Spring is in the Air, and so are Frost and Rain

When you live in an almond orchard Spring is delightful. It is like living in a fairy land. If the weather is nice we take some lawn chairs and eat lunch under the trees.


Almond bloom can also rive you nuts. We have two or three weeks to set the crop. We need nice days. If it is windy, the bees won't fly and pollinate the blossoms. If it rains mold and fungus can set in. If it freezes it can burn the little blooms.

I was up at 5AM to run water in the trees this morning. The warmer ground water helps break up the cold stillness on a frosty morning. The other thing we do is mow the centers. When centers are flat they capture the maximum solar radiation during the day and reflect it back at night. Every little bit helps.

The up side of the rain this week is we got the wheat fertilized. We flew on a dry fertilizer and the rain worked it in. That is pretty slick. You can't run a tractor in the wheat fields because the plants fill the beds. If we water run fertilizer it can be uneven, plus the fields are too wet to run water. So this method works pretty well.

We have been doing some maintenance around the orchard. This next week we will put in some replants, replacing downed or dead trees.

I hope y'all have a great week, and the weather settles down. [We need the rain so we can irrigate in the summer. I would just prefer rain before the almond bloom.]

P