We are happy to update our customers that you can now enjoy our organic pecan pieces in a new breakfast cereal from Natures Path. The cereal, Flax Plus Maple Pecan Crunch, is a combination of toasted flax flakes and granola made with organic maple syrup and organic pecan pieces. It tastes as good as it sounds, and better still it is made with only certified organic ingredients! We hope you will try a box today, and if your local market doesn't carry the product, please ask your grocery aisle manager to request and stock this wonderful, healthy new cereal.
Recently, Rio Grande Organics helped to organize a community cleanup day...and boy were we surprised by the number of people who turned out to pitch in!!
On February 23, 2008, over a hundred people gathered in the small town of Quemado, TX to pitch in and help cleanup the town. We filled up two garbage trucks with the litter that was picked up, and we re-painted the stands at the community baseball field. Many Rio Grande employees gave up their Saturday to participate!
As you can see in the second picture, one of the real highlights of the day was the number of children who showed up with big smiles and the energy to make it happen.
Picture three, left to right: Pete, our Quemado orchard manager, Luanne, Ky Anne, our Director of Community Relations, Bob, Tim, from Wilbur Ellis, our other main co-sponsor of the day, and Patti.
In the next image, the 50 acre field was planted with the Pawnee variety this past winter. We are planting the trees on a very dense spacing in this field, around 70 trees per acre. This will allow us to make better, more efficient use of water in the early life of these trees. When these trees are seven years old, we will use a special piece of equipment to dig up every other tree and move it to a permanent location.
Clearing work continued all throught this past winter. Take a look at the last image and you can see how it progressed. We are clearing about 200 acres of land that will be replanted in pecan trees over the next few years. Pecan trees are native to both the Rio Grande River and the Nueces River. The southern United States and northern Mexico are the only places on the planet where pecan trees thrive. Demand for pecans in the Chinese market is doubling every year!
People often ask us what it takes to grow pecans organically. One of the first subjects that an organic pecan grower has to master is an understanding of the insects that attack the pecan tree and the young nuts.
First shown is a nut that has been growing on the pecan tree for about six weeks. The mass of material at the base of the nut is called "frass"; it is actually feces left behind by a pecan casebearer worm as it chewed its way into the young nut. The worm is now inside the nut, eating all the soft tissue. This nut would fall off the tree in a matter of weeks, as the nut dies once a worm eats into it.
With the frass cleared away, you can clearly see the nice round hole where the worm has bored into the nut (in the second picture). We try every year to limit the damage to about 2% of the total nuts that are set on the trees. Without some type of control strategy, a pecan grower can lose between 50% and 70% of the crop to the pecan casebearer worm.
Next we can see that having been disturbed, this worm is crawling back out of the nut. Normally, the worm would morph into the pupal stage, and eventually it would emerge as a next generation moth. The moths lay eggs on branches close to the small nut. Our entomologist, Robert Sandner, scouts the orchard every two days looking for casebearer eggs. When he finds enough eggs, we spray the orchard with bT, a bacteria that is harmless to people, but is deadly to the newly hatched worms. Next, it looks like Mr Worm is headed for the border!!
All food producers, whether conventional or organic, face challenges controlling damaging insects. In our organic farming system, we use naturally ocurring substances, as opposed to synthetic chemicals, to control damaging insects. Our system of scouting for insects is very labor intensive, and the timing of our applications of bT is critical to achieve control.
In the fifth picture, you can see where the pecan casebearer worms have damaged three out of the four nuts. If this level of damage is extensive in the orchard, then there is very little chance of having a crop at the end of the season. Fortunately, in our four years of using organic farming methods, our orchards have built up large numbers of beneficial insects, such as lady beetles and green lacewings. These insects eat the casebearer eggs, and help to control the casebearer outbreak. Finally shown, this young pecan tree is entering its second growing season in Quemado. We are seeing some of the young branches exceed three feet of growth in one season. We are experimenting with a number of techniques to maximize the yearly growth on these young pecan trees.
