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Stanton Lange looks through a magnifying glass at bean sprouts at David Lucas' Zin Star vineyard on Wednesday. The sprouts harbor "good" mites that will help to eliminate the "bad" mites found on the vines. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)
Bug-eat-bug world
Predatory mites used as 'pesticide' in growers' organic practices
In years past, if a grower was faced with a pest problem, in most cases he would spray his crops with pesticides and move on. But what if, like many of today's growers, he was trying to implement organic growing practices?
David Lucas, of the Lucas Winery on Davis Road in Lodi, is facing that very dilemma. On a routine inspection of his Zin Star Zinfandel vineyards, Lucas's growing partner, Stanton Lange, discovered a minute menace: the Willamette spider mite. To combat this foe of the vine they would simply employ ... more mites.
Scarcely a fraction the size of the head of pin, Willamette spider mites will run rampant through a vineyard, feeding on the leaves and laying their eggs on the leaves and, over winter, under the plant's bark.
Detecting the mites — as small as they may be — is easy enough, because the leaves they feast on become discolored with brownish yellow spots. Though the mite doesn't defoliate the plants like other species of mites do, the discoloration is still harmful.
Since the leaves act as a solar panel to the plant, absorbing sunlight and allocating nutrients to the fruit, discoloration shuts down that function and keep the grapes from ripening properly.
Enter Galendromus occidentalis, the western predatory mite. Shipped from Sterling Insectary in Kern County, the "good" mites are sent on small bundles of bean plants. Growers place the bundles in the crotch of the tree, and the imported mites crawl off the leaves onto the vine, attacking the spider mites where they live.
Kim Gallagher, the general manager of Sterling, said she works with a lot of almond and grape growers throughout the entire Central Valley. Ten thousand mites will cost a grower $120 plus shipping and tax, Gallagher said.
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Lucas, who nicknamed the predatory mites "terminator" mites after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in the movies by the same name, joked about the ensuing battle.
"We won't be able to sleep with all the gunfire," Lucas said.
In the quest to become a certified organic grower, Lucas had to put part of his vineyards through a two-year "test" to gauge the crop's sustainability under organic growing practices. After an application and inspection process by the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) based in Santa Cruz, growers who meet the requirements can be certified organic.
And growers must be seriously committed to the practice, as it can cost more and cut into a farmer's profits.
Other techniques Lange and Lucas have employed are the thinning of leaves (to deter other pests that love the shade) and veraison thinning (reducing the number of grape bunches to force the even ripening of remaining bunches).
Lucas pointed out that in a region as small as Lodi, growers can't always afford to use veraison thinning, as it can cut down on their overall sales, sometimes losing 40 percent of a crop. This year, however, he said the good weather means only about 15 percent of the crop would be thinned.
"It definitely adds expense, but that shouldn't stop anyone from going organic," Lucas said.
Next year, Lucas, whose wife Heather is already a certified grower in Napa, will switch to organic practices on the remaining 20 acres of vineyards and become certified. He'll be joining a small number of Lodi growers who have already been certified, according to Mark Chandler, the executive director of the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission.
"We have many sustainable growers, and a handful of those are organically certified," Chandler said. "You're seeing more and more of our sustainable growers going the organic route." He said that it's still a relatively small percentage of the overall crop.
Until that time, the battle between good and bad mites rages on, with 15,000 predatory mites being released per acre.
"We put them on, and away they go," Lange said. But probably with less gunfire than Lucas expects.
Contact Business Editor Marc Lutz at marcl@lodinews.com.
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