By José Ramírez, Monterey County certified crop adviser

My day to day consists of visiting with Central Coast berry and vegetable growers and listening to their concerns about challenges they face to grow a good crop while being good stewards of the environment.

As a certified crop adviser, I focus on the best return on investment to the grower. I believe it takes a commonsense approach to evaluate, diagnose and recommend what is needed, bridging the gap between soil and plants. Many times, my recommendations include going back to the basics. For example, picking your best ground for the most challenging crop or reduce water use.  

The latest trend is the use of biostimulants as California has announced them as beneficial substances. One of the many tasks is to screen them for efficacy for more than one season in different crops, soils and microclimates. The majority of biostimulants are plant extracts, but some have macronutrients and/or secondary nutrients like calcium and magnesium. 

One of the biggest pest problems is the two-spotted spider mite, and the other is lygus. In the disease world, you have a lot of problems with pathogens—fusarium, macrophomina and phytophora. 

To battle these, when you plant a berry or lettuce field, transplants are dipped in a solution of amino acids, microorganisms or pest-specific synthetic products. The follow-up is to continue to fertigate with these types of inputs and/or products categorized as biocontrol agents. This practice helps create a healthy soil environment for the root to grow. 

There are biofungicides or microorganisms that are registered with EPA for this specific purpose. The idea is to have biodiversity and use of an integrated approach. Biodiversity is key, so integrating many types of products goes a long way. 

Farmers have been sustainable for years. If not, they wouldn’t be here. We as crop advisers are helping them be more sustainable by the transfer of technology. As CCAs, we are always going to seminars and evaluating products and taking a hands-on approach. 

By Joe Colace, Imperial County melon and vegetable grower, packer and shipper

We are into our second full week of sweet corn harvest. We had a little bit of a cool spell in early April, and that cool spell may have set maturing back a couple of days. Overall, we’re very pleased with the crop. We have the bicolor and the white corn that are going, and we were up to full production last week.

On the melon front, we are excited for what we see in the fields, anticipating what we believe will be a normal start time, which is the first week of May. The quality looks encouraging, so we’re optimistic we’ll finish well. The weather forecast is slightly above-average temperatures, so that bodes well for the melons. The other thing we like is dry weather, and we have that nice westerly flow, which gives us the drier conditions, so everything is very positive.

We’re very excited about the prospects of our Picasso line of specialty melons. We have our frontline Picasso melon, for which we have expanded the acreage base. There are a couple of other Picasso melons—the Picasso Sunrise and the Picasso Moon—and we expanded trials for both varieties. The Picasso is a hybrid melon that comes from two different lines.

Related to technology, we are trying different types of mechanical weeding. There are a couple different companies that are working on that. They mostly focus on vegetables, but one of those companies is out in one of our melon fields. We’re encouraged with what we think is going to be the future. Obviously, AI application is becoming a reality, and we hope to be at the forefront. Also, we are trialing new varieties for the future, so we are relying on advanced technology when it comes to solubles, production and sizing. The plant breeders are working diligently to try to create what the consumer likes, which is a larger melon with good shelf life and the flavor profile that we work hard to maintain.