From the Fields - Debbie Chamberlain

By Debbie Chamberlain, Riverside County farmer

We started our tomato season at the beginning of March, so we’re about halfway through our tomato season. We have five varieties of cherry tomatoes. We also have a few areas of squash and green beans that we’re finishing up. We’re also trying sweet peppers. Those are new, but we don’t do a lot. They’re little sideline items to go with the cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes and basil are our main crops. The amount of greenhouses we now have in basil has grown. We’re also looking to increase it for next year.

The mangos are flowering, so that’s normal, and it looks good. They’re alternate bearing, so some trees look heavy and some don’t. That’ll be ready for harvest the beginning of July. It’s been extremely wet this year. The good side of it is we got free water, and mangos love it because they’re a tropical plant.

We had a lot of cool, wet weather, so we’ve had some issues with powdery mildew, which killed some of our tomato plants. Our cherry tomatoes are in a hydroponic system. Even though they’re outdoors, they’re pretty dense because it was warm early on. Then we had all those storms come through. It was the perfect condition for powdery mildew. It’s affected some of the production, but not too bad.

Some varieties are more resilient than others, so it seems like some things pick up the slack for other problems. Sungold is one that’s very susceptible, and it’s almost 40% of our cherry tomato varieties. Customers love that one. Sungold has a thin skin, and it’s tricky. When we had those rains, we had some splitting, and you have to dump that, because once they split, they go bad. Normally, we’re drier and it’s not as much of an issue. But I hear (about splitting) with the central California growers and coastal growers who try to grow Sungold. But (the variety) is hugely productive.