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...
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Fire Relief Offer for Northern California Growers
Andaman Ag, Master Distributor for Creative Ag Products, Inc. (Pacific Gro) and Sustainable Growing Solutions (MetaGrow ST compost tea), is working directly with its generous suppliers to offer free and discounted products to those vineyards or orchards that have been...
A Growing Problem: Ramifications of Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizer
Despite the best efforts of soil health advocates, the rate of synthetic fertilizer use is still on the rise. According to USDA, in 1964, farmers were applying on average 58 pounds of nitrogen per acre. By 2010, the average was 140 pounds. It’s unlikely those numbers...
Now You’re Cooking: Being a Chef of the Kitchen of Your Soil
Organic farming is less about following a recipe and more about being a chef in the kitchen, experimenting with different ingredients. We’re learning more and more about the exchange between plants and the fungi, bacteria and other organisms in the soil and, frankly,...
Post Harvest Applications
Post harvest applications are essential as studies have shown that nearly 30% of all nutrients for the entire season are taken up at post harvest providing essential nutrients to help get the crop through the winter and ready for spring. This is a window of...
Organic Farming as Crop Insurance
Organic farming combines conservation-minded methods with technology, but does not use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Instead, organic farming relies on enhancing and building soil fertility. Still, for a farm to survive in a market economy, it has to be...
Microbes Carry a Lot of Carbon to Their Graves
My newsletters are consistently about improving soil fertility, and carbon sequestration is a key part of that process. What’s interesting is that carbon sequestration is still poorly understood despite years of research. I believe that where technology is making its...
What Can We Learn from Soil Management?
I met a grower down in the Oxnard area that grows over 600 acres of blueberries in substrate (pots) and is very successful selling his organic product to Driscoll. One of his primary challenges is growing during the winter. The pots cool off each night much more...
Great Grapes: Accelerating Vineyard Maturation
As we get closer to grape harvest, many of you have been asking us about options for increasing the maturation of vineyard blocks. The question is, how can you accelerate improvements in color, sugar and phenolic levels? The last 30-40 days prior to harvest is when...
Soil – It’s All About the Carbon
I was visiting an organic lemon grower recently. His lemon trees were full of fruit, rich in color and uniform in size. After I toured the property, we stopped and he dug a bit to show me the thick dark brown soil. He invited me over to smell it and it was musty, damp...