Currently, most pecan trees need seven to eight growing seasons before they start to produce a harvestable crop. We are hoping that land leveling, intensive water and organic fertilizer management, and weed control will reduce this waiting period. The long period between tree planting and full nut production is one factor that keeps world nut production low, and nut prices high. As people look to add healthier items to their daily diet, the demand for tree nuts will continue to grow!
Many people are under the impression that winter is a time of rest for pecan farmers.....the reality is that it just may be our busiest time of the year!
It is now late March, and our pecan trees have not yet started to put out their new leaves, a process we call 'bud break'. The pecan tree will start to flower and put out it's pollen producing catkins very soon after bud break. The actual pecan nuts start to form in late April, and they will be growing and developing on the tree for close to six months.
The pecan trees in Crystal City have grown to a point where their size is interfering with the growth of surrounding trees. The Crystal City orchard sits on the bank of the Nueces River, and the soil is an optimal alluvial river soil. With proper watering, these trees are capable of living for 200 years, and attaining a height of 100 feet. We have had to designate about half of our trees as permanent trees, and the rest of the trees are 'temporary', although temporary may turn out to be 20 years. Our men have been hard at work extensively pruning back the temporary trees, and this will allow the permanent trees to continue to grow and produce lots of nuts. Note the heavy crop of clover growing under the trees; this will help put lots of nitrogen into the soil.
At Rio Grande Organics, we embrace our responsibility to future generations. This winter, we completed the planting of 40 acres of new pecan trees. We will be old men by the time that these trees are productive and full grown, but our children will be able to enjoy the nuts that are produced. Many people talk about making the world a better place - we are busy planting trees!
Our Quemado foreman, Alan Frerich, and our whole Quemado crew did a great job planting these new trees. These young trees will depend on water from the Rio Grande River for their survival. Agriculture in the US has been under relentless pressure from developers and environmentalists, who claim that our efforts are 'wasting water'. We like to think that watering suburban lawns and building endless car-washes is a much greater misuse of our precious resources.
It's harvest time in Crystal City, and Rio Grande Organics gears up to get the precious pecan crop harvested before any weather disasters strike.
Check out how our harvest season gets under way as our tree shakers move into action. This machine clamps ahold of the tree, and uses a powerful hydraulic engine to shake the tree vigorously. The ground under this tree is littered with pecans that have just been shaken off. Note the sweepers in front of and behind each wheel; these devices gently move the pecans to the side of the wheels as the vehicle moves through the orchard.
Next, the cluster in image two shows the progression of ripening pecan nuts. The nut on the right is at the stage where the green shuck is beinning to split open along the suture lines. The nut in the left center area shows the shuck fully open and drying to a brown coloration. In the last month prior to harvest, the nuts are susceptible to shuck decline disease and the shuckworm; both will keep the shuck from opening normally and will result in damaged nut meat.
In the next cluster, all of the shucks have opened normally, and the nuts will easily fall from the tree when shaking pressure is applied. The nuts can actually remain in this loosely held position for months.
In the fourth image, our senior organic consultant, Robert Sandner, stands in front of the first load of pecans harvested in 2006. Some of the pecans are still inside of their green shuck. A special machine in our cleaning plant will remove the shucks so that the nuts can dry out and be shelled. The 2006 harvest is very special to us, as it marks the end of our three year transitional period. The pecans harvested from our Quemado, TX orchard will be our first large 'Certified Organic' crop.
Most of Texas is suffering from severe or extreme drought. We are very thankful for the irrigation systems that water our orchard.
First here, we see a picture of our nutlets back in early April. Someone once asked, “What does it take to make a good pecan?“ The answer is that it takes plenty of sunshine, plenty of water, and some method for keeping the destructive insects and fungi off of the developing nuts and leaves.
One of the questions that we are most frequently asked is “Aren't all pecans grown organically?" While this may be the case for some backyard trees, it is not even remotely the case for most commercial orchards. In order to control the insects that eat the developing nuts, and to control the fungi that grow on the nut's outer shuck, most commercial growers spray synthetic chemicals on the trees numerous times each year.
