From the Fields - Tosh Kuratomi

By Tosh Kuratomi, Placer County farmer 

Peaches, plums and tomatoes are being harvested right now. We sell everything on the farm at a farm stand.

The weather has been devastating—too much rain after years of drought, too much heat burning up the fruit. The trees were very healthy. The pollination was great. We had all kinds of fruit, and then the heat wave came. We lost maybe 20% to 30% of our fruit.

The ripe fruit cooked on the inside and started to get rancid or fermented. That hardly ever happens with peaches, but this year it did. The plums and pluots all seemed to get damage from the inside. The persimmons got scorched. After they burn, if the heat is prolonged, it sucks the moisture out of them, and the fruit shrivels up. We won’t know until mid-September how the persimmon crop will be. We’re on pins and needles until the last minute. Even though we’re peeling it and drying it, we still have to make sure the quality is there. If you have blemishes, sometimes those blemishes show up in the dried product.

With a lot of the vegetables, the heat is too much, and they drop the blossoms. When the blossoms drop, you’ve got to wait and hope they’ll set blossoms again. We’ve got shade cloth, sheets and towels over the tomato vines to protect them from the direct rays of the sun, but the heat was so intense. I had some new trees that are still in the pot, and they burned—and they’re in the shade.

Some folks would’ve sprayed Surround. We don’t use any chemicals. We don’t do any spraying, even though it would be organically. We’re afraid that if we jump on a tractor with a sprayer, then people will think we lied to them about chemicals. They think organic means no spray, and I have to reassure them that we are allowed to spray. It’s just what is acceptable and what is not.