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The destruction after a fire can be pretty gruesome and sad. Many times, though the fire moves through the orchard so fast that, even though the canopy has turned brown, there is a good chance the trees can come back. It all depends on how much damage has been done to the trunk.

Calls are coming in about leafminer. It's there on the new growth, twisting and distorting it. In fact, it' been there most of the year. It was working new growth all winter long, because it was a warm winter. Right now, though, they are more active and more damage is being seen.

March 9, 1923 - August 4, 2016 Samuel was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the eldest of five siblings. He graduated medical school in Cochabamba and married Carmela Morales. They had two children, Lucia and Dario. Samuel moved his family to the United States, settling in California in 1959.

The very fact that avocados can be grown in hard to get to places means that the trees are also in areas that are subject to wildfire damage. Recently several hundred acres of avocado burned in the Fillmore/Santa Paula foothills. The fire was fanned by high winds and low humidity.

Thanks for the rains that leach the soils of accumulated salts and bring on new fresh growth. Or maybe not. When we apply irrigation water with salts which with few exceptions we do in irrigated agriculture, salts accumulate in the soil.