From The Fields ®
From the Fields is a firsthand report featuring insights from farmers and ranchers across the Golden State, including members of the California Farm Bureau. If you would like to be a contributor to From the Fields, submit your name, county of membership and contact information to agalert@cfbf.com.
Photo/Courtesy Jonathan Merrill
Photo/Ching Lee
Jonathan Merrill Monterey County vegetable grower
Kulwant Johl Yuba County tree crop farmer
Everything we could possibly be growing is being planted and harvested right now, so we have everything from transplants of Brussels sprouts going in, di- rect-seeded iceberg, romaine, mixed leaf lettuces, transplant broccoli, transplant celery, carrots and onions. Crops were delayed because of the flooding that happened over the winter. We had a lot of crop loss. We had an immense number of fields that were under water. If erosion didn’t destroy the crop, the contaminated floodwaters did. We had to plant back a lot of those fields that we had lost. We had to play a lot of catch-up. We’ve had huge gaps, huge periods of oversupply and missed windows of oppor- tunities. Getting a good, consistent schedule this season has been really challeng- ing. But we are coming into our turn right now, so we have a little bit more control to pick and choose the crops that need to go in for the late-season harvest. Last week was our very first heat wave of the season, so we haven’t had the typ- ical weed pressures pop up until now. Pest pressure has been very low. Necrotic spot virus was a huge issue in our valley—and it still is—but it seems to be less ag- gressive now than it was last year. I think the cool weather and the floods to some degree delayed propagation of that particular disease. That’s one silver lining in the chaos of this year. It’s hard to know what’s going to be the next big trend in fresh produce. One year it’s going to be cauliflower rice. Then LA decides that drinking celery juice is the next best thing for weight loss, and the whole country will want celery for six months. Next year, it’s kale. It’s always changing depending on what’s in the ethos of the health culture. Probably the biggest thing we struggle with is knowing where demand is going to come from.
Everything is late this year. Cling peach harvest started about two weeks late. We started harvest last week. It’s going well. The fruit in some varieties is a little small this year because of the weather and the hot days we had. When the temperature goes up to 95 or 100 degrees, they just stop growing. July and August are really busy, and we will stay busy until the end of October. We are getting ready to harvest prunes and almonds in August. They will both be about two weeks late, too. Peach harvest will go into September. Walnut harvest will probably start the first week of October. So far, we have plenty of labor. Most other growers use farm labor contractors. I personally don’t. I have my own guys—about 40 people—who work almost year- round for me. During harvest, they bring their families. The price for cling peaches is very good this year. The (California Canning Peach Association) does a good job negotiating a price. Last year’s price was good, too. The prices for nuts are really bad. As a farmer, you always look at the market and see this crop or that crop is not doing too well; the future doesn’t look very good, so let’s change and go into something else. My grandfather started farming here in 1924. I got involved right after college, in the 1970s, and I’ve been doing it since then. About 10 or 15 years ago, all I had were peaches and prunes. At the time, nut crops were doing well, so we got into al- monds and walnuts. Almond trees take four years to start producing. Walnuts take about five. Some people have taken out their walnut and almond trees. Personally, I’m just going to hang in there. A few years ago, prune prices were not very good. But then the market changed and prices improved. We’re hoping the nut prices will do the same.
Tom Jopson Siskiyou County nursery producer
For the conifer seedling nursery, everything is sown, and we’re trying to grow things pretty rapidly. Douglas fir are already fully grown, so we’re doing “short-day blackouts,” giving them short days to set buds. That started in early July. It works really well for Douglas fir in particular, which is a big crop for us. We are projecting the growth and then adjusting fertilizer and things to get them to the right size. It’s a horse race. You fire the gun and you have 15 weeks or 18 weeks to pull it off. If you get behind, you don’t have that much time to catch up. The goal is to have a lot of them ready to plant by Oct. 1, because if we have rain, people have the option of planting them. Reforestation is a big deal now with all the wildfires. The seed is completely irreplaceable, and it is in short supply. For succulents, the peak for mail-order plants was in the springtime, so the season is winding down. It slows down steadily through the summer and into the fall. Now that we’re past the peak, we spend less time on order fulfillment, and we start propagating varieties that we have to propagate in quantity. There are those that produce offsets once in the year, like the semperviva, which is a hearty rosette succulent. We are starting to propagate large quantities of things because we have more people avail- able. We have something like 700 cultivars. We’re still fulfilling orders. We are swapping locations within the nursery, so that is a big part of what we’re doing—building new facilities and upgrading our facilities to do a better job. For example, we added heat tables and grow lights to improve the rooting of these plants because everything’s done from cuttings. We’re in the process of installing that, which means I’m having to redo the electrical.
Photo/Craig Alan photography
4 Ag Alert July 26, 2023
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