Hello Andaman Ag Blog Readers, I hope this finds you well and prospering! I have to apologize for sending out an aggregate sales email to everyone. I would much prefer to send you each an individual email, but that would require being chained to my desk/computer for...
News
This Year, Resolve to Kick the Chemical Habit
Happy New Year! Andaman Ag would like to wish all of you a very successful new season! Maybe you saw the recent news about a California court stopping a state program that allowed pesticide spraying at schools, organic farms and backyards across California. The court...
The New Year, Time to Commit to Soil Resolutions
If you’re a regular reader of our newsletters, you’re aware of our continued push to improve organic matter in your soils given all the wonderful benefits to plant growth and health, including the ability to store water, nitrogen and phosphorus and the acceleration of...
Good Microbes vs. Bad: Antibiotics for the Soil
In my last newsletter, I talked about how the introduction (inoculation) of new microbes can benefit poor soils and struggling crops. On the other side of the coin, devastating fungi, bacteria and other microbial parasites can contribute to a host of crop diseases. In...
Soil Inoculation: Giving Plants a Nitrogen Fix
Soil inoculation has been around for a long time, but it takes on new meaning today given the host of products capable of introducing new bacteria to the soil. Many years ago it was learned that certain bacteria have beneficial effects on soils. Scattering soils that...
Why Your Plants Like to Get Down and Get Fungi
Most of us have heard of mycorrhizae fungi and their association with the roots of a plant in a symbiotic or mildly pathogenic relationship. In fact, approximately 80 to 90 percent of all plants form symbiotic mycorrhizae fungi relationships by forming hyphae...
2017 Sustainable Ag Expo
Last week I was in San Luis Obispo attending the 2017 Sustainable Ag Expo. It is a very well run event and there were a number of excellent speakers. It’s a great place to meet with growers we work with from all around the state. Dr. Marc Fuchs, Plant Pathology...
Getting Your Bearings, Post-Harvest
There are a number of studies showing Alternate Bearing (AB) as a naturally occurring and internally regulated process. That’s equivalent to saying that your family has a history of high blood pressure, when it’s actually a family history of poor living and eating...
The Pest and Pathogen Carousel
I’m reading a book by Francis Chaboussou called “Healthy Crops.” The book has groundbreaking material, and all growers should give it a read. I would compare Chaboussou (although much less known) to Liebig, the German chemist who made major contributions to...
Soil Microbes Can Help Battle Heat Stress
Drought conditions, heat stress, heavy frost and freezes all dramatically impact our crops. In California, over the Labor Day weekend, we witnessed a heat wave with temperatures soaring as high as 117 degrees in wine growing regions like the Santa Cruz Mountains. Many...