Category: Drought

Does a lot of rain mean a lot of aquifer replenishment?

Let’s ask a hydrogeologist! I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Timothy Parker of Parker Groundwater Consulting in Sacramento, CA.  Timothy Parker began his career as a regulator working in contaminant hydrogeology. He got involved with fresh water while working for the California Geological Survey, doing watershed assessment and timber harvest oversight, and […]

After the flood…Part deux!

After the flood…Part deux! How did the recent rains affect your aquifer…if at all? California was hit by some torrential rain in January. In our last post, we explored how that rain had affected soil moisture. In some cases, the water percolated right through and left the soil dry again. In other cases, the rain […]

After the flood…

After the flood… What does soil moisture look like after two weeks of rain? In the last couple of months, California has been hit with a lot more water than we’re used to. Here in Sonoma County we’ve had excesses of 18” of rain and that was just since January 1st. Other parts of the […]

Why was yield low this year?

Why was yield low this year? All over California, tonnage came up shy Not to state the obvious… There are a lot of factors contributing to the low yield this year. Let’s address the most glaringly obvious one: things got hot. September temperatures reached over 105° in many parts of the state and stayed that […]

Groundhog day: 2022 is looking a lot like 2021

Groundhog day: 2022 is looking a lot like 2021 Let’s take a look at the soil moisture, shall we? Things certainly were looking up a few months ago, amiright? Harvest ended. Nothing in Sonoma or Napa caught fire. And we even got rain! A lot of it. Here in Windsor, California we finished out 2021 […]

2021 was a good year…to dry farm??

2021 was a good year…to dry farm?? More reasons to consider monitoring your soil moisture Between stunted growth to unexpected nutrient deficiencies, this second consecutive year of drought threw us quite a few curve balls. One thing people aren’t expecting to hear though is that some places haven’t needed to irrigate all season. That’s right. […]

New regulation is coming. Invest now in improving your water management.

New regulation is coming Invest now in improving your water management There’s nothing farmers love more than government regulation, am I right? And there’s nothing this viticulturist loves more than legal rhetoric. That is of course why I violently sobbed into my textbook during the semester I studied food and beverage law in undergrad: my […]

Fear not! Potassium is your friend

Fear not! Potassium is your friend Holding off on K fertilization may be damaging your wine quality There’s a lot of headbutting between grape growers and winemakers. I get why. Lush green canopies with active shoot tips mid-July look pretty, but they don’t usually make good wine. On the other hand, leaner vines with drastically […]