My nectarines are also more productive than peaches (including branches on the same combo trees) but my Puget Gold cot branches are the most productive of all.
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I had problems with size and production with nectarines until this year. My Mericrest is probably my most productive tree in terms of pounds of fruit produced, and Summer Beaut is also cranking out huge quantities. I had to spray a lot of disease control product to get the size up, I think that was holding back the size in past years.
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I have two Harglows, which I’d rather not, because I thought one had died so I got a replacement.
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Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve not seen any nects competing w/ peach yield here yet. I’ve had peaches break scaffolds from too much fruit but nothing near that w/ nects. I’ve also sold some peaches weighing 3/4 lb. pound or more this year (which are really big peaches to be sure) but I’ve not seen nects approach anything near that weight.
Nects seem to be more finicky here with marginal weather. Maybe that’s part of the difference.
I have one Hardired which seems to be very productive for a nect (sets lots of fruit) but even then the fruit seems to be much smaller than peach.
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There are so many factors that influence fruit flavor beyond the Brix level. For apricots, in particular (and for many other fruits), aroma plays an important role in overall eating experience. Studies identified up to 26 odor-active compounds in apricots, including terpene alcohols, 2-phenylethanol, β-ionone, hexyl acetate, benzaldehyde, γ-octalactone, ®-γ-decalactone, (E)-β-damascenone, δ-decalactone, (R/S)-linalool, etc. Contributions of various compounds change significantly between different cultivars and ripeness levels, with a reduction in aldehyde and alcohol production along with an increase in ester production observed as fruit’s ripeness increases. As for sugars, apricots, for example, contain sucrose (the predominant sugar in apricots) along with glucose, fructose, maltose, sorbitol and raffinose. With that, the amount of fructose is especially important since it provides a high level of perceived sweetness relative to other sugars at the same concentration. In addition to sugars, the flavor of apricots is affected by multiple other chemical compounds, including phenolics, carotenoids, β-carotene, organic acids, etc. This enormous chemical complexity determines the fruit’s complexity of flavor, as perceived by a human, and, on top of that, the perception of flavor varies significantly between individuals.
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I would agree that most nectarines are tastier than peaches, however there are some exceptional peaches that are every bit as good as if not better than the best nectarines! Here is a great example, June Pride peach, very low fuzz, deep dark red color, more fragrant than any nectarine I grow, and most importantly, very intense peach/ nectarine flavor! This peach is a cross of O Henery and June Lady clingstone and is the best fruit I grow in front of Flavor Supreme, Flavor King, Flavortop, and Arctic Glo nectarines. It is somewhat of a secret over here and is never mentioned, but the flavor is intensely sweet and rich!
The dark red ones are on Lovell root and severely water deprived, the fruit on right is on Nemeguard root and has more water but still not a lot. Brix 27, and 25 respectively, really awesome peaches, worthy of challenging any nectarine!!
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I should add that my Arctic Jay nectarines have been 28 to 30 brix, I much prefer the more intense June Pride peaches, just more flavor!
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Wow, you’ve given me quite a bit of the information I’ve been looking for since I first purchased a refractometer. Thank you!
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They look like Indian Free which is one of my favorite peaches that rivals nectarines to my palate. Are thy only grown in the warmer zones? Silver Gem is a nectarine that reminds me of Indian Free and is quite early.
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Both peaches and nectarines are good to me but my preference is nectarines.
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Wow those look great, I have to get me one of those June Prides! We talked about this before. I put it on my want list. Oh cool, the patent is expired!
Me too, but I only have ever grown two trees! I wish I had more to talk about!
I have to try and graft some on. My Nectaplum produces giant nectarines, the largest of my stone fruit. Arctic Glo is my favorite fruit. I think I’m just going to develop other nectarines from that one that ripen at different times. I have to cross twice to get back to nectarines. I like it so much, not sure why I’m looking for others? Feedback from friends and family is the same, best they ever had. They should be ripe in about 2 weeks. The tree is loaded to the gills, I should have thinned more. Not that they are spaced bad, just so many of them.
I have three seedlings of the first cross, now to grow them out. I burned the leaves badly bringing them outside. I thought I had it acclimated. It made the trees branch, and they lost their leaves. Growing well now. One in ground two in pots. All three are crosses with Indian Free and Arctic Glo
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My question is if you have nectarines that need thinning why don’t you set the yield?
