Irrigation problems at Carpenter

PROBLEM: The irrigation station filters were plugging up within a minute or two of being backflushed.  Here is how it works: The system takes in water from irrigation canal, passes it thru a filter to trap debris, and clean water goes out to the orchard floor.
As debris in a filter increases, backflush is initiated. During backflush, the trapped debris which is flushed out.
But here, the filters are clogging within a minute of backflush.

OUR APPROACH: Disassembly of the filter station revealed no obvious problem. The plugging of the filters forced us to irrigate by opening only 2 of the 6 valves for each set instead of the normal 3. This reduced the flow through the filters to 1300 gpm instead of the normal 2100 gpm. 

Of course, the filters could handle the lower flow without a problem. The problem with irrigating this way is that it took 3 days to irrigate instead of only 2. Thus there would be a 50% increase in pumping costs and irrigation labor. 

CALLED IN HELP: We had the representative from the manufacturer (Netafim) out to evaluate the problem. He thought that cleaning the filtering elements (small grooved disks) with strong chlorine would correct the problem. After two tries, It did not. Perhaps, the filter elements had worn down and the resulting "mesh" was too fine for the canal water to pass through. The well water had no problem passing through the filters without causing plugging. 

PURCHASED NEW: Finally last week we purchased new elements and changed them. Went with an 80 mesh set of elements (it had been 120 mesh) which will be plenty small enough to prevent problems in the field and which will last much longer. 

The first irrigation with the new elements has gone very well, I sure hope the problem is corrected.

Carpenter trees

Canopy is racing to close in the inter-row space! At this rate, we may have complete shade between rows in two years, or three I think!

Spray schedule for Peaches: PART II

Here it is:

ALTICOR -- Oriental Fruit Moth (these moths are hard to get rid of, apparently!)
PMZ Plus -- Foliar Nutrient/Buffer (yep, this would be a second application)

It's not all. In case it rains before harvest we keep Orbit on hand, if it is not used it is returned to Mid-Valley.

ORBIT -- Fruit Brown Rot (See pic)
PRO 90 -- Spreader (It helps the spray "spread" properly. Just an anti-foaming agent that improves wetting of foliage).

Spray schedule for Peaches: PART I

Finalized spray schedule with Elsa. It was a lot to process for me. I highly respect her for her passion and knowledge. She knows  her peach farming. Lots of new stuff that I didn't know before..

PART 1:

1. Silencer - Oriental Fruit Moth
2. PMZ Plus - Foliar Nutrient/Buffer
3. Micro Sulfur - Mildew control
4. Potassium Nitrate - Foliar Nutrient

Here is a pic of the major pests of cling peaches (which is all what we grow).  Oriental fruit moth in the upper left, and peach twig borer, left middle. These pests can bore into the terminal of the leaf, lower left, and cause it to wither and die, right.

Nuts looking pretty nutty

Which is a good news to us.

We love clean row-middles.

Clusters of green almonds:

Some people love eating green almonds. In the middle-eastern countries, I heard, green almonds are dipped in sea salt and eaten as a snack. Some other people I know swear by the health benefits of eating green almonds. I gave it a try, but it's probably an acquired taste. But, if you break it and just eat the developing almond inside, it tastes exactly like a piece of "sugar palm fruit" if you know what it is.

Hull split has not begun yet:

Frost damaged all smaller peach fruit. Not good news.

It wasn't even a lot of frost in the first place. It has damaged the smallest of the fruit. Goes to show how delicate peaches are, I guess. In checking the orchard, we believe that the damage at this point is minimal. 

But of course, we will continue to check for frost damage. Frost is insidious. We ll never know the exact amount of damage done until fruit develops.