From the Fields – Rod Chamberlain

By Rod Chamberlain, Riverside County mango and tomato farmer

We’re in between crops. We finished our mango crop about a month ago, and we’re just waiting for the temperatures in the Coachella Valley to drop a little so we can start transplanting tomatoes.

This time of year, we typically do our farm cleanup and improvement projects. We’ll be planting some more mango trees. We’ve always got repairs and maintenance to do on the hydroponic systems we use for our tomatoes.

Our mango crop was below average. We have about 15 acres of mango trees. During flowering season, we had an awful lot of rain, which stimulates vegetative production rather than going into flower production. I think that led to the smaller overall fruit yield this year. Mangoes are typically alternate bearing, so we’re looking forward to what we think will be a strong season next year.

It’s a tropical fruit, and it has been a learning curve growing mangoes in the Coachella Valley. It’s so hot down here, so we can’t do a lot of the pruning that operations in tropical climates do. It would let too much sun in and burn the fruit. We keep the canopy a little more tight so that the light penetration isn’t as much. We actually put an individual bag over the early fruit and staple it to shade the fruit and protect it from sunburn.

Our product goes to Southern California farmers markets. We’re not competing with the imports at all. We produce an exceptional fruit, which is super sweet, and it’s very well received in the markets. In these short years, we have a lot of disappointed customers. We just don’t have the volume to supply what people want.

Our cherry tomatoes are grown hydroponically on about 3 acres. They’re grown outdoors on pipe systems, and all the nutrients are supplied through the water system.