Halloween may be long gone, but mummies could be lurking in almond orchards – mummy nuts, that is!
Mummy nuts are what almond farmers call the nuts that remain on the trees after harvest. The normally fuzzy, green outer hull darkens and the kernel remaining inside becomes a desirable food source for certain orchard pests.
To prevent and manage these pests, almond farmers are doing the “Mummy Shake” to sanitize their orchards and prepare them for dormancy.
Check out how the California almond community does the Mummy Shake:
Dormancy is the period of time in the winter – now through January – after almond tress lose their leaves and the orchards get to rest, relax, and store up almond nutrients for next year's crop. Around late-January or early-February – the end of dormancy – buds begin swelling on each tree’s branches in preparation for bloom.
To learn more about this time in the almond lifecycle, as well as other parts of almonds’ annual growing cycle, watch:
