I only have a small graft of Spring Satin and a Honey Punch.
I like them both but HP cracks every year in the rain and we have a lot of rain even in the summer.
I did not have good luck with Flavor King, Granade in the past re. stingy fruit set (probably no good cross pollination partner at the time.
I have Nadia setting fruit this year. I had it in the past but the tree it grafted on was removed. Hope to try the fruit again this year. It was all the rage 10 years ago.
Hi Tippy,
As everyone else mentioned, the crack at the end is what’s causing the peaches to bleed. Some varieties crack and some don’t. TangOs 1 & 2 both crack pretty badly for me in years where we get a lot of rain during development. For the most part Saturn is the donut peach I’ve had the most luck with. I also had good luck with Flat Wonderful. I need to add that one back. It doesn’t taste quite as good as some of the other flat peaches, but it produces pretty good and they rarely crack or rot.
I had good luck with Saturn, too. I hope my luck won’t run out.
Mark - can you tell me again what causes peaches and nectarines to set fruit in abundance on twigs or small branches that have fewer leaves.
I ended up getting rid of all those fruitlets because there are no leaves or not enough leaves to support fruit development.
Tippy, I’ve evidently forgotten. My guess is it’s hormone related. The lack of vigor of short shoots probably sends some hormonal signal causing the shoot to produce more fruit buds, vs. single leaf buds, and to produce them in tighter spacing.
Of course vigor (thereby the amount of short shoots) is affected by age, fertility of the soil, weed competition, etc.
It also could have something to do with the timing of when the shoot sets terminal buds. We know that shoots that develop earlier in the season tend to have more fruit buds vs. those that develop later in the season. That’s one reason peach experts recommend to have peach pruning done by Mid July in my area. That way any new growth will have plenty of time to form fruit buds, when there are plenty of daylight hours.
I’ve noticed short shoots set terminal buds earlier and just quit growing. So those are formed pretty early in the season.
Thank you, Mark. I have noticed that my older peach/nectarine trees (6 years or older, which are not old in a grand scheme of things) have been in decline with less vigor. I have fed them urea but they seemed not to like my overall poor soil.
@scottfsmith
I have sprayed my stone fruit with Indar against brown rot for the past 4-5 years. Plums, peaches and nectarines have responded well. My Black Gold seems to be in deep trouble.
This year, I add Indar and Luna for pre-bloom spray against blossom blight. Followed by two same spray combo after petal fall and a week later.
At first, things looked fine on Black Gold. Lot of fruit set.
However, this past week, most clusters of fruitlets turned yellow and brown. It looks more like blight than anything else. Your thought?
Oh, wow! That’s pretty severe. Less thinking to do, at least.
That’s just fruit drop. It varies how much you get year to year. I lost about half of my Regina crop this year due to drop.
Thank you, Scott.
So, the good news is that this is the rot. The bad news is that “self fertile”label of Black Gold is a relative term.
I have one small white Gold grafted on it. It blooms a week earlier so it does not help much.
I think I lost about 70% or more of fruitlets due to a lack of sufficient pollination. All clusters are affected. Many dropped all but 2-3 left.
I’m in the same boat with my North Star cherry. I have a Montmorency too but it did not have nearly as many buds/fruitlets to begin with.
How old are your trees? Many fruit trees need to mature before they settle to produce.
My BG tree is over 10 years old. The “self- fertile “ label of Black Gold sweet cherry is only partial fertile if you ask me.
My Monty is 7th leaf and the North Star is only 2nd but has held on to more fruit of the two. Go figure.
So did my Monty, I have had mine for three years. The last blooms on the trees held the least fruit. All a pollenation problem.
Mrs. G.,
Thank you very much for your generous gift. They have been in use every year. We just put up the net on my Juliet yesterday.
Thinking of you.
these needle nose snips speed up thinning:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009PP88N2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
It looks great!!! And so glad it working!!!
This happened overnight. About 4” deep. The wood is live. Less than 1/4” hole, so seems too small for Carpenter Bee. Any ideas on what it is and how to mitigate damage to peach seedling? It’s a Flamin’ Fury variety and cost a pretty penny. Thank you! (Zone 5b, northern Colorado)
borer maybe?
