Incessant spring rain has rendered most of my early peaches and nects with split pits, especially nects. They end up with a flattened shape and ripening very unevenly, never achieving the brix levels that comes from proper ripening.
The majority of the nects have actually rotted before ripening, rot that starts inside the fruit from the split pit.
I’ve still gotten an occasional totally wonderful nectarine, which makes it all worth it. But good isn’t good enough, and 12-13 % brix just doesn’t cut it.
I’ve noticed that fruit from my nursery trees with their less developed root systems are not as prone to the problem.
Not good news. My Easternglo will ripen in about 10 days. I can’t see them as they are in paper bags but I’ve noticed that they have sized up in the bags.
Our climate is about the same. I probably will encounter split pit, too. I used to have PF1 peach, an early peach. Lot of split pit in our quite wet weather.
This is the worst split pit year I’ve seen in a while here. I got loads of split pits on early varieties, and the splits don’t seem to be slowing down a lot. We are just now ready to start harvesting Redahavens and still getting lots of split pits everywhere.
We had lots of split pits this year too. Early peaches and Red Haven too. Even had a some on Fire Prince and Winblo. Not many on Contender which we just finished picking
As Alan mentioned, we’ve also been struggling getting sugar up in the peaches. We have had some dry stretches with some decent 90F heat, which has helped.
This is the year of split pits and low sugar stone fruit.
At first, I thought It was just me, but it appears to be everywhere.
Glad to hear I’m not the lone stranger.
Red Haven is the traditional beginning of peach season here and it is not yet ripe. Split pits has been a terrible problem with my early nectarines but not so much early peaches, which have been good but not great. Actually, for my own use, my nectarines have been OK. They’d be impossible to sell, for the most part, but I even froze some of them for winter, although I’m hoping the quality rises as the season continues.
After over two years of a continuous monsoon, including this season’s spring, we are having typical east coast summer weather lately- maybe even a bit dry.
The jury is still out on our peach and nect season, but I’m quite hopeful that it will be a good one.