From the Fields - John Tenerelli

By John Tenerelli, Los Angeles County tree fruit grower 

This week is peak bloom in my orchards. The apricots bloom first with some of the varieties of plums and pluots. We have early bloomers, mid-bloomers and late bloomers, and they started blooming two weeks ago. We have other plum varieties that haven’t started yet. Peaches are starting to bloom.

I’m spraying for flower thrips, a little bug. They spoil the fruit, and they get into the little embryo and the blossom. Everything is pruned. We are cutting firewood and weed whacking. We’re in the desert at close to 3,000 feet. Since we’re high elevation, we don’t really worry about having enough chill hours like other growers do. We try to plant trees that bloom a little later because the later they bloom, the more they are protected from frost.

I talked to the irrigation district, and I’m getting ready to turn the water on so I can get everything ready for frost protection. This year it looks to be a warmer year. I guess El Niño warms it up a bit, and we might not have any frost, which is a good thing. But we’re getting the water going anyway because these blooms need moisture in the ground. We only get 5 inches of rain each year, so we have to put water on them a bit earlier than the San Joaquin Valley does.

Everything looks really good. This will be our second year with the cherry U-pick. We had a lot of fun last year. It’s nice to talk to the customers. We have five cherry varieties: Coral, Rainier, Benton, Sweetheart and Lapins. They’ve got another two to three weeks before they start blooming. We focus on the late-season crop because we’re a late growing area. You get the premium on the price at the end. In the beginning of the season, we can’t compete very well because we don’t have much.