De Luz Farms and Nursery

Gary and Melodee Leavitt              

Back in 1997 we were looking for property in the De Luz area of Temecula. We really liked the area as it reminded Gary of upstate New York where he grew up and Melodee of Utah where she grew up. We found an older, declining avocado grove on twelve acres that had a great views, and was a perfect site for a new home. At the time the grove was split about 50-50 between avocado and star ruby grapefruit trees. The avocado trees were suffering from a common California avocado disease called "root rot". For more on the disease click here. The disease slowly kills the trees until they need to be removed. Also at that time Gary was working as a District Manager for Home Depot and Melodee was a Call Center Manager for Home Depot. We took a lot of kidding about our part time job as farmers. 

Learning to be an "Organic Grower".

As the years went on we seemed to enjoy the time we spent on our farm working much more than time on our “real” jobs. During those first several years we became obsessed trying to stop the disease killing our avocado trees. At the time, the grove was grown conventionally, meaning the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides was okay. The more research we did the more it occurred to us that perhaps the way the trees were being cared for was the problem. In 2000 we converted all of our property to Organic growing practices. We stopped using all chemical fertilizers, herbicides and chemical pesticides. Slowly, many of the trees responded using manure, compost and other organic growing practices. We also noticed how much better the fruit tasted and looked.

Many of the problems we had encountered growing the conventional (chemical) way were no longer a problem. We even started to bring in bees every year to pollinate and it has made a tremendous difference in production. Now we keep bees year round on the property

And now we're farmers. 

Lettuce TransplantIn 2002, we completed our house and Gary was able to say goodbye to Home Depot. Melodee moved on later but went to work in the financial sector (farming doesn’t quite pay all the bills). In 2004, we completed our 5800 sq ft computer controlled greenhouse. We started our greenhouse adventure growing Certified Organic transplants (small starter plants transplanted to produce field crops) and received Organic Certification for our grove as well.

  Pictured to the left is a Certified Organic Lettuce (transplant) "plug".

 In 2005 we completed an Aquaponic growing system in one half of the greenhouse to raise herbs. We believe that Aquaponics is one of the most environmentally friendly greenhouse growing systems. We'll have more information on our Aquaponics in future newsletters.  Aquaponic Cilantro 

Contact Information:

De Luz Farms and Nursery

PO Box 2208

Temecula, CA 92593

951-693-0272 phone

951-693-0272 Fax

Our Website:

http://www.deluzfarms.com/index.html