From the Fields - Darrell Cordova

By Darrell Cordova, Stanislaus County tree nut farmer

We’ve finished up our hull-split spray for almonds a couple weeks ago. Then we mowed everything down. We finished a full coverage weed spray last week so that we’re ready for harvest. In the meantime, we’ve been trying to keep everything watered with this heat. By the time we get through all the fields, it’s time to start all over again. We will probably be shaking almonds in about 14, 15 days. We’re 10 days to two weeks later than last year.

We’re making sure broken branches are out of the way. We put walnut shells down on the roadways to cut down dust. The ones that we didn’t do that on, we put a salt-based road oil down to hold the moisture in the soil and prevent dust. It eliminates the problem of mites.

Seems like gophers are bad this year. They like to eat the roots of young trees. Our pistachios are a little over a year old, so we’re trying to keep them from eating the roots. We won’t prune them until dormant season. We’re going to use a central leader pruning method, which is a newer pruning method. Instead of doing the bowl shape, it’s more like a Christmas tree. In heavy years of production, if (the nuts) all come off at one point and one (branch) breaks, the other ones might break too. This way, the branches are staggered and makes for a stronger tree.

The almond and walnut crops look good. On walnuts, there’s a lot of doubles and triples, so that’s good. We need that because of the low price. On almonds, the nonpareils are down in production. Everything else looks about the same or maybe better. The Independence looks good. The Butte/Padres look really good. The Fritz and Monterey are probably better than last year.