In general my goals have nothing to do with maximizing production, I already have more fruit than I can eat. Instead I am looking towards plant health, not having stunted / slow growth, as well as the question of how nutrients will effect fruit flavor, size, etc.
There are several factors which affects plant health stunted/slow growth. In my climate the biggest factor for health/growth of peaches is the amount of water on the roots (too much is bad) and whether or not good weed control is maintained. There are some members on the forum which have had stunted trees due to a lack of N, but I suspect their soil was better overall than yours (just lacked N).
In simplest terms, mulching will help a lot, and may or may not be enough to avoid any deficiencies. Iāve not grown peaches or fruit trees on the soil you describe. I have grown fruit trees (and seen them grown) on pure clay, but clay in my area still has a lot of nutrients, just little organic matter, so itās a different animal. I have read about various deficiencies, like Zn deficiency, which is widespread in CA and is also recognized as a problem in the Northeast. Ca is a common deficiency in apples in many places. How you approach nutrient management is of course a personal decision.
You could always take a reactive approach as Alan mentions. Nothing wrong with that. However, your question is specific enough, I donāt think anyone, short of someone with experience growing the fruit trees in your area, is going to be able to preemptively tell you the problems (or not) of growing various fruit trees on unamended soil in your area.
As Ray mentioned, you may want to check with local Extension, if they have experience with fruit trees, and not just reading out of a book.
In terms of fruit flavor, imo, the biggest factors affecting flavor for peaches are the variety, peach load (on the tree), where the peaches were picked on the tree, and amount of water available to the tree (more water negatively influences flavor).
There has been some long standing slight disagreement between myself, and what I consider other fruit experts on this forum (in this case Alan and Fruitnut). Weāve had a lot of discussions about this on this forum and one previous. My own view is that I donāt consider fertile soil a negative for fruit quality, if there are not extensive rains for the period up to about three weeks before harvest, and trees are summer pruned to prevent excess shading from new growth of waterspouts.
I personally like my fertile soil. Iāve learned how to manage the vigor on peaches. I like to see lots of red productive wood. It gives me lots of choices/flexiblity. What I donāt like is to see peach trees with lack of vigor putting out lots of short 6" shoots, which I canāt do anything with. I generally give fruit more space than most people on the shoots, which helps size and flavor considerably, but my trees are large and spreading enough, I still get good yields. My trees come in to meaningful production a little sooner. Of course my orchard isnāt perfect, and it has itās own issues, but on balance, Iām thankful for the nutrient management plan I adopted.
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I donāt think we disagree at a basic level- but I live where we āaverageā 3"-5" a month throughout the year and I donāt rely on the testimony of customers or even entirely on my taste buds, but the hard evidence of the refractometer. Here sandy soil produces higher brix fruit, except with plums, in my experience, presumably because or the decreased reservoir of available water.
For me it isnāt fertility in general- FN is more convinced of the danger of too much N. I believe that organic matterās ability to store large quantities of very available water in climates that get rain throughout the season tends to reduce brix, depending on rainfall during the summer months (or late spring for early ripening varieties). Clay also stores lots of water, but much more of it canāt be extracted by roots of the species we grow for fruit.
If excessive N is also in play, and I think it might be. organic matter tends to release the majority of its nitrogen at precisely the wrong time to produce highest quality fruit- unless the soil becomes dry enough to reduce microrganisitic N releasing activity (did I invent a word?). As moist soil warms into summer more and more N is released. I believe that nitrogen taken up by trees for the first few weeks of growth improves fruit size without diminishing fruit quality (brix), because it encourages more fruit cells instead of bigger and more watery ones, which is encouraged by vigorous growth later in the season.
Youāve already complained of lack of sugar in early ripening fruit after wet springs in your region- here summers are just as wet.
What we donāt know yet is precisely when the spigot needs to be shut off to produce the highest quality, fruit with good size. You could probably evaluate that issue better than I if you compared seasons in terms of later rain and its affects on brix of individual varieties, but you are extremely busy during harvest season- I donāt think you even record brix readings.
Itās true I donāt record brix readings. Iāve thought about buying a refractometer, but it would just be to compare numbers for folks on this forum. It wouldnāt help my business at all.
