- Author: Mark Bolda
I had lunch last week with Steve Tjosvold and Steven Koike last week to mark Steve K's leaving UC Cooperative Extension after 28 years of service. It's been a huge run, and his innumerable contributions to plant pathology have been of great benefit not only to science , but also Central Coast agriculture and beyond. He'll be moving on to Trical, and I look forward to continuing my work with him there.
For those of you who are happy with my research and extension program in berries, you have just Steven Koike to thank. I met him first as a graduate student touring the vegetable industry, and then continued to interact later on as a researcher in private industry. Steve's leadership, commitment to the industry, the depth and breadth of his knowledge accompanied by a first class program of extension delivery impressed me deeply and I resolved to get a job in this organization. As luck would have it, a few years later, I got one and have been loving it ever since.
Thank you Steve!
- Author: Mark Bolda
For those of you who might have missed it, the presentations of last week's UCCE - CalPoly Strawberry Center are posted here. Just speaking for the Watsonville event, we had a seriously large SRO crowd that read like a who's who of the industry with lots of enthusiasm with plenty of participation.
Just a side note here, but a good number of people commented to me later on that they really got something out of this single topic format. I hear you loud and clear, and going forward to will look to do more of these.
- Author: Mark Bolda
For those curious about how the berry industry is faring in Southern California, one look at the picture below should be all the information needed. It's a disaster.
A good resource from the Strawberry Commission for growers on how to manage this situation is included below. In a nutshell, care should be taken to not put ash back into the air, workers should be changing gloves and washing hands frequently, and should also be outfitted with N95 respirator masks when working in these fields.
- Author: Mark Bolda
Announcing the 2018 UCCE Annual Strawberry Production Research meeting. Event will be held February 1 at the Watsonville Elk's Lodge and features a really good and interesting line up of speakers covering topics from fumigation alternatives, soil pathology, irrigation, and nitrogen management.
Agenda below - hold the date!
- Author: Mark Bolda
Sort of surprised this morning to see my name included in a feature article on strawberry farming and rainwater runoff, especially from fields on steep hillsides.
My quotes are from an interview that happened a loooong time ago, but still they are pretty apropos in my mind.
One of the things when you talk with a Farm Advisor is that you get straight answers, and in this case yes it is true that strawberry bed plastic is an essential part of strawberry farming, no two ways around it. I am fully aware what this plastic does as far as impeding soil water absorption and Michael Cahn, Richard Smith and I looked into mitigating this a few years ago (see article below), but the fact of the matter it's still a lot of water coming down that hill when it rains and it has to go somewhere.
http://cemonterey.ucanr.edu/files/171012.pdf
The math for the "Olympic size swimming pool" volume of water coming off of a 30 acre field comes from here:
One acre inch of rain = 27154 gal water x 30 acres = 814620 gallons
Volume water in Olympic size swimming pool 25 m x 50 m x 2 m = 660430 gallons
Assuming some loss from ground absorption and so yeah it's about a big pool's worth of water.
