From the Fields ®
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Kulwant Johl Yuba County tree crop farmer
Taylor Serres Sonoma and Mendocino counties farmer and rancher
The cling peach crop looks good and is sizing nicely. Plus, the weather is good and has not been too hot, so that helps. The state’s cling peach crop is estimated to be a little larger than last year. In 2023, the crop was light because some varieties did not set well due to rain during bloom. The Yuba-Sutter cling peach-growing area has about 8,400 bearing acres of peaches that are sold to canners. This is a good area for growing peaches. Farmers in other areas of the state can grow other crops. We are relatively limit- ed in this area. Due to the salt, we can’t grow pistachios. We do have almonds, but they don’t produce as well here. We are about three weeks away from cling-peach harvest. We have extra-ear- ly, early, late and extra-late varieties. From extra-early to extra-late, these are: Calaveras, Loadel, Stanislaus, Carson, Kader, Andross, Vilmos and Kingsburg. Harvest for these varieties lasts from about the first week of July to the first week of September. To prepare the orchards for harvest, we had to spray for Oriental fruit moth and peach twig borer. We are also mowing and getting other things ready. We have some harvesting machines. I keep them ready just in case, but I don’t use them because canners only allow use of machine harvesting on a limited basis. Because I have varieties coming off one after the other, I have a better chance of finding employees for harvest than some other farmers who may only have one crop to harvest. We believe we will have enough workers for harvest this season. Inflation and the cost of inputs are high, and sales for peaches are coming down. Canned and dried fruit is not selling as much as it did before. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was good. Everything sold—peaches, prunes, whatever people got hold of, they bought it.
We have cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, zinfandel and other red winegrape varieties. We have gone through fruit set. We’ve finished all our suck- ering. We are starting to leaf pull. We’ve had a moderate season as far as weath- er goes. The grapes look good. The market is a little precarious with the oversupply of grapes. We are opti- mistic about it. We have almost everything under contract, but there is still some fruit available. We are slightly worried about the Point Fire that just broke out. We hope it won’t have too much of an impact. It was very smoky here in Sonoma Valley on Sunday. We are probably a good 30 to 40 miles from the fire. We don’t know yet if there will be an impact on the grapes. We’re thankful not to be in evacuation proximity, but we think of our neighbors who are impacted by smoke and evac- uations. With a fire of this magnitude this early in the season, we’re hoping this will be the first and last of it. Our blueberries are in Laytonville in Mendocino County. We’re going to start har- vesting this week. That will keep us busy for the next month or so. Talking to other growers, everyone is saying they’ve had a bumper crop. I think it’s going to be a lighter crop for us. We haven’t had the heat we need to get the berries to size up. We tend to come in after the Watsonville and Salinas area and before Washington and Oregon. That market window is beneficial for us. I spoke with a wholesaler who said blueberry production elsewhere in California has come to a close for this season. We also have cattle in Laytonville. We’ve had a very good grass year. Being organic, we incur extra costs, but it seems to work out in the end. We sold our steers and heifers last week, and prices seem to be strong.
Josh Barton San Joaquin County walnut grower
It’s kind of uncharacteristic to have these high, triple-digit temperatures in the beginning of June. This year, specifically, given where the industry is on the walnut side, we have made an aggressive effort to focus any and all of our resources on preserving quality on our products. Quality is what’s going to try to raise all tides. We’ve done a lot in preparation for this sea- son knowing that our goal was to put the emphasis on quality. We’ve made a very mitigated irrigation schedule to be on top of it, irrigate more intermittently to satisfy the water demand in the trees. With the heat that we’ve had in early June, we have gone through and applied Surround on our early varietals in a hope that we can alleviate any sunburn that may or may not come from this heat. It’s also a really important time because we’re trying to get size right now, and when you get into this high-heat index, as your crop is trying to size up, it can hit stall points with really hot temperatures. We really need more of those mid-80-degree, low 90-degree days right now to get really good, consistent size as we transition from post bloom into the heart of the growing season. It’s a two-prong approach. We’re doing everything we can to monitor our ir- rigation closely, to not overirrigate but not underirrigate and hit size and quality early on. That helps set the tone for the rest of the growing season. Early-season fertilizers are going out as well. We’re trying to take our nitrogen manage- ment plan, and we’re already starting to spread or inject fertilizer on the walnuts as well, to try to meet the early demand on our nitrogen budget at this time.
4 Ag Alert June 19, 2024
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