Banana Farmer Weathers Cold Snap : Agriculture: The only such plantation in the continental U.S. will produce more than last year despite damage suffered in December freeze.

As his banana harvests grew ever more bountiful, Doug Richardson silenced skeptics who claimed that the fruit could not be grown in the continental United States.

But in each of the past five winters, the pioneering Ventura County farmer harbored a fear that a rare frost would destroy his Seaside Banana Garden, which banana experts say is the only commercial banana plantation in the continental United States.

In December, when one of the century’s worst freezes enveloped California, his fears proved warranted. The freeze ruined 30% of the 12-acre crop at Richardson’s farm in La Conchita, a little beach colony about 10 miles up the coast from Ventura. The big chill also wiped out the entire yield of Richardson’s six-acre grove in nearby Carpinteria.

Richardson says that so far he’s lost an estimated $100,000 worth of fruit. That’s far less than the $1-million losses felt at some Southland farms and a tiny portion of the overall $850-million crop loss statewide.

But for Richardson, it was a major financial setback, coming in a year in which he had been anticipating a record yield.

Despite the loss, Richardson says that he is not overwhelmed by the setback. The freeze has provided the self-taught farmer a chance to see which of the exotic bananas he grows can best weather the travails of the North American climate.

“We’ve got over 50 varieties, and the genetics of each one are different,” said Richardson, a former landscape contractor. “This really is an open-air laboratory.”

“Many of the varieties he’s growing have never even been studied,” said Ben Faber, a farm adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension who specializes in subtropical crops.

Banana plantations usually are found in subtropical regions of Central and South America, Asia and Africa where temperatures rarely dip below 55 degrees. The common variety of bananas sold in American supermarkets, the Cavendish, is among the most sensitive varieties. Its plant and fruit stop growing at 50 degrees, suffer damage in the low 40s, and die when the weather drops into the 30s, Richardson said.

But Richardson and his partner, Paul Turner, felt safe when they established their U.S. plantation--which the International Banana Assn. describes as one of a kind-- at the base of 300-foot-high coastal bluffs that normally provide a save haven from frost.

Longtime residents assured the two when they began their venture in 1985 that the last time the balmy coastal area had experienced freezing temperatures was in 1937, during one of the most severe California cold spells on record.

Temperatures in La Conchita normally run eight to 15 degrees higher than in Ventura or in Santa Barbara, which is about 15 miles away.

When Richardson was selecting bananas to raise on his mainland plantation, he chose Iholena, Blue Java and Red Jamaican plants and other varieties not readily available in the United States.

As it turns out, most of these rare plants are not as susceptible to cold as the more common varieties because they normally grow at 2,000-foot elevations, Faber said.

That choice saved Richardson from some crop losses but was not enough to totally shield him from the impact of the frigid holiday blast.

On the night of Dec. 21, when the arctic cold front hit, temperatures fell to 15 degrees in Santa Barbara and to 22 degrees in Ventura. They dropped to 32 degrees at La Conchita from 9 to 10 p.m. before reaching the mid-30s for the rest of the night.

Richardson said the single hour of freezing weather was enough to damage some of the 10,000 trees at La Conchita, about a third of which still have brown leaves and weakened trunks.

“We lost a big chunk, but we’ll still have more fruit than we did last year,” said Richardson, who produced 125 tons of bananas last year. “There were large areas that were virtually untouched.”

In Carpinteria, Richardson’s groves did not fare as well, with temperatures dropping to 29 degrees throughout the night. The entire crop was destroyed, about half of it was the Cavendish variety.

Because the Carpinteria trees will not produce fruit for one to two years, Richardson has decided to harvest the leaves and sell them as Mexican tamale wrappings. Banana leaves impart a better flavor and aroma than corn husks, he said.

“We didn’t like sacrificing leaves before, because without them the fruit wouldn’t fill out,” said Richardson, whose bananas bring $1.50 to $4 per pound. “But they could turn out to be just as profitable as the bananas.”

He said most of his banana crop is sold at organic food stores and exclusive restaurants nationwide.

About 30% of the La Conchita crop already has been written off because it has an off-flavor, appears scorched and has skin that sticks to the fruit or has pulp with a hard and crunchy texture.

An undetermined amount of the crop will suffer cosmetic damage, its skin ripening to a yellow-brown rather than bright yellow. Richardson said he will be able to sell that fruit from his thatched-roof stand at the Seaside Banana Garden.

All the fruit still hangs in bunches on the trees so Richardson can determine which ones have lower yields because of the freeze, and which ones bear fruit that can mature from nutrients in plants whose leaves have all but died.

With that knowledge, Richardson said, he will be better armed for nature’s next frontal attack.