In the second picture, five months have passed, and these nuts are nearing maturity. The green shuck will split open, and the ripe nut inside will be ready for harvest. The highlite of the 2006 growing season was a hail storm that missed our orchard by less than half a mile. The baseball sized hail took the paint off of some nearby houses.
Farming in Texas is not for the faint of heart. Most of the state is subject to episodes of serious weather, including hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, windstorms, and drought. Any one of these events can damage or destroy an agricultural crop. California, by comparison, is rarely subject to extreme weather, and as a result, it is the most productive farmland in the world. So , why do we continue to farm here? The answer is simple: the finest tasting pecans in the world are grown in South Texas!
Next, we see the latest addition to Rio Grande Organics. These 400 acres of pecans are on the banks of the Nueces River, near Crystal City, Texas. We have begun using only organic methods in this orchard. The trees were originally planted by Dr. Darrell Sparks of the University of Georgia, perhaps the worlds leading expert on pecan tree horticulture.
Most of the pecans in this orchard are of the Wichita variety, a heavy bearing, dependable producer. Pecans are notorious for being alternate bearers, meaning that the trees will only bear a crop every other year. Rio Grande Organics has an extensive program of nutrition, crop load management, and water management that has helped to reduce this tendency. We are fortunate to have two of the best pecan growers in Texas working with us; Robert Sandner, our organic consultant, and Joe Urban, our Crystal City farm manger.
In the fourth image, you can see the Amistad Reservoir, which was formed by damming the Rio Grande River just north of Del Rio, TX. A canal system that was built in the 1920's to irrigate farmland along the Rio Grande River brings water from this lake to our pecan orchard in Quemado, TX.
This reservoir is capable of holding 4.5 million acre-feet of water, with one acre-foot being the equivalent of 326,000 gallons of water. The Amistad Reservoir is one of eight reservoirs in Texas that can hold more than 1 million acre-feet of water. Only one of these giant reservoirs was built in the last thirty years; the other seven were built by a prior generation of forward looking citizens. Environmental opposition has halted the construction of most new reservoirs in Texas. If you like the “win-win“ of reliance on foreign oil, you're going to love being dependent on foreign food!
The pecan trees we are planting this winter will start to bear nuts in 8 years, and they will reach full production in about 16 years. We hope we're around to see that...
The young pecan tree shown in image one is putting on a big flush of new growth. We use borders along the tree row to flood irrigate each strip of new trees. This land was precision leveled with a GPS system and large earth moving equipment before the trees were planted. This ensures that the irrigation water and the rainfall will flow evenly across the land.
As the irrigation water moves down the row, many of the weed seeds are germinated, leaving the green strip you can see in image two. As an organic farm, we do not use herbicides such as RoundUp to kill the weeds. We will actually mow the weeds to create a mulch strip. Marcello Stabile, our agronomist from Brazil, helped to oversee the planting of 50 acres of new pecan trees this winter.
Native pecan trees are usually found growing along rivers in the southern US and Mexico. Although the field in the next image is only about 100 yards from the Rio Grande River, it is unlikely that flood water from the river will reach the trees. An extensive system of dams and levees is in place to control the flow of the Rio Grande. Rest assured, however, that nature will eventually put together a flood event that will put this whole area under water.
This spring, we are growing about 60 acres of watermelons. The next image shows that using a mechanical planter and the seedlings that we raised in a greenhouse, our crew is able to plant about 25 acres of watermelons a day.
Finally, you can see that we have spent many hours perfecting the art of mechanical weed control. We use various implements , such as a rotary hoe, to control the weeds in our melon patch. To do a good job, you have to drive the tractor in an absolute straight line. It is much faster and easier to spray a field with herbicide, but we simply don't know much about the long term effect of exposure to synthetic chemicals in our diet.
