I googled this but did not really find a match. What is this , I have not seen it before on my peaches,
Nasty claws then rot.
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My guess is that it was caused by fluctuating weather from dry to excessively wet when fruit is about to ripen. The fruit could not handle such a drastic change and its skin cracked,
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Like they said- but I don’t grow peaches.
Why did it make me think of blossom end rot on tomatoes? Is there a nutrient deficiency element here?
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Funny that you mention that mark, the only photo on the internet that seemed close was a plum that they said had a potassium deficiency. It has been very wet this year also
Like Mamuang said, it’s too much rain Derby. I’ve got stuff cracking too. Mostly cherries and apples. I haven’t looked that closely at my earlier peaches, but I suspect I’ve got cracks in them too. A few days ago we got almost 2" of rain in 1/2 hour. Coming down in buckets.
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I’d love to know what does this to stone fruits. I just picked up a winter glow nectarine for my wife and all of the fruit it set suffers the same cracking. Thankfully I wasn’t expecting anything out of it for the first year anyhow.
Cracking is usually the result of heavy rain or irrigation after a long dry spell. The fruit sucks up water and the skin cracks. Sweet cherry are famous for cracking but it can happen on most stone fruit and Asian pears.
I have found it highly variety-dependent. My Tashkent Gold got it badly most years and O’Henry is somewhat prone. Other than those two I don’t get many cracked peaches at all. Cherry varieties on the other hand are all prone; even the crack-resistant ones are bad compared to your average peach.
Ok well rain I cant control. Does the cracking spoil the fruit completely?
Sometimes they will rot like the picture above, or at least some of the fruit will rot. Other times there will be very little rot, it depends on the weather etc.
If it keeps cracking every year you may want to replace it with a different variety.
We will see. The tree that is having the issues is still in the nursery pot and my native soil is very sandy so the jury is still out. Hope I get to keep it though, I was going to try my hand at grafting some other stone fruits onto it at some point in the future.