Not necessarily. Almonds can grow without water but those varieties have deeper roots to tap into the ground water.
They were all uprooted and replaced by cultivars that are dwarf and early yielding. Two reasons: the root stock takes care of resistance to certain soil disease and secondly harvest.
Almonds are harvested by mechanical ‘shakers’. Giant ‘arms’ that shake the tree and then vaccum the fallen nuts.
So what we need is uniform height dwarf trees that are disease resistant and are spaced optimally for equipment and machinery for spraying, banding, harvesting etc.
You have to think of these commercial orchards as open air factory assembly lines. This isn’t nature. This is factories without safety and environmental rules to follow. Because there is no OSHA for bees.
They were all uprooted and replaced by cultivars that are dwarf and early yielding. Two reasons: the root stock takes care of resistance to certain soil disease and secondly harvest.
Almonds are harvested by mechanical ‘shakers’. Giant ‘arms’ that shake the tree and then vaccum the fallen nuts.
So what we need is uniform height dwarf trees that are disease resistant and are spaced optimally for equipment and machinery for spraying, banding, harvesting etc.
You have to think of these commercial orchards as open air factory assembly lines. This isn’t nature. This is factories without safety and environmental rules to follow. Because there is no OSHA for bees.