Spring Rain and the Almond Crop

Spring Rain and the Almond Crop

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
Mel Machado, Director of Member Relations for Blue Diamond Growers noted bloom is over and the young nutlets are thiriving.

“We had a good bloom with excellent weather during the bloom and now we're into a stormy pattern of weather. When you get these spring storms, we worry about thunderstorms and hail and all that. And I don't know of any issues that have popped up yet other than its been wet,” Machado said.

“So as we're going through this first shed of nuts, I would like to see it just a little bit of wind with these storms to help scrub those jackets and those nuts that are aborting out of the trees and that will help reduce disease,” he noted.

Speaking about disease, Machado said we got to keep an eye out for other potential problems and there are several of them.

“Now that we're back in the wet period again, we need to watch out for foliar diseases, such as green fruit rot, and jacket rot. Those are the normal things you start to worry about,” he said

Machado also commented on insect pressure. “It was a fairly mild winter. And we didn't get a lot of rains, so everybody's wondering about the lack of mortality on some insect pest. I'm hearing pest control advisors talk about, that they are already seeing mites in the fields,” noted Machado. “I don't know if anybody would have treated this early. Navel orangeworm, sanitation issues, all those kinds of things, everybody's concerned about that going forward.

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