Well sure. However my experience is that higher brix improves flavor beyond just added sweetness. Most people that like fruit like really sweet fruit but only if it has high flavor, that includes me. The flavor can come as an acidic component or from non acidic flavor components.
That’s very high brix for a peach. Maybe it’s a nectarine in peach clothing…lol The fruit looks fabulous…!!
Can you fill us in more on your growing techniques and growing conditions: soil, watering regime, etc? How many yrs have you been growing with a water deficit and where did you first learn about this technique? How has your fruit improved?
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I have a Shuhou nectarine, and Fantasia. Apparently Shuhou is the most widely grown here, closely followed by Fantasia. The Shuhou is quite late, September harvest.
I’ve had them both two years, and this is the first year letting them fruit. I foolishly followed some advice to pick all the blossoms off. They grow so fast there’s no need to do that, the few fruit I have are the blossoms I missed!
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These are rated zones 5 to 9 and on the DWN cold country and house favorite fruits. 900 to 1000 chill hours per commercial catalogue. I bet it would do fine over there but I could be wrong. It is at its best with lots of sunshine. Indian Free is more tart than these, but I like them too! Your Silver Gem sounds wonderful, enjoy!
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Thanks for the info. I will order a tree at next opportunity. I wonder when they will ripen here- probably not until mid-July at earliest.
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Nectarines may be better, but man are they difficult to grow where it rains and is humid 24/7. I’m going to graft my nectarines all onto a few trees and then grow them under plastic…there is no other way unless you have your spray bottle full of fungicides///bird protection///etc. We had just .13 of rain yesterday and i see a few of my summer silk have long cracks in them…they are still very unripe. The A glo look like hell…a star/rose both have a ton of spot as does raspberry red and most of the peaches. Tough stuff…very discouraging.
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And I have had problems with Methley and Santa Rosa plums splitting. Next year I’ll try putting black plastic under some of the trees when July arrives to reduce moisture.
Fruitnut,
So far, except for one variety, I’ve not had to thin any nects. They haven’t set real well for me. It seems like they are more fickle to spring weather so far. Probably under good weather conditions, they would over set. We rarely get ideal spring weather conditions here.
Last year I spoke with a commercial grower who grew peaches for 20 years a couple hours drive south of me. He had a fairly sizable orchard (by Missouri standards). His orchard produced about 90 bu. per day during the season. He said of the twenty years he grew peaches, he had 4 years of full crops, 4 years of no crop, and all the rest of the years were partial crops. That’s more or less what I’ve seen, that the norm here is more like partial crops because of the marginal weather.
It’s during those partial crop years where I see the most potential to move the productivity. In the 20% of the time there are full crops, variety doesn’t matter, since everything will set full crops. In the 20% of the time when there is no crop, variety doesn’t matter because pretty much everything fails. The rest of the time (marginal years) there are varieties which still set full crops, along with varieties which are pretty much blank. I’m really working to try to identify varieties which are still productive in marginal weather, and taste good, and don’t suffer too much bac. spot.
As an aside on the bac. spot issue, last winter I got rid of a lot of my worst offenders for bac. spot (mostly white varieties) and I seem to have seen less bac. spot this year on the remainder of the fruit trees. This is just the first year since I removed so many bac. spot prone trees, so it’s a little premature to draw any confident conclusions, but initially there seems to be less bac. spot in general, despite some really rainy wet weather in early summer.
There is one variety of nect which sets very heavy, Hardired. It sets heavy, but even when thinned properly, the fruit are much smaller, so the yield is lower.
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We had one very cold night in mid-feb that seemed to affect nectarines more than peaches. Lots of runts that stop growing and rot instead of ripen and get the rot spreading through the tree, quickly infecting the most cracked fruit nearby. It seems all the nectarines have lots of these dangerous midgets. Peaches have none and aren’t cracked either.
Before I grew a lot of nects I did have this happen to peaches one year.
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Usually I’m too lazy to measure Brix since I know that fruit grown in my conditions is almost always very sweet (some very early fruit like May-ripening apricots can be an exception). Just for the sake of this discussion, I measured today two Spice Zee NectaPlums — one is the last of four fruits from my first-leaf tree (fully ripe, may be even a bit overripe) and another is from a batch I bought from an orchard in Brentwood (I would call it firm ripe). Mine was 27 Brix and the purchased one was 18 Brix. Both were quite good, although in somewhat different ways. Frankly, I would ideally prefer something in the middle, as mine was almost too sweet.
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