From the Fields: Josh Barton, San Joaquin County walnut, almond and olive farmer

By Josh Barton
San Joaquin County walnut, almond and olive farmer

With walnuts, we’re ramping up our irrigation right now. We’ve kind of prolonged our first irrigation of the season till middle and the end of May. It’s been our standard for about the last 10 years. We’ve been doing some lighter shots of water, waiting for some of our district water deliveries to get made as allocations have been set. We’re doing all our irrigation maintenance and pressure bombing, making sure that our trees are ready to take the water and that we’re utilizing it properly. 

On the bug front, it’s been quiet, so we haven’t had a lot of spray activity, which tracks with what we’re seeing with this weather. 

For almonds, we’re getting through our irrigation portion of the season, starting to see a little bit more disease this year than we’ve seen in years past. There’s been a lot of shot hole that we’ve been observing in certain areas, so we’re mitigating that. Same thing on the almond side as with the walnuts: Pest pressure has been down, so we haven’t had to do a ton of spray activity.

On the olive side, we grow super high-density olives for olive oil. We’re past bloom, and this is the time of year that we like to do our canopy maintenance. We’ve completed a fair amount of topping that we need to do to preserve our cropping zone, and we will be doing a little bit of thinning by hand. Same thing with olives—just slow, steady irrigations as we work our way into the crux of summer. It’ll be very interesting to see how this season unfolds.

All in all, the crops looked good in some areas and lighter in other areas. We’re making our way through the season trying to get a better understanding of what the overall crop projections are going to look like. Aside from that, it’s been herbicides and field maintenance. 

In this edition…

• New school sawmill spurs logging interest
• H-2A rule change puts spotlight on work visa program
• Feedback needed to assess state veterinary shortage
•​​​​​​​ Nutrition program benefits growers and inmates alike
•​​​​​​​ From the Fields: Josh Barton, San Joaquin County walnut, almond and olive farmer
•​​​​​​​ From the Fields: Matt Stayer, Shasta County beekeeper and queen breeder
•​​​​​​​ From the Fields: Jerry Maltby, Colusa County rancher, feedlot operator and rice farmer
•​​​​​​​ From the Fields: Tiffany Holbrook, Sonoma County egg and poultry producer
•​​​​​​​ Growers use pressure bombs to fine-tune irrigation
•​​​​​​​ State targets sharpshooters from Costco grapevines
•​​​​​​​ Moth damage rises as growers await new insecticide
•​​​​​​​ Advocacy in Action: California Farm Bureau tackles labor, immigration and forest management
•​​​​​​​ Four farm safety priorities this National Safety Month