yeah it is like beware of dropping fruit. In the tropics I really have this association of fruits falling often. I hear the noise of leaves getting flapped and a flop on the ground and go look what fell. Pears and apples are the main dropping fruits in temperate climate I can think of. oh also nut trees.
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Ha!
A girlfriend I had was in Vietnam eating outside at a country restaurant. Just as she got her food a durian fell from the tree above and split open right on the table, her food, and herself!
She’s lucky it didn’t hit her head.
Seriously…what can you do…
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My best honey berry producers have been anything from the university of Saskatchewan and also anything from Dr Thompson’s cultivars. I have Solo and Maxie and an unnamed cultivar purchased at Thompsons orchard. All three produce lots of good sized honeyberries.
Interior looks so much like my plum posted earlier. Is its skin a little tart?
That is high praise! The whole text was very complimentary. Very rewarding, I would think!!! Well done, Mark.
I have been tempted to try Spring Snow in the past, but after reading the discussions you and others have had about it, I’m not sure I would be able to buy the same SS that you have.
Do you grow any nectarines? I am not sure I am remembering correctly, but I thought you used to grow a few but no longer do?
Scott’s and Drew’s comments on Artic Glo make me want to try that as well.
How do you think it would do in our climate?
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And for the grower.
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I’ve tried about 15 different nectarine varieties. Several were more flavorful. But some were too tart in our orchard.
The best tasting nectarine we grew was Nectafest. Really good tasting nectarine, but like just about all the nectarines we tried, they wouldn’t produce very consistently at all our my climate. Spring frosts seemed to wipe them out much easier than the tougher peach varieties we have.
I found that just about all nectarines produced about like a frost tender peach. So if one can grow frost tender peaches in one’s locale, then nectarines would be a go for them. Some frost tender peaches which were a bust for us were Bounty, 24-007, Messina, Lucky 13, Coralstar etc. If one can get consistent production out of those peaches, then I expect nectarines would be no problem.
Hardired nectarine was a consistent heavy producer, but the fruit was too tart. The first picking (i.e. first fruit to ripen on the tree) was very good, but the sugar and flavor fell off pretty fast on the second picking. Really not good enough to sell.
There were a couple other reasons we quit selling nectarines. One was that in a commercial orchard, it’s difficult to get good looking nectarines. Because of the smooth skin, bugs are more attracted to them. They also magnify any bumps and scratches, so they don’t present well on a fruit stand.
Lastly, they don’t sell as well as peaches in our area. We sell mostly to very traditional blue collar Missouri folk. They are used to peaches, and that’s what they want. So even if some nectarines taste better, even if we could grow prefect nectarines, with consistent production, they are still harder to sell in our locale.
The only Zaiger’s nectarines I recall growing were Honeyblaze and Honeyroyale. Honeyblaze had poor flavor in our orchard, and bad bac. spot. That’s pretty normal for Zaiger’s creations (bac. spot, that is). Bac. spot pressure isn’t nearly as bad in a back yard orchard vs. a larger orchard with lots of trees.
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That is exactly the problem we ran into. Almost all early peaches just got too much rain. We finally removed any peaches prior to about -21. Rich May was a decent peach some seasons, but in lots of rain and cloudy weather, the peaches would be tart (at least anything after the first picking).
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I gave away all my Desiree peaches that hadn’t rotted 2 days ago. The rot was from letting them get over ripe on the tree. This morning I was slicing up Silver Gem nectarines for the freezer. Almost every pit was split- the fruit actually looked somewhat squat before our current summer monsoon began- I think we’ve had about 17 inches in the last two weeks- 10 in one night- maybe the splitting was at least partially from the late winter sub-zero weather- spring was dry.
The Silver Gems aren’t quite up to their usual high standards as far as brix, but are sweet enough to be good and wonderfully aromatic. Too juicy though. They are very crack resistant as is Artic Gem which is just about to be ripe. It looks like Artic Gem doesn’t have so many cracked pits.
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Yes it is, quite tart
Unfortunately, that doesn’t sound like my location.
Ok, I remember reading some comments similar to this a few years ago. I wanted to try a few nectarines for my sister. She loves them but is not a peach fan. I don’t think it sounds like it would be worth the effort for me. Thanks for your candor and sharing your growing experiences with nectarines.
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Yes nectarines are hard to grow. Here thanks to the lakes the cool off in the fall is slow and the warm up in the spring is buffered by the ice on the lakes. It seems to keep plants from growing too early. Michigan is sixth in US peach production. Some years second if the south has late frosts. Anyway I have had fairly good luck growing nectarines here. Most years trees are productive. This year is a good year. Last year was a bad year so I have been waiting two years for a good nectarine! My trees are loaded! Now if I can keep the squirrels away! I understand though if you have major problems it’s not worth the headache. I’m so in favor of growing fruit known to work in your area first. Then if you wish to experiment. I discovered that some pluots do extremely well here. It’s great to make those discoveries.
