From the Fields: Doug Phillips, Tulare County tree fruit grower, packer and shipper

By Doug Phillips, Tulare County tree fruit grower, packer and shipper

I just started a big project putting in a couple of new reservoirs. They will have new sand media filters as opposed to a gravity-screen type. It’s more efficient to pump direct from the reservoir booster through closed filters into your microsprinkler irrigation system. As part of the project, we’re putting in soil moisture probes on every 10 acres. We’ll have a probe, weather station and controller that allow us to look at data from a cellphone or computer and determine when to irrigate and how much to irrigate. 

The whole idea with the reservoir is we can manage our water much more efficiently by having shorter irrigation runs. We can turn the pump off remotely with the phone. Part of the project is variable frequency drive, or VFD. We can control the booster pump motor and make it more efficient by running it at a lower hertz. I’m hoping we can use 25% less water. 

I’m a little concerned about some of the federal and state programs that could offset some of the cost of these things, as they’re not cheap. With SGMA (Sustainable Groundwater Management Act) and establishment of GSAs (groundwater sustainability agencies), it’s become imperative that we cut back on groundwater pumping and try to use whatever surface water we have more efficiently and not have to remove orchards, which may still be in the cards if we get another extended drought.

We already picked some early peaches in late April. We’re about to start some plums and pluots. The biggest disappointment was the citrus, particularly lemons. Packout returns have been lower than normal. Mandarins, in many cases, aren’t doing that great. But the stone fruit season just started, and that crop looks good. My kiwi had a good year last year marketing wise, and we have a very nice-looking crop coming in. Bloom just finished. We can see the crop, and it looks very good. We’re optimistic about kiwifruit, especially the red kiwi.