It Was a Good Almond Bloom Period

It Was a Good Almond Bloom Period

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
The bees did a great job pollinating and now there is a great almond set on the trees

Christine Gemperle is owner and operator or Gemperle Orchards in Ceres which is south of Modesto. And by the way Ceres is named after the Roman goddess of Agriculture.

Again, Gemperle noted a good early set. “It's looking to be pretty heavy even on some of our older trees that are about 22 years old. I haven't seen anything on that particular orchard like that in 2009,” noted Gemperle.

And we ask Gemperle if she's having any issues protecting that great crop.

Not so far. Actually our biggest year to this year will probably be water because we only got a 15% allotment on the West side on our Gustine ranch,” she noted.

But there has been rain over the last couple of weeks, which will certainly help.

We were able to hold off irrigating and save that water. And because of the cooler temperatures, the evapotranspiration rates weren't as high,” Gemperle explained. “So even though at this time of year, there is a high demand of water. Because it wasn't hot---we used less.”

And what she did use was that water in the soil profile. And with that low initial allocation, it could go up. But who knows? We ask Gemperle about her wells on the ranch.

“We have wells, but they're not the greatest. And what we've done in the past is we were able to pump into the Delta Mendota canal and bank water and then pull it out. But now they've made the restrictions on that so difficult that it's not even worth it,” she said.

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