Last week, our newsletter focused on building soil carbon and its incredible impact on soil and crop health. Interestingly enough, I saw an article dated May 31 in California Today titled “To Fight Climate Change, Heal the Ground.” The article goes on to say, “The...
Articles
Producing Carbon-Rich Soils
Imagine if someone invented machines that could pull carbon out of the atmosphere — machines that were incredibly inexpensive, autonomous, and solar powered, too. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, we already have these devices -- they’re called plants. Unfortunately,...
Improving Soil Health Reduces Material Costs
Can improved profitability and soil health be connected in an obvious way? Well, the answer is likely no, but it’s still worth real consideration. There are so many factors that go into farming that it’s challenging to place each grower in a single bucket. Each farm...
Foliar Fertilizers Promote Root Exudation
When I first starting advocating for the use of foliar fertilizers around 2005, many growers did not share my perspective that building better soils coupled with the use of foliar fertilizers was the most expeditious way to get crop production moving in the right...
Optimizing Fruit Set
A few weeks go we presented newsletters addressing ways to improve fruit set. Getting a good bloom and fruit set is critical. I’ve always made the analogy that prior to fruit set it’s all about the “mother,” or getting the plant as healthy as possible. After fruit...
Soil Health and its Payoff
It’s challenging to pick up any agricultural publication today and not see at least one article addressing soil biology. There’s clearly a soil movement taking place. As a matter of fact, I was just sent an email for a webinar about soil health improvement where I...
Current Weather Pattern and Fruit Set
The start of this growing season’s weather pattern has been unpredictable, and the recent overcast, wet and cool weather may result in poor fruit set. Cool temperatures can interfere with the development of pollen and pistil during the flowering process or with the...
Why Integrate Biological Products?
I get a lot of questions from growers about integrating biological products and the cost of organic and sustainable products relative to conventional products. Today, our ability to measure the impact of about everything in agriculture is validating why we need to...
Building Crop Health For Today And Tomorrow
I’ve been traveling around California looking at the various stages of crops emerging from dormancy. There have been some areas that have experienced a considerable amount of rain and the soils remain very damp if not boggy. I hear many growers rejoicing about soil...
Lessons Learned from Biodynamic Farming
I was talking to a very experienced vineyard manager last week who shared with me his experiment of converting a small number of acres to biodynamic. It was something that he decided to instigate, with the blessing of the vineyard owner, as he was curious about the...