Mimicking mother nature.
Healthy soils are vital to backyard gardens and almond orchards alike. Just as a tree falling in the forest provides nutrients to those around it, researchers are working on projects, funded by the Almond Board of California and the almond community, to explore the potential for recycling almond coproducts back into the soil and how that might affect orchard health.
One of those research projects is exploring a new practice known as whole orchard recycling. Almond orchards generally live for 25 years, during which the trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it as wood, a process known as carbon sequestration. This new orchard removal approach extends that carbon sequestration by storing it in the soil, using the woody biomass to build healthier soils3 and address climate change. Models show that recycling the orchard sequesters 2.4 tons of carbon per acre,4 equivalent to living car-free for a year.5