A recent website just posted hopes to make research papers available to the general public. Many times these papers are locked away in archives or libraries and are hard to access. This website wants to change that. It is sponsored by various group0s, including USDA, University of Missouri, industry, Resource Conservative Districts and other entitites. It's a small data base at this point, but hopes to build over time. check it out:
There's a lot of distracting stuff at the site, but the guts are at
Other good ag websites are the USDA's National Ag Library:
USDA's ATTRA which is loaded with basic and detailed farming information:
USDA's Farming Information Center
It's a new year, READ ON!!!!
In a recent meeting the topic of where to go for irrigation information came up. Well there's no substitute for attending a class in irrigation, such as offered at Cal Poly SLO (http://www.itrc.org/classes/iseclass.htm ,
but here's some written sources to get you started thinking.
There are something like 1,000 named varieties of avocado. Big, small, green, black, purple, round, pear-shaped, winter, summer, fall harvest, anise smelling leaves, all kinds of distinguishing features. A homeowner once called to ask about the ‘San Marcos' variety of avocado and we viewed images of this tree and fruit and finally figures out it was a ‘Bacon' that was planted on San Marcos Pass and had adopted the new name because they didn't know what to call the avocado tree in the backyard. So there are a lot of trees that are misnamed for known varieties.
If you want to find out the name of an unknown tree in your backyard, there is a convenient online source of information at Avocado Information at UC Riverside. There is an online list with photos of avocado varieties at:
And a variety database you can use to search by name at:
There's also a list of unreleased varieties at:
One of the best sources of variety information is the CA Avocado Society Yearbook where most varieties were listed for registration. Some of the descriptions are online, but in many cases it's necessary to go to the original paperback version
Yearbooks can be found at many UCCE offices in Southern California, UC Riverside and Davis libraries, many Southern CA public libraries and from interlibrary loan.
Historically if you wanted to know what soil type and the description for it, it was necessary to go to the library, NRCS office or Coop Extension office to find the soil survey. It is a book out of print now, but it has maps with outlines of the soils of that county and the descriptions that characterize those soils. The USDA put the Soil Survey online about 10 years ago
and it is great unless the internet goes down.
Toby O'Geen at UC Davis has taken the same information and repackaged it so that it is easier to use