Strange indeed. How your Lavina could already have mostly been harvested and your Silver Gem still be hard defies my expectations and even logic. You are close enough to me and my Silver Gem are all picked while Lavina is not nearly ripe- and you gave me the wood of my Lavina.
All of my nectarines I’ve measured are coming in at 15 or higher, but I’m disappointed that Honey Blaze isn’t higher than that, being a subacid variety it needs to be about 18 or above to be really good. I have a client in Greenwich whose Silver Gems are also very high quality as well as in Bedford NY.
Yes, I believe it may be yellow jackets drilling small holes in my nects causing premature rot, although they supposedly don’t have the mouth parts to do this. They’re the only things I see in the trees going after the fruit.
I saw something I’ve never seen before in an orchard I manage when a Silver Gem nectarine had fruit being destroyed by J. Beetles. I had sprayed the nearby plums and Honey Crisp apple to kill them and they seem to have concentrated on this nectarine I couldn’t spray because fruit was almost ripe.
Since you’re talking about Shiro ripening time, when does Shiro ripen for everyone relative to Redhaven? Redhaven ripens about Aug 5 for me. I’ve been eating Shiros for a week or so. They’ve been good but don’t seem fully ripe quite yet. I’d like to leave them on for another week, does that seem right?
I find that a bit strange as well. Both fruits have ripened nicely for me in the same window. Not sure what the brix levels have been, but the quality has been excellent.
The J plums seem oddly compressed this year, usually WSR is a week or two after Shiro. Lavina also usually comes later but they are gone already (some critter cleaned it out before they were fully ripe but they were still ahead of their usual). I’m bummed I only got a couple underripe Lavina, they were still good enough for me to remember why it is so awesome. The stock is super healthy so I should have a nice big 20’ tree in a few years with more plums than can be swiped.
I had a few early peaches, Gold Dust was excellent this year. It did less of the overripe on top and hard on bottom thing, hopefully it is growing out of that. That is the only flaw of Gold Dust. The Claytons nearly all got swiped, they were also small and not as sweet. The cicada damage didn’t seem good to them. I am about to get Summer Beaut nectarines, probably in a week. They are usually very good, just a touch down from my favorites Flavortop and Sunglo.
One thing this season seems to support is the idea that plenty of water early in the fruits development helps increase size without reducing brix. Got the biggest AND sweetest Silver Gems I’ve ever harvested.
Went away for 4 days. Neighbor said it rained twice. Picked a lot of Early Magic today. Most are ripe and a few are overripe. Of these, only one plum that got brown rot !!
As I posted on another topic:
I’ve never grown any plum with brix that low besides, maybe, Shiro, and I’ve had years wetter than this one where almost every day was grey and mosquitos plagued me all day long. And yet your plums look absolutely beautiful. I’m amazed they didn’t get up the sugar at all there because plums that don’t crack and rot here always do on wet years. I can tell you that even this year when Shiro is actually quite good, EM is about 2 points higher on average, with more appealing texture (meatiness) and acid with that sugar. However, my main tree had a sparse crop, partially because of bacterial spot, but also because of its very early flowering habit. However, nursery trees with it that are on a part of the property with much better eastern exposure and heavier set had equally sweet fruit, equally superior to any other early plums.
My experience is plums can take water and still be sweet so I’m thinking it is the grey skies. As I’ve already mentioned many times, plums don’t suffer quality-wise on sites I manage that water the lawns at their feet. Plums on wet seasons over the years have not suffered as much as other fruit in terms of brix, IME, but I’ve only recently started looking at the issue closely and taking brix readings. .
Been doing this for a very long time now and have the benefit of caring for orchards on contrasting sites. Not that I expect anyone to respect my anecdotal observations over their own. We all love our own anecdotes, myself included.
In New England, we can have days of no sun. One year, we had about 10 days of no sun shine. That was a very long stretch. 3- 4 days of no sun is not uncommon here, either.
That’s good to hear. I planted only two stonefruit trees and Nectafest was one of them. Olpea said the problem with that cultivar is that it’s got such a low yield that he was going to remove the tree. Does it yield well for you?
my sour cherries got done the 3rd week of july and i ate all of them fresh so the drought is good for something. red/ yellow raspberries were sweeter than usual. now ive been eating nelson blackberries. got s few last year but they are loaded this year and very good. getting a pint every few days. problem is the wife likes them as much as i do so its a rush to who picks them 1st. i give it about a week and she’ll tire of them. alpine strawberries are putting out so many fruit i cant keep up. probably got 3 gallons of them frozen so far. its so dry theres barely any slugs which is a good thing. flavor of them is exceptional this year as well. the best tasting is my dewberry. unfortunitly not a big producer but what i get are real good.
Olpea is in Kansas so varieties he has trouble cropping often tend to overset here and varieties he endorses, such as Spring Snow may really suck here even if they over crop and are thinned carefully. May suck because one season does not tell the story but I only like low-acid fruit that is high sugar and I’m already sure Spring Snow isn’t that compared to other fruit that ripened at the same time.
This is the first year I really cropped Nectafest although it was capable of holding a full crop last year if hard frost hadn’t eliminated all stone fruit here. If it is a reluctant setter, not nearly as much as Honey Blaze, which ripens just a bit later. The crop needed to be thinned this year but it is a season of over abundant set in general for all but the earliest blooming plums and pluots.
I’m thinking Nectafest is probably the best fruit I have in its season this year, but I will let you know in a few years how it rates when given a fair trial.
If this season has taught me anything, it is that what the weather preceding ripening is as important as the cultivar in terms of flavor. For me, the trick is to generally run with the highest brix productive varieties in their season and Nectafest likely fills that bill.
I just picked about 50 pounds of utterly beautiful Summer Beaut nectarines. I’m at the point where I just throw away any with defects starting to rot. These look as nice or better than one you see in markets, only bigger because I thinned and then thinned again. Some are more like grocery store size but a lot have impressive size- for nects.
The thing is that brix runs from 10.5 to 12.5 which is the lowest of any nect I’ve harvested this year.
