Sunlight, Water and Nutrition

Keeping it simple knowing what you can do and the almond orchard, Mike Griffin is a field supervisor for Blue Diamond Growers.

“So, it really comes down to sunlight, water, and nutrition,” said Griffin.

But first the importance of light in the tree. “I've seen trees that are like 30, 40 feet tall, and I can't even see the crop and they turn out, they've got like, 2,800 pounds up on the top of that tree because there's a big producing area up there, that's getting the sunlight,” Griffin said.

“For us, the water and nutrition is our part of it. And the key is to make sure that what we apply gets used by the tree and that's in that root zone,” said Griffin. “And so as long as we are monitoring and we know that we're not flushing our nitrogen or other nutrients down below the root zone, but irrigating just right.”

And Griffin noted that drip irrigation is important to growers. “Drip irrigation is a wonderful tool, that's come along and we can use that to manage where the nutrition is in the root zone to feed those trees to grow. That would make those spurs, we'll make those nuts,” Griffin said.

Here's a reminder for almonds---Frost can occur in late March and even April, so keep vegetation mowed and avoid working the soil from bloom through the end of March.