PALM DESERT, Calif. — Living herbs, fresh melons, organic citrus were some of what West Coast Produce Expo tourgoers got a chance to experience on May 29.
A sold-out tour crisscrossed the Coachella and Imperial Valleys to get a closer look at fresh produce production.
North Shore Greenhouses
The first stop was at North Shore Greenhouses, where Leo and Suzette Overgaag first started farming in 1987 with greenhouse-grown English cucumbers, then living herbs.
Suzette Overgaag said her husband promised her “a small greenhouse you can start in,” to understand how to produce living herbs. North Shore Greenhouses now has about 10 acres of greenhouses in living herb production.
She said a challenge when launching the living herbs was having roots in the wet rack at a grocery store. But she said she firmly thinks a wet rack is the proper place for the herbs.
“It took us a long time to get people to put it in the wet rack,” she said.
The Overgaags landed their first client, Whole Foods, which asked North Shore Greenhouses to grow organic herbs. When company transitioned to organic, a key challenge was sourcing a good organic fertilizer, so it invented an organic fertilizer to make it happen.
On the tour, visitors saw North Shore Greenhouses' production techniques, automated flat-filling system and packaging system, as well as its greenhouses designed specifically for herb production.
Suzette Overgaag said its herbs typically last about one to two weeks in its innovative clamshells versus fresh-cut herbs, which results in less shrinkage for the retailer and less food waste for the consumer.
And while tourgoers asked about alternative packaging, the Overgaags say that as fragile as the living herb plants are, its recyclable packaging is what helps the products stay as fresh as possible in the store.
West Valley Organic Farm
The next stop was West Valley Organic Farm in the Imperial Valley, where visitors got to see cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon production.
Cantaloupe harvest will start in a week and watermelon harvest began last week, said Jesus Macias, general manager of West Valley Organic Farm.
Creekside Organic has worked with West Valley Organic Farm for the past several years. The farm uses its melons as a seasonal summer complement to its broccoli, cauliflower, iceberg lettuce and celery production, which occupies the fields during the winter months.
West Valley Organic Farm harvests watermelons twice; the first is a significant harvest and the second is usually a routine cleanup.
Macias said it's a challenge to grow organic melons, as he and the crews constantly battle thrips and aphids.
“You're up against Mother Nature,” he said, noting there are not many good organic controls for these pests.
Avoiding sunburn is also a challenge, so a major focus for the crews is to grow significant vines to shade the melons. While crews can supplement the vines' coverage with hay, the wind often blows the hay away, and then crews need to reapply.
“There's not a lot of room for error,” Macias said.
The team at Creekside said it's important for retailers to help communicate the challenges of organic production and what it takes to grow organic melons to emphasize the value of the melons in the store.
Tourgoers also got to see beehives in action, as those act as pollinators for the melons. Beekeeper Brock Ashurst shared a little bit about the role of bees in pollination and why his hives go to Montana after pollinating crops in California.
“The Imperial Valley is the worst place to keep bees,” he said, noting the amount of honey generated by his bees from pollinating melons is significantly less than what his bees can produce in Montana.
Doc's Organic Farm
The Dockstader family has been growing organic lemons, minneolas, mandarins, grapefruit and dates since the mid-1990s. Doc's Organic Farm has 250 acres of organic medjool dates, 430 acres of organic lemons, 160 acres of organic grapefruit, 80 acres of organic minneolas and 50 acres of organic sweet limes.
The farm markets its fruit to retailers across the country and into Canada and other international markets.
While the fruit is grown under P&T Enterprises, all fruit is packed under the Doc's Organics label. The Dockstader family opened a new packing shed in 2017.
“This allows us so much control,” said owner Gina Dockstader, adding that this means the team can leave the fruit on the tree until it's ready.
Dusty Dockstader, partner, said his grandfather and uncle added some citrus trees to complement its 3,000-acre forage production. When his grandfather and uncle faced some challenges growing conventional citrus trees, someone advised the Dockstaders to transition to organic production.
“My uncle, to his credit, we are not smart enough to separate organic and conventional, and this was years ago — we went all 100% organic,” he said. “It was easier for us to deal with. It solved our problems over the years. We have totally bought into the difference.”
Dockstader said his uncle also understood the need to diversify crops and added the organic date trees.
“My uncle was forward-thinking that we need to diversify, because sometimes lemons are terrible, oranges are good,” he said. “It was just trying to give us options. That's why we ended up with three or four different crops. We are not big enough, and it's very hard for us to get everybody to come to us to buy just lemons. But if you got minneolas and you got lemons, now I got two products in this palette.”
While growing organic citrus can have its challenges, Dusty Dockstader said huanglongbing — also known as HLB or citrus greening — hasn't really affected the citrus production in the Imperial Valley. He said citrus growers in the valley have come together to push for mandatory preventative sprays and a committee that monitors everything.
“We are very blessed, I would say, to be secluded in a place where we have minimal growers and minimal acres, and we can monitor each other,” he said.
Dockstader said one citrus grower abandoned his groves, and the committee has worked with the grower to have him bulldoze the grove to protect those still in production.
On the tour, Dockstader took a small group to see the farm's organic Persian sweet limes. Because it's a lime, people think that when they're green, they're ripe.
“Everybody hears the word lime, and they think it's something sour,” he said. “These turn yellow when they get ripe, and they're sweet. They get a little bit of sugar to them.”
Tanner Dockstader, a fifth-generation farmer and part of the sales team with Doc's Organic Farm, said the sweet limes are popular with ethnic groups, but because the limes turn yellow when ripe, it takes some education.
“It's actually gotten better lately,” Dusty Dockstader said. “Last year we did some business with Whole Foods. They've been putting them in a bag in their grocery store. It used to be a little more difficult for us to get a market on them and now other people are starting to become open to the idea.”