California growers are working to get their almond orchards ready for dormancy. Second-generation almond grower Christine Gemperle said there is a lot to do in the fall in preparing for the winter. One of the considerations has been appropriate timing for getting cover crops planted.
“In order to do that there’s several things that need to be done before you can actually put in those cover crops. Sometimes its pruning, sometimes its shredding those prunings, sometimes it’s a little bit of mowing down of the resident plant population that’s there,” said Gemperle. “So, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last month.”
Christine and her brother Erich farm 135 acres of almonds in the Turlock and Gustine areas of the Central Valley. A lot of the work over winter is focused on getting the almond orchards prepared for the next season. Gemperle said that in planning ahead, they are cleaning up some issues in a new block that just had its first harvest.
“We realized the trees grew great, tons of limbs, but some of those limbs were actually too low and they interfered with my brother being able to use the shaker,” Gemperle explained. “Now we’re going through that orchard, and we are cutting all those branches, so he has a clear line of sight when he’s in there next year.”
Looking to the year ahead, many growers are preparing for another season of limited water supplies. Gemperle noted that having a lot of organic matter in almond orchards can go a long way in helping soils hold onto moisture. It can be especially important to try and build organic matter in sandy areas, or in soils that have a lot of gravel or clay.
“You can do it by either chipping your prunings and tilling them into the ground, or you could be planting cover crop, or you could do both. Or you could be adding compost,” said Gemperle. “Those are things that you could be starting to do right now.”
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