As of Jan. 10, all of northern California, everything north of Sacramento, is no longer in drought, according to the federal government. South of Sacramento, with the exception of a sliver of land along the coast north of Monterey Bay, remains in some level of...
Articles
Water and Soil Treatment Breakthru
We highly value our capability to contribute to our client’s growing practices by providing you with options and solutions that deliver distinguishable advantages. Hence, we’re very excited about our new partnership with Bio-Organic Catalyst (BOC). BOC manufacturers a...
UNH Research: Microbial Traits, not Plants, Determine Abundance of Soil Organic Matter
Healthy soil is rich in organic matter, but scientists have yet to fully understand exactly how that organic matter is formed. Now a team of University of New Hampshire scientists have uncovered evidence that microbial pathways – not plants – are the chief originator...
Organic Growing Practices Outperform Conventional Growing Practices
We've been espousing the benefits of sustainable and organic growing practices for a long time. Growers that have committed to these practices over extensive periods are telling us that they are experiencing excellent results and witnessing their organic crops...
Pruning To Avoid Frost Damage
Delayed pruning is an effective strategy for delaying bud burst and reducing risk of frost injury. Delayed pruning or double pruning techniques take advantage of a characteristic that all grapevines have called apical dominance. This term means that the buds on the...
Why We Should Foliar Feed Our Crops
Many organic and sustainable farms still operate under the NPK principle but are choosing and apply fertilizers from organic sources. Growers realize that having pristine farmland requiring no additional inputs is an unrealistic scenario. Providing a plant with...
A Focus on Soil Health
There seems to be more and more articles in the press addressing soil health as an epiphany in agriculture. Well, I say it's about time. Andaman-Ag has always promoted the "healthy soil equals healthy plant" perspective and I’m encouraged the discussion about the...
Exploring the transfer of recent plant photosynthates to soil microbes: mycorrhizal pathway vs direct root exudation
A significant proportion of plant photosynthates is transported below ground shortly after photoassimilation and subsequently released to soil microbes. Both root exudation and transfer to mycorrhizal fungi occur rapidly after photosynthesis, ranging from a few hours...
Root Exudates Regulate Soil Fungal Community Composition and Diversity
Nonresident plants and root exudates influenced the fungal community by both positively and negatively impacting the relative abundance of individual phylotypes. A net increase in fungal biomass was observed when nonresident root exudates were added to resident plant...
Optimizing Wine Phenolics
Professor James Kennedy of California State University at Fresno, pointed out that phenolics are essential in wine because of their impact on “the visual, aromatic, and tactile properties of wine.” The color of a red wine and the stability of that color, for instance,...