No leaves. No photosynthesis. No food. How do trees survive in winters?

They find their strength in fasting. Water fasting to be exact, as their roots continue to suck in water. 

Just like us, trees need water and food to live. Food in this case is carbohydrates generated by photosynthesis in leaves. These carbohydrates are utilized for:

1. Living: Performing essential biological functions (e.g. respiration and generation of chlorophyll). You see, this chlorophyll is a tricky substance. It breaks down easily. So the tree has to work to manufacture it continuously to keep the leaves green. 
2. Growing: Producing new cells for tree growth.
3. Reproducing: Making flowers and fruit.

In summer, there's no problem. There's plenty of sunlight to fuel photosynthesis, which produces tons of carbohydrate to grow and give fruit. In winters, there's not much sunlight. So the output of photosynthesis drops dramatically. Hence it's not worth the effort to keep making chlorophyll. So, evolution came up with this neat idea: 

Every winter, the tree sucks in all nutrients from its leaves causing them to fall off, cuts down its energy needs, shuts down growth, and, enters a period of rest called "dormancy."

During dormancy, trees also break down their stored carbohydrates. This increases the concentration of sugars in the cell sap throughout the tree. The elevated sugar level acts as an antifreeze, helping protect the tree from freezing damage. 

Here are some latest pics from the orchards. Click on them for larger view.

Carpenter Ranch:

Whitmore ranch:

Save water.. Save the planet.. Pee in the shower!

Fine, I won't insist! But, toilet flushing accounts for 27% of indoor water use in a home, you know!

You may have heard that California announced statewide drought emergency. When this happens, our first instinct is to check our ground water wells and make sure they are ready to go if and when needed.

So, we went ahead and got the deep-wells tested on our ranches. Here's what the results look like:

In other words:

1. Water stands at 33 ft below the ground. This is when the pump is not running.                                                
2. When the pump is turned on, water level recedes to 41 ft below the ground. Water level falls because we are drawing 700-1100 gallons per minute.                                                                                               
3. Once you turn off the pump again, water level recovers to 33.5 ft below the ground. I know this is a bit higher than original level of 33 ft, but given a little bit more time, I think it would settle at roughly 33 ft.                                                                                                                                                     
4. Overall, the deep-well is in good condition and the  underground aquifer has good water at shallow depths. For now, at least.

For everyone's sake, I hope this is going to be a wet spring and all the reservoirs will be brimming with water by the start of summer.

Why bees? What exactly do they do in an almond/fruit orchard?

I get this question a lot. It is indeed a fascinating topic.

Trees are, what they call, sessile organisms. They cannot move. A male tree cannot go over to a female tree for the purpose of fertilization or vice versa.

So, they have to depend on somebody else to carry pollen (plant sperm) from one tree to another to unite it with a flower ovary. This somebody is called a "pollinator." Pollinator could be simply the wind or any insect that does this job. Bees, it turns out, are the most effective pollinators.

Each flower contains both ovary and pollen. But, pollen from a flower cannot fertilize ovaries of the same tree variety. So, the standard practice is to plant alternating rows of two compatible varieties (cultivars) so that each acts as a pollenizer for the other.

Honeybees forage for nectar and pollen in almond blossoms. They use this pollen to produce food for the queen bee and their brood (larvae) in the hive. While bees are busy doing this, pollen easily sticks to their legs and travels to a compatible variety tree where it gets rubbed off on a flower ovary when the bee is busy collecting its nectar.

Fertilized ovary at the base of a flower develops into an almond fruit with nut inside.

Here's a flower anatomy (courtesy: Brittanica)

Bees at work:

God of Lightning is a secret cook too?

Otherwise, why would he order every lightning to prepare gourmet nitrogen food for plants down below?

On average, there are 100 lightning strikes happening over the earth per second. That translates to 8,640,000 lightning strikes per day. Apparently, 80% of them are in-cloud flashes and 20% are cloud to ground flashes. And every one of those lightnings converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into plant consumable form of nitrogen.

During lightning, air burns at very high temperatures. This tremendous energy causes the (inert) nitrogen and oxygen in the air to combine with rain water to produce nitric and nitrous acids.

The raindrops that you stick out your tongue and catch when it is raining, believe it or not, contains these acids in very small quantities. The acids in the rain water combine with alkaline substances in the soil and form "nitrates." If that sounds like the name of a fertilizer, that's because it is.

These nitrates along with other nitrates from animal manure, bacterial action and fertilizers strengthen the plant.

Just in case you are interested in the chemistry of this, here is how meaningless equations from your chemistry classes from school take on a practical meaning in the context of farming.



Nitric oxide oxidises into nitrogen dioxide in presence of excess oxygen. Nitrogen dioxide may react with rain water to produce nitric and nitrous acids.

These acids reach the soil with rain water and combine with alkaline substances readily release the hydrogen, forming nitrate and nitrite ions.




PS: Thanks to Vihari Komaragiri for his elucidative edits on my original post.

Guess how much water is used to produce 1 lb of almonds?

Our Carpenter ranch uses 38 acre inches of water per acre per year delivered via a micro-sprinkler system. Apparently, the state average for a mature california almond farm is 39-42 acre inches per acre. This, combined with average yield numbers, it turns out:

500 gallons of water is used to produce 1 lb of almonds.

So, it's equivalent to 10 standard bathtubs of water.. Isn't that fascinating? Oh, BTW, for comparison, try this. According to PETA, it takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat.

Every orchard has its weak spots..

So, we are not exactly surprised to discover that candycots have some weaker areas to deal with.  We applied potassium fertilizer to the weaker areas of the Candycots because they can easily be identified now. The plan is to apply potassium to all of the trees later so the weak areas will end up with a double dose. We ll proceed to do the same with a systemic nematicide, doubling the application in the weak area.

We had a crew prune the inside portion of the Candycots a few weeks ago. We will be coming back to prune the upper growth. This is a technique we learned from John Driver. The Brittons pruned their Candycots, top and bottom, right after harvest. As a result they have a lot of new shoots to deal with. By leaving the tops on our trees, the pruning did not stimulate new shoots. I hope I am making sense..

Mature early, die late.

Think about it.. Trees mature early but die late. Humans mature late but die early.  You can quote me on that.

Look at these trees. Can you believe these are first leaf almond trees at Whitmore?

We are very thankful! This pic doesn't have a frame of reference to appreciate the fact that how fast and how tall they grew in a year.