Skip to main content

crop yield report has come in, reflecting improved soil health on California Pistachio field

Good News on another success story that just came in today. If you remember our blog story from last January 2015, Don DeBoer had performed some soil compaction testing with his penetrometer on Pistachio orchard land owned by Charlie Gragnani. http://www.soilsecretsblog.com/2015/01/soil-health-and-changing-soil-compaction.html
The results of the testing discovered that the soil compaction had dropped a bunch, from an average of 300 psi coming down to an average of 75 psi. This is significant because there's a direct cause and effect where water and oxygen can now penetrate the soil when its psi has been reduced. The reason, the drop in psi is demonstrating an increase in soil porosity, which also causes an increase in air space in the soil. This is the single most important thing that can happen to the soil as its health improves!
So what's the good news? The crop has been harvested and evaluated and the grower was able to collect an average of 600 more pounds of nuts per acre above and beyond the control fields. At a price of $4 per pound that means the grower made an additional $2400 net profit per acre caused by our TerraPro product improving the soil porosity. In addition the % of blanks was under 5%, compared to 20% being normal in California this season.








Michael Martin Melendrez
Managing Member - Soil Secrets LLC

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Weed Identification: Goatheads or Stickers

Goatheads ( Tribulus terrestris ) are native to Southern Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Goatheads are also called stickers, sticker weed, bullhead, devil’s weed, and puncturevine. Goatheads are easily recognized by their prostrate growth form, leaves with leaflets, yellow flowers, and stickers (Goatheads). If you miss’em visually then they will stab you painfully in the fingers as you work your garden, or stick to your clothing and shoes. Goatheads are the primary reason local bicyclists must get “thorn proof” tires for riding on area trails and streets. Goatheads have prostrate stems that radiate outward from one central point. Leaves are compound with smaller leaflets. Lemon yellow flowers form along the stems and fertilized flowers form fruits.   Fruits consist of several attached structures called nutlets (Goatheads). Each nutlet is a single seed that becomes hard or woody when mature. Each seed has two sharp spines that easily pene...

Weed Identification: Sand Bur

Sand Bur ( Cenchrus longispinus ) is native to North America. It has other names like sand spur, long-spined sand bur, hedgehog grass, and bur grass . Sand Bur is an annual grass usually growing with a prostrate growth form. It is similar in appearance to other grasses prior to seed formation. Individual plants may be 3’ in diameter, sometimes larger. Sand Bur is a common weed of sandy soils but also grows well elsewhere. Sand Bur will often root at stem nodes that are touching the ground. The root system of Sand Bur is shallow and fibrous making them easily pulled (when immature). Sand Bur produces a flowering spike. As seeds begin to form Sand Bur is easily recognized by its numerous sharp or burred seeds or long spines. As the burred seeds mature they are easily separated from the mother plant and their sharp spines stick to virtually anything. Sand Bur can disseminate its seeds long distances because its sharp spines will hitch a ride on skin, anim...

All About the Shantung Maple!

             The Shantung Maple ( Acer truncatum ) is also known as the Purple Blow Maple due to the color of its newly emerging leaves which are red-purple (see photo below). These young expanding red-purple leaves change to green as they mature. Leaves are small, about the size of Japanese Red Maple leaves, perhaps 3’-4’ wide at maturity.    The Shantung Maple grows 1′-2′ annually reaching 25″ tall and wide.    This is our tree for all planting situations. This Maple does well in heavy clay, sandy soils, full sun, or part shade. It can be planted in a lawn or next to a hot asphalt street (see photo below). It seemingly is a happy tree enjoying life wherever it is placed.    One place we would not recommend planting this tree is in a rockscape which is just too hot and inhospitable to support this beautiful tree.               A smaller tree, the Shantung Ma...