Iāve probably mentioned this before, but when we pick a pickup load of peaches, my son and I may try about 30 peaches. If itās the second picking, we pick on a tree and start tasting till we notice the flavor start to drop off, then leave that tree and move onto the next one. We try so many peaches, we donāt even eat the bite we take out, but spit it out. We are just tasting for flavor. In this way we can sell the best dessert quality peaches. We sell the remainder on the trees, after we notice a flavor drop, as cheap seconds. As Iāve mentioned, most of the time there is more difference in flavor quality within the tree than from variety to variety. Center picks and low hanging fruit donāt compete with fruit which gets lots of sun.
I do have problems with early varieties and removed most of those, but I have pretty high standards. Iāve tasted peaches from unamended soils here, and they are no better than mine, and sometimes worse because the crop load hasnāt been managed well.
I havenāt tried peaches from sandy soil, but I will say I had some MO extension out this summer for fruit tree insurance purposes. I watched him eat a peach and he said it was as good as any peaches he had tried from down south. I could tell he wasnāt trying to make me feel good, he said it with such emphasis.
My daughter now lives in SC. She of course has eaten tons of peaches off my orchard growing up, so she obviously knows what we grow. She has bought peaches in SC (pretty light soil). I always ask her, because Iām genuinely curious of the quality of the peaches she gets there. She says she has gotten some good ones and some bad ones, but the good ones are no better than what we raise.
This summer I sent her some from her favorite variety (in the mail). She was wowed by them like she always is. Said nothing in SC compares to her favorite we grow here.
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Alan it sounds like we have a similar amount of total annual rainfall, around 60-65 inches per year here. Generally we have wetter winters and many if not most years a 4-6 week long dry spells in the late spring or early fall, with somewhat wetter hot summers thanks primarily due to scattered afternoon thermal thunderstorms, which themselves can be hit or miss. Meaning one may be soaked 3 days in a row, and a mile away it may not have rained for a week. Though all this does vary year to year with weather patterns. see Average Weather in DeRidder, Louisiana, United States, Year Round - Weather Spark for averages
Olpea, are you suggesting it isnāt water content in your soil that affect brix of your fruit and it is solar units instead? We are both dealing with very subjective evaluation, but Iām in orchards with different soil textures every single day of the growing season, sometimes within a few miles of one another. We may spend an equal amount of time with fruit trees but the extent of my experience with different conditions is vastly greater- for whatever thatās worth.
The general consensus here of commercial growers is that drought raises brix. In areas that depend on irrigation such as CA the same conclusion is drawn, especially by grape growers who monitor brix more than anyone. Solar units canāt be a factor there, it has to be about available water. No one debates that organic matter increases the relative amount of available water.
Water is much more important for brix than N. But perhaps too much water and N together result in excessive shading that lowers brix.
My trees are very close together, 2x5 to 4x7ft. I donāt need much nitrogen to get enough leaves. All I need is 12-18 inches of new growth. Those 6ft shoots are not needed or welcome in my orchard. Thatās just extra work and an indication to me that the trees arenāt set up for max quality.
One doesnāt need a refractometer to determine anything. But sometimes itās nice to know where one stands on an unbiased scale. The numbers reported this yr on this site opened my mind to the vast difference between those that can control water and those that canāt. Itās a two fold difference in brix on some fruits. Which by the way is about the difference due to water that Iāve reported for nectarines from my greenhouse for many yrs.
Iāve never seen such big differences with peaches. However this yr east coast growers were reporting many 8-12 brix peaches while a CA member was reporting near 28 brix. Iāve had many 24-32 brix nectarines but not peaches. My extreme range for fruits in the sun not hangers has been ~12-32 brix nectarines and ~10-23 brix peaches. Nectarines go higher if pushed but the flavor goes bad and the refractometer only reads to 32 anyhow.
The top report from Clemson in SC for all the peaches and nectarines they tested for many yrs, thousands of readings, has been 23 brix according to Dr Layne. Thatās not very high for dozens if not hundreds of varieties and 16 yrs of testing.Clemson University Trials - Peach Variety Evaluation - Clemson University Horticulture It rains there and they irrigate.
If one measures each fruit on a tree, nectarine and pluot, there can be nearly a two fold difference in brix from best to worst. If tried to report representative numbers but itās easier to block out those awful hangers under the canopy than the best fruit up in the sun.
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I agree with both you and Fruitnut that excess water is the killer of brix, compared to fertility (but by fertility, Iām including organic matter).
I understand more fertile soils have more water holding capacity. And I understand you are saying you see a difference in fruit quality with soils, due to water holding capacity.
What Iām saying is that I havenāt yet seen a fruit quality difference from the amendments Iāve done through the years (including mulching) vs. unamended soil here. Based on the two people I mentioned, I have no reason to believe my soil is any more detrimental to peach quality than peaches grown on lighter soils.
