New Cold Front May Threaten Growers’ Citrus, Avocado Trees

With much of Ventura County’s citrus and avocado crop already devastated by last weekend’s freeze, growers may now have to fight to save the trees themselves, officials said Tuesday.

Farmers and other county residents enjoyed a brief reprieve of warm weather Christmas Day as temperatures reached near 70 in inland communities, National Weather Service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said.

But by Saturday and Sunday, the next cold front from the Northwest will again deliver freezing temperatures that will top out in the 40s or low 50s during the day and dip into the low 20s at night, Schaeffer said.

Temperatures could plunge even further throughout the county if the cold front contains an air mass that originated in Siberia before it moved across the Arctic to the Pacific.

The results could be severe, he said.

“If the colder Arctic air comes down the coast and doesn’t veer off into the southwest desert, we may reach the point where the growers will have to forget trying to save the fruit and just try to save their trees,” Schaeffer said.

Last weekend, much of the coast and some inland areas--including the agriculturally rich Santa Clara Valley and the Los Posas and Santa Rosa valleys--were spared the several hours of sustained frost that cripples trees. But those areas probably will not be as lucky this weekend, he said.

“This might be a much more democratic-type freeze,” he said.

Schaeffer said satellite information today should tell growers for certain whether the Arctic mass will skirt the county or cast a pall of heavy frost over the county’s biggest agricultural commodity--lemons, worth $164 million in 1989.

County agriculture officials estimated the crop damage at $100 million countywide Monday. But the losses could surge, reaching into the crop yields for the next two or three years if the extremely cold freeze hits, said Richard Pidduck, a citrus and avocado grower in Santa Paula Canyon along California 150 north of Santa Paula.

“My entire avocado crop is 100% loss,” he said. “And I suspect my citrus is largely lost. We can’t suffer much more fruit damage, but if we get a lot of wood damage on the trees, they could be out of production for two or three years.”

Pidduck said each crop is worth about $100,000 to his ranch a year.

He said the losses will mean lean years for the growers and higher prices to consumers.

If consumers “don’t begrudge us the occasional good year we have in citrus and avocado farming, we won’t complain too loudly about the occasional bad year,” said Pidduck, whose family has farmed in Ventura County since the early 1900s.

At Pidduck’s orchard, the broad leaves of the tall avocado trees were darkened and limp, their edges burned and crisp. Many of the usually waxy green leaves on the lemon trees were gold and curled, causing the tree to rattle when the wind blew.

The new lemon trees, the most vulnerable to freeze damage, lost much of their foliage, and the tiny fruit they bore had turned into dark marble-sized balls.

Orange trees, the hardiest of the citrus crop, fared better, with much of the damage limited to the leaves.

Randy Axell said some of his 100-acre citrus and avocado ranch near Santa Paula had been spared from the freeze last weekend.

“This particular ranch isn’t a total loss yet,” he said. “We still have a lot of optimism. But there are a lot of folks out there who were a lot less fortunate than us.”

Growers can do little more than they have already done to combat the coming freeze, they said. They spray with a plastic-like substance, run wind machines and sprinklers to keep the temperatures high, and fire up orchard heaters.

They can further protect trees by wrapping them or shoveling dirt around their trunks, Schaeffer said. But how they handle their own orchards is an individual economic decision.

“Do they concentrate the pots in the warmer areas and write off the other trees, or pay people to shovel dirt all night?” he asked. He is seeking advice from an agricultural expert at the University of Florida, where the citrus industry has weathered several severe freezes.

Schaeffer said little if any rain or snow will come with the cold front that is moving toward the area, so the county will find no drought relief in the cold.