How almond production works

An almond crop has to be tended to all year in order to have good production, said Franz Niederholzer, pomologist, and Kelley Drechsler, a UC Davis graduate student.

Niederholzer said production almonds bloom in the early spring and their growth comes from the previous fall’s activity in the orchard. In order to have the high production growers want, the farmers want the orchard to be healthy from now until leaf drop and all of those activities go to support the next crop.

Drechsler said after harvest is one of the most critical times to irrigate, even though not much water is required, because the trees are developing what will be the buds for next year.

“The conditions before and after harvest have shown to affect the production next year,” Niederholzer said. “... They don’t walk away, they maintain moisture with adequate support for the next year.”

Drechsler said the different varieties are harvested at different times because the three different varieties have different growth stages.

The nonpareil almonds are harvested first. They shake the trees and the almonds are supposed to sit on the ground for a week to dry out. Drechsler said this can make it difficult to irrigate the trees.

“Coincidentally, this is when bud differentiation happens and it will determine how much will be produced next year,” Drechsler said.

So, another thing she said she’s looking at is isolating the irrigation to one side of a row of trees.

“Because this orchard is drip irrigated, there’s drip line on both sides of tree rows,” Drechsler said. “I’m looking at the idea of isolating it to one side and having the almonds at the other side.”

Drechsler said almonds are unique in the way they have to be pollinated by another variety of almond because of the way bees travel. The tress won’t yield very well if the orchard doesn’t have different varieties within the orchard.