Hurricane Katrina produced wide bands of rain and high winds, and the threatening weather from the massive storm stretched all the way to South Texas.
Dark, ominous clouds from Hurricane Katrina move over the pecan orchard. The pecan limbs are already heavily loaded from the growing weight of the nuts. High winds and rain increase the strain on the limbs, and can in fact cause 70% or more of the crop to be lost.
A sky, such as the one in these images, at ten o'clock in the morning, can put great fear in the pecan grower. An entire seasons work can be lost in a matter of minutes. There is no insurance available to protect a nut grower from weather damage.
Look how the outer bands of Katrina move over Quemado, Tx. Fortunately, the orchard did not suffer any major damage from the terrible Katrina storm.
Our nuts are almost fully formed by the end of August, as you can see in the last couple of pictures here. Now, the liquid material inside the nut is hardening into what we call the 'dough stage'. Over the month of September, the 'dough' will harden into the final nut. The big green 'shuck' that you see here protects and nourishes the nut forming inside.
If you look closely at the last picture, you will see many nuts that are slightly covered by the leaves. We will start to shake the nuts out of the trees and harvest them on October 1.
We are entering the critical 'water stage'; this is the period during which the pecan nuts will stop growing in size and kernal development reaches a maximum.
Take a look at the first image below. The nuts are now almost full size; the critical formation of the kernal is taking place inside the hard shell. Interestingly, the nut center at this time is almost completely liquid, similar to water.
Robert Sandner is the guiding force behind the transformation of this pecan orchard to “Certified Organic“ agriculture. Robert is scouting the tree in the second image for insects; he will determine if the damaging insects are too prevalent, and what needs to be done to control them.
Next, we see another "perfect" day in Quemado, Texas; the dirt borders are up around these trees as we get ready to flood irrigate the orchard.
Marcelo de Stabile (on the left in image 4), recently joined Rio Grande Organics as an agronomist. Marcelo comes to us from Brazil, with a short stop at Texas A&M for a Masters degree. Here, he and Juan are getting ready to spray a molasses/zinc mixture on the trees.
Finally, the sun sets over one of the canals that supplies irrigation water to our orchard. Recent heavy rains in west Texas, including hurricane Emily, haved filled our main reservoir, Lake Amistad, to the top.
The pecan trees have set a nice crop; it is up to us to bring it to fruition...
With the start of summer upon us, we appear to have a good nut set on our trees. The insect pressure in our orchard, which is always one of the big threats to reduce the crop, is very low at this time.
The first image below shows one of the larger clusters that we have in our orchard, with a total of six nuts. Most of our clusters have two or three nuts. If all of the clusters had five or six nuts, we would have to mechanically reduce the nut load in July by shaking each heavily loaded tree. These nuts are free from insect damage, and the green shuck, the outer covering of the nut, is developing normally.
The trees in the second image have healthy leaf set, which is critical for normal nut development. We don't use synthetic chemical fertilizer in our orchard; we use cow manure, and various ground-up rock products to provide potassium and phosphate. In normal fertilizer, the phosphate is water soluble, and much of it washes away with the rain to pollute local waterways. Rock based phosphate releases slowly over a long time period, reducing the amount that leaves the orchard with either rain or irrigation run-off.
The third close-up shot shows a nut cluster forming at almost every terminal branch, indicating that this tree is loaded with pecans. One of the greatest challenges for all pecan growers is the mystery of alternate bearing, whereby trees alternate a heavy crop one year with a light or non-existent crop the following year.
The following picture shows a limb so loaded with nuts that it is already sagging towards the ground. In pecan orchards, limbs often get so heavy with developing nuts that they actually break off from the tree late in the season!
Work is currently underway to get the orchard floor smooth for the fall harvest. In conventional orchards, vegetation is controlled by spraying glyphosate, which insantly kills many grasses and broadleaf species. The effect of glyphosate on the bacteria and microbial life in the soil is unknown. In organic farming, having a healthy, balanced soil is our number one priority.
