Irrigated agriculture on the Central Coast is much more dependent upon groundwater than are most other farming areas of the state. The composition of well water varies quite highly throughout this region, and even wells very close to each other can have very different water compositions if they are extracting water from different aquifer formations. The chemistry of the water is of concern to the agriculturist for two main reasons; the minerals in the water can clog drip irrigation systems, and lead to undesirable changes in the quality and productivity of the soil over time.

Clogging of drip irrigation systems with mineral deposits will lead to extremely poor irrigation uniformity, and subsequently very uneven vine growth in...

Few people today are aware of the history of the UC Agricultural Experiment Station at Paso Robles over a century ago. The information that it produced regarding the potential of dry farmed fruit crops in the area has renewed relevance today as the limits of groundwater supplies are approached in many parts of the Central Coast.

The passage of the Hatch Act by Congress in 1887 provided funding to establish and operate agricultural experiment stations. Later that same year, three new experiment stations were created in California, located in the Sierra Foothills, the San Joaquin Valley, and the South Coast Range in Paso Robles. A fourth followed later at Pomona. These were operated as sub-stations to the main experiment...

Most vineyards in this area will show increasing infections of wood-rotting fungal pathogens as they become older. Both the Eutypa and Bot Canker pathogens are found in local vineyards, and vineyards often have mixed infections. Numerous vineyards begin to show symptoms of infections by the time that they are ten years old, indicating that the infections began quite early during the life of the vineyard; making efforts to prevent these infections from happening in the first place needs to be the foundation of any management program.

Exterior symptoms of canker infections generally include dead spurs or cordons; if a cut is made through a symptomatic cordon or trunk, a dark wedge of infected wood is usually visible. Infections...

In the past several years a number of coastal vineyards have experienced significant levels of vine death due to Black Foot Disease (aka Young Vine Decline). This disease results from infections with Cylindrocarpon spp. and Campylocarpon spp. fungal pathogens. In typical cases, vines appear to make normal growth for a couple of seasons and then cease growth rather suddenly, often times by not pushing any buds in the spring or by having very stunted shoots that soon die back.

Vineyards that have been suffering the largest losses locally in the past several years have been sites planted on ground that was recently farmed with intensive row crops (vegetables, flowers, etc.), and which were planted with 101-14 rootstock. The...