Perhaps my soil is more detrimental to flavor, but it seems easy to manage around.
What I canāt manage around is weeks of rain close to harvest. Itās then the peach quality suffers badly, but youāve also been disappointed in quality at those times.
I agree you have more experience on varied soils, but I think at least from a commercial perspective, Iāve more than compensated for my fertile soil compared to other commercial growers in regions with lighter less fertile soils.
Iāll mention I once read that growers with more fertile soil should be able to get better tasting fruit, than growers on sandy soil because there were more minerals available for the fruit. This was from another commercial grower, so not worth much, but I thought the theory interesting.
Like Fruitnut mentioned, I donāt think anything can trump water deprivation for quality. Nobody regardless of soil can compete on flavor with places there is little to no rain in spring and summer.
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And do you know how much that compensation is based on waiting for peak ripeness before harvesting? If thereās anything else involved, do you have evidence of what it is? Iād like to know, so I could grow highest quality fruit on wet years and in wet soils. One of my most important sites does a poor job of producing sweet peaches, although the nectarines there are excellent. I use the same methods I use in lighter soils but the results are consistently poorer in the clay with same varieties.
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Actually, during this discussion Iād forgotten that we pick riper peaches compared to other commercial growers. Peaches are not always soft ripe, but close. Close enough we canāt stack them, but pick one level deep in stackable crates.
I donāt know how much that helps flavor vs. other commercial growers, but Iām sure it helps some.
I think our thinning is a pretty big deal. When the appraiser came out last summer he weighed peaches off 5 Redhavens, and counted every peach on those 5 trees. I hadnāt picked any peaches on those trees waiting for the appraisal.
One of those trees didnāt get thinned good enough and had 280 peaches left (some had already dropped but he didnāt count those because he only wanted to count marketable peaches).
That tree wasnāt grossly overcropped, and the size would have still been considered good by commercial standards, but the peaches were considerably smaller than other Redhavens. He didnāt eat a peach off that tree, he got a bigger one off one of the other trees, but the flavor of the peaches off that heavily cropped tree was, by and large much lower than the lighter cropped trees. To the point I sold a much higher percentage of the peaches off that tree as seconds.
Thatās something we do really different, I think compared to commercial growers. We try to space at 12", and I never see that spacing in thinning guidelines. I think it has a pretty substantial impact on flavor and size. Except for young trees which produce small fruit, and very early varieties, a half pound peach is not a big peach for us for a number one peach. Itās not even average. Big peaches for us are peaches which average 0.8 lbs. for the box. Since I donāt see other growers selling peaches this big (I see their peaches at farmers markets) and since we donāt irrigate, I have to think the difference is largely due to thinning. I even thin flat peaches the same spacing, as I think youāve mentioned youāve started doing in the last few years.
The other thing I think has a pretty big impact is where the peaches are picked on the tree. Iāve never heard another grower mention they grade peaches by the sort of subjective tasting/picking we do, leaving the rest of the peaches as second grade, when we determine the flavor has dropped off. We really leave a surprising number of peaches on the trees as seconds. As ive Iāve mentioned before I could probably take my worst tasting variety and the best peach on that tree would be better than the worst peach on my best tasting variety.
I donāt know how much these things would help the situation you describe, you may already be doing them, but I think very very few commercial growers are.
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Thank you Olpea. Your 12" spacing does exceed mine, but trees thinned the same way also seem to produce sweeter fruit here if you donāt have too much organic matter in the soil and if available water affects brix I canāt come up with a logical conclusion how this wouldnāt be the case.
I want to buy some of your peaches! Bet they are close to perfect.
Iām fortunate that my soils and climate are well suited for peaches and produce excellent peaches with less attention.
Its pretty normal for peach growers here to pick in picking bags transferred into 10 bu bins or directly to handle baskets or cardboard boxes. I pick about 1/4 bu per lug. The peaches normally require 3-5 days of ripening time. I normally pick twice a week and sell twice a week from the farm stand but expect to sell some pick your own peaches during a high production year.
My soil is shallow sandy loam with very low organic matter and a hard clay hardpan. I have two 1 GPH emitters per tree, but the larger commercial growers here grow on very sandy soil which requires a micro sprinkler producing about 15 GPH per tree.
Iām not sure which soil and climate factors combine to make it easy to grow peaches in my area, but they make it very difficult to grow apples.
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