Organic strawberry transplants show good results

On the edge of a strawberry field at Tom Broz' Live Earth Farm outside Watsonville, a few rows of strawberry starter plants produced using only organically accepted methods are doing favorably compared to the adjacent starts shipped by a conventional nursery.

These organic plants look fuller, more vigorous and greener than the conventional starts that Broz has, until now, used to grow organic strawberries.

"They're doing better than the conventional ones," Broz said. "They started earlier and are consistent. Overall, we've been very happy with them."

Broz is among a handful of Santa Cruz and Monterey county strawberry growers looking closely this year at strawberry starter plants that were produced at the Innovative Organic Nursery in Butte Valley near the Oregon border using only organically acceptable methods.

"This is really exciting that we have an opportunity to use organic starts, and take it full circle," Broz said.

Innovative Organic Nursery co-founder James Rickert planted a couple of acres of organic starts last year, after taking a few years off because demand was limited, and doubled the acreage this year.

"From 2006 to 2009, I was the only supplier out there producing organic strawberry planting starts," Rickert said. "There was a reluctance among organic growers who were worried we'd bring nematodes and various disease pathogens to their fields. I walked away in 2009."

Interest in organic starter plants received a boost when strawberry sector leader Driscoll's announced its plan to use organic starts exclusively for organic strawberries, so Rickert decided to test the waters again.

"It starts with finding property that has never been planted in potatoes or other crops that could put verticillium into the ground," he said. "We bring in beneficial insects and use a lot of organic crop materials to protect the plants. When you have healthy plants, it limits the danger."

The current trial of his starts on the Central Coast, and a larger one to be planted later this year, could pave the way for a larger return to organic starter plants, after they have been unavailable for nearly a decade and growers have had no choice but to start with plants grown using conventional chemicals.

"We're talking about 35 to 40 million starter plants for just the public varieties," said Lisa Bunin, director of Organic Advocacy. "California growers produce 130 million pounds of organic strawberries on 3,755 acres, which is more than 10 percent of all the strawberry acreage. Organic growers are required to use the starter plants if they are available."

Organic Advocacy helped bring together researchers from the University of California, Davis; UC Santa Cruz; regulators from the California Department of Food and Agriculture; and nursery growers at a summit during the 2013 Ecological Farming Conference that led to the trials as part of the Organic Strawberry Fields Forever project.

The trials could lead to a requirement that all certified organic strawberries begin with organic starts, but some growers are already very pleased to see Rickert's plants available once again.

"I'm a huge fan of Jim's plants," said Steve Pedersen, owner of High Ground Organics in Watsonville. "We used them before when he was growing starters, and I have faith in them."

This year, all of Pedersen's strawberry plants are from organic starters of the best-tasting UC variety.

"We are only using Albion, which is the only variety we grow," Pedersen said. "We sell directly to the public through a CSA and farmers markets, so it's very important to us to use the best-tasting berries."

A larger trial planned for later this year will include Albion and Chandler, among a total of four public strawberry varieties.

"We applied for a grant by the Organic Farming Research Foundation to do side-by-side field trials with organic and conventionally grown starts," Bunin said. "Five growers will be planting 2,000 plants of each variety."

A Watsonville firm with extensive experience in treating organic soil will conduct this larger-scale trial of the organic starter plants in conjunction with researchers from UC and UC Cooperative Extension.

"There will be 100,000 plants in our trial," said Lucy Toyama, representative of Farm Fuel Inc. of Watsonville. "The goal is to get them on five different farms, with one-fifth of an acre per farm. Half will be organic transplants, the other half conventionally produced transplants. We are not planning any special treatment of the ground other than what the growers already do."

Farm Fuel has worked extensively with anaerobic soil disinfestation, a technique that many organic growers use to rid their soil of disease pathogens.

"Today we have tools we never had before," said Broz, who uses disinfestation for his strawberry ground. "We go on a four-year rotation, but we could go three, or maybe even two with disinfestation."

If all goes well, it should not take long for organic starts to become universally accepted and required in the organic strawberry business statewide.

Driscoll's is already growing its own organic starts, and plans to use these plants exclusively for its organic strawberries by 2020.

"Driscoll's has been an active participant in the Organic Strawberry Fields Forever project," Bunin said. "When they announced they were switching to organic starts, we told the farmers, 'We have to step on the gas.'"

If the starts pass their test next season, one issue that will remain will be consumer willingness to pay a few cents more for their organic berries.

Live Earth has been built on a foundation of a direct connection to the community since Broz and his wife, Constance, started farming the ground in 1995, and those relationships could make it easier to explain the cost difference.

"At a farmers market, we can tell the consumer why they cost a little more," Broz said.

Like Pedersen, they grow the sweetest tasting Albions, and a few Seascapes, for the U-pick berries at their Saturday produce stand at the farm.

And area kids of all ages and backgrounds come to Live Earth Farm every year to learn about how seeds become food, and also become familiar along the way with a few chickens, goats and cows.

"We started with the CSA model over 20 years ago, and built a nice community," Broz said. "With the Farm Discovery program, 2,000 kids of all backgrounds come here every year."

(Bob Johnson is a reporter in Davis. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@aol.com.)