Nectarine with flower parts still attached.
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This looks strangely beautiful
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That was my exact thought!
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Nice. Is that something from the honey series?
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Yes Honey Lite. Fruit isn’t pollinated and will be small.
Are your cherries ripe yet?
Yes the sweet cherries are ripe. Started 4 weeks ago. Down to a few left.
Would you share some pictures if you have the time. Very few cherries get as ripe and pretty as yours.
Thanks
A lot of your fruit seems to ripen very early,compared to mine.Is there much in late Summer?bb
I can’t of this yrs crop. I just ate the last one. Below some of earlier crops.
I’ll have figs until Dec and pluots until September. This yr is very early because I’ve been heating the gh for fig propagation needs.
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Is the only lighting in your greenhouse from natural light? If so, does the fruit ripening now and previously this year develop the same brix they would had they ripened later, when the days are longer? Simplistically, I’m thinking longer days = more light exposure = more photosynthesis = more sugar.
Yes natural light only. And in the greenhouse the light level is about 50% of outside. But I’ve never thought that reduced fruit quality. We get a lot of sun here all yr long, about 75%. That’s less than interior CA in summer but more in winter.
I ate a nectarine today that was 27 brix. But the crop load is light so that doesn’t prove much.
There was a guy in western Washington growing fruit yr around in a greenhouse. He had it figured so as to get two crops a yr on certain fruits. He never gave brix numbers. From looking at his fruit I’d suspect very low brix on fruit ripening this time of yr. As you know cloud cover up there in winter is 80-90%. And their daylight hrs in winter are shorter than ours.
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Interesting. I guess on some level that makes sense because I know there are often more photons available than the chlorophyll can capture.
So, would you say that temperature is more important that light in developing sugars because temperature affects the speed of biochemical reactions?
For your situation I’d say temperature is the limiting factor not light. That’s with regards to sweetening up peaches and nectarines. There is a work around for both. A greenhouse/high tunnel can increase temperature. Pruning and thinning can overcome the light limitation that you may have with June gloom. Expose the leaves better to light and leave less fruit. Most people leave way to many fruit and it lowers brix even with high light and optimum temperatures.
Thanks Steve. Yes, I do notice that when I’m aggressive about fruit thinning, the remaining fruit are definitely better.
Is it generally understood why temperature is important? Is it about the speed of sugar synthesis, or something else?
I’ve never seen a reason. It’s just something to do with the physiology of the plant. I’m sure peaches evolved in a warm summer climate. And they need that type of climate to develop best quality. All of which tells you nothing.
Have you studied what does well in the PNW? That’s where I’d look to find the best species and cultivars for your coastal CA climate.
Sugars (as well as many flavor components) are synthesized by enzymatic reactions, and every enzyme has an optimum temperature range for it to operate, so I guess that this range for peaches/nectarines/figs/tomatoes and many other plants is in the eighties/low nineties. For example, I noticed that my tomatoes are most flavorful when the temperature is in the eighties (when it’s in the sixties, they loose most of their flavor). For plants that grow in cold climates, the optimum temperature for their enzymes is probably lower.
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That makes perfect sense. I even teach that concept of optimum temperature range in relation to growth of fishes. Somehow I just hadn’t though about it in the context of plants. Duh.
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