left middle. These pests can bore into the terminal of the leaf, lower left, and cause it to wither and die, right.

Nuts looking pretty nutty

Which is a good news to us.

We love clean row-middles.

Clusters of green almonds:

Some people love eating green almonds. In the middle-eastern countries, I heard, green almonds are dipped in sea salt and eaten as a snack. Some other people I know swear by the health benefits of eating green almonds. I gave it a try, but it's probably an acquired taste. But, if you break it and just eat the developing almond inside, it tastes exactly like a piece of "sugar palm fruit" if you know what it is.

Hull split has not begun yet:

Frost damaged all smaller peach fruit. Not good news.

It wasn't even a lot of frost in the first place. It has damaged the smallest of the fruit. Goes to show how delicate peaches are, I guess. In checking the orchard, we believe that the damage at this point is minimal. 

But of course, we will continue to check for frost damage. Frost is insidious. We ll never know the exact amount of damage done until fruit develops.

We like to give frequent showers for Peaches..

You know I am talking about weed sprays..

Here we go with a long list of weed sprays. I honestly feel like we going overboard in killing weeds. Note to myself: Research more and talk to people. But, for now, we will go ahead with Elsa and Gary Layne's recommendations.

ASC Plus -- Buffer Activator
Alecto -- Grass Killer
Galigan -- Broad leaf Killer
Pro 90 -- Surfactant (This is like a toner in make-up cosmetics!)
Magnesium EDTA -- Micro Nutrient
Soil Bor -- Micro Nutrient (Water soluble form of Boron)

Here are some common weeds in our orchards that we are trying to spray the above to get rid of. Click the images for larger views.

Puncture-vine (We call it "palleru" in india):

prickly lettuce:

hairy fleabane:

hare barley:

bermuda grass:

horseweed:

Drinks table for Peaches looks like..

The following:

1. Pristine $39.72/ac
Technically, Nufarm Pristine fungicide -- For the control of blackspot (scab), powdery mildew, etc.

2. Western Mix $ 7.05/ac
For the correction of micronutrient deficiencies. Has sulfur, iron, manganese and zinc.

3. Pro 90 $ 1.62/ac
Surfactant. Increases the surface area of application spray.

Rain is expected next week, as a precaution we will be spraying all those at Whitmore. Oh well.. This is the last year of peaches..

Black spot on peaches looks like this:

Powdery mildew on fruit:

Our reliable friend, Tony, always drives us to the orchard when we need him to. Adam stops by the farm.