This has been an interesting thread to read. Thanks everybody.
Some pluots are so beautiful it seems to me on looks alone they would be easy to sell. Here is Fall Fiesta. Leaves are poor because it’s October 5th 2021.
The secondary colors are starting to dominate before leaf fall.
Delicious fresh pluots in the fall in Michigan! Life is good!
Flavor Finale oct. 1st 2021
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Time to add a few more amazing fruits to the list…
The Freckled Face nectarine is pretty amazing … extremely high sugars and a very clean flavor. It’s not as strongly yellow-nect flavored as some but its a really good balance. I knew it was good by how the fruit flies were all over it. They know the sweetest fruit every time. I had a few last year but I got a better sample this year. Wow!
I just had my first Elephant Heart plum in a very long time. I had the variety a long time ago but not in a good spot and I never got really good ones. This graft is in a great spot and is producing some awesome fruits! To me it tastes like a cross of the mainstream pluot flavor and Santa Rosa … and really better than either to me. I put in a whole tree of it awhile back and am glad I did that. Speaking of pluots, at some point I re-added Flavor King since I am doing better rot control now (it is a horrible rotter without sprays) and it will be ripening soon. I will look forward to comparing it to Elephant Heart. FK was about my favorite pluot when I had it before.
A wannabe amazing is Howard Miracle plum. I had a couple bites on a couple plums that were out of this world, a tropical fruit salad of pineapple, mango, etc all in one bite! But they don’t seem to like my climate, the flesh is actually browning inside from some kind of heat breakdown and on those parts of the fruit they have very little flavor at all. If I pick them underripe they don’t have the browning but they are also flavorless that way. Only a couple bites on a couple plums were awesome. Which is too bad as I think it would be my favorite tasting plum if it was all like the tropical fruit salad bites. This tree will probably get topworked.
The Red Baron peach really performed well this year. I think it’s the best peach ripening around now, much better than Ernies Choice for example (which is a solid peach). I’ll give RB my supreme compliment for a peach: “its almost as good as a nectarine” 
Mostly kidding there, it is better than your average nectarine. Peaches tend to get too watery especially in the rain, and nectarines are much less prone to that, at least for me. RB held up a lot better than the other peaches in terms of keeping its flavor.
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I live in fear that my Freckle Face could die because of the cold weather here. It is on a Nemaguard rootstock and I see some cracking on the lower trunk. I need to graft this variety to my other tree.
Glad you gave high praise to Elephant Heart. I like it but, so far, it has had stingy production. None this year due to Feb freeze. I was contemplating removing it due to a lack of production. I will keep it for now.
Thanks for your input.
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Yes, EH is pretty low on production, it could have maybe 3x as many plums and still produce top fruit. But the older I get the more that sounds like a great plum to me … I had zillions too many plums on my Shiro, Satsuma, etc and even with aggressive thinning I didn’t nearly take enough off. My Weeping Santa Rosa was perfect, a bit more than EH so a perfect load without any thinning.
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Not consistent for me either, but that is likely more related to it being a small tree on Citation rootstock and within reach of some vigorous kiwi vines. that I periodically need to un-bury it from. It had been several years since I’d had any and when taking a walk through the yard, my father pointed it our “aren’t those ripe?”, I had missed it entirely.
I think they were better than the Rich May, which finished about when I picked these.
They weren’t anything close to as good as the few Mirsanjeli Late I picked the same day. But who knows if they would be as good if the tree had a heavier load.
Recently, I’ve been enjoying Splash plums. I’m shocked that as far as I could tell, none of them were taken by animals, even with the brix over 20.
It took 9 years (planted spring 2015), but I’ve finally had my first Opal plum. I think there were others earlier, but this is the only one which made it all the way to ripe. It was pretty good, but I wouldn’t call it amazing. It still edged out the other two plums in the pic.
This white peach has been pretty good. I think it is a Chinese peach, fairly high acid, especially for a white peach. The problem is that the graft was made so long ago that I can’t even see the union. And my grafting notes all describe the union location. This tree has had a ton of grafts, as I gradually discovered that I wasn’t likely to ever ripen a Caviler nectarine due to it’s propensity to crack and rot. I looked it up and there have been 90 grafts on the tree (probably so many because I’ve had it so long, which gives the old grafts a chance to fail…). As best I can tell, white peach candidates are:
Shu Mi Tao
Zin Dai Jui Bao
China Pearl
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These are my Grosses Mignonnes white peaches. Oldest peach grown in France. Rarely found. The tree is failing this year. It is 9 going on ten years old and will be replaced next spring. They are not very big this year, but are the sweetest, juiciest peaches I have ever eaten. It is very windy today. Six flew off of the tree to my neighbors terrasse below mine. Oops. There are about six left on the tree that will be ready in two days. I have already eaten 10!
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