It’s that time of year when many of us are reviewing the performance of our trees this past year and considering what to order next year. Since my knowledge about fruit trees in general is considerably less than most of yours, I am reluctant to make many recommendations. But I have a few trees that just seemed to be way, way above average so I felt they were worth mentioning. I’m not saying anyone should plant one of my best trees based solely on my experience, but I’d like to hear if others have the same experience, and if so then it might be one to strongly consider.
One of mine that really stands out is my June Princess Nectarine. This tree was just out of this world in taste, production, appearance, and “hang time”. As you can see from the photo, my tree is still pretty small (About 4 foot tall) but was absolutely LOADED. The nectarines were all incredibly sweet and delicious. They were perfectly formed and shaped and uniformed and had few blemishes. They are a very attractive red color, with less yellow blush than most nectarines. But above all else, what shocked me was what I’m calling “hang time”. In fact, these fruit stayed ripe AND on the tree so long it bordered on absurd. I basically just let them hang until the went soft on the tree-meaning VERY ripe. But if I picked them hard, they’d soften up on my table within a few days so they were all ripe about the same time, just not soft-ripe at the same time. Where I live, they basically ripened the last week of June to the first week of July. But- hard as it may be for you to believe this- these fruit stayed on the tree in a ripe and almost-soft stage for 6 weeks! Really. I picked some of these in AUGUST that were ripe in late June!!! And in all the weeks between I was picking a few along and they were all either soft-ripe or hard-ripe and the hard-ripe ones would soften up in the table in a few days. Maybe this is more common than I think, but none of my other nectarines and CERTAINLY none of my peaches have this ability. They all get ripe about the same time, and I have to either pick them or they will go bad within about 2 weeks. My tree was planted in December of 2013 as a potted tree from a big box store, so unfortunately I don’t know the root stock, but it was on its 3rd leaf this year. It produced a few last year, too.
Anyway, just thought I’d sing the praises of my June Princess Nectarine for anyone interested. If anyone else has this variety, I’d be interested in hearing your experiences with it. Hope this helps someone.
If my posting here has in any way been helpful or provide even a small amount of information to you,@fruitnut, then I certainly am happy about that! Your knowledge isa million times greater than mine and you’ve helped so many people (especially me) over the years, so its always nice if I can actually enlighted you a tiny bit.
I was actually spraying more than I needed to and even more than I should have, so my answer to that question won’t help you and may even disappoint you a little since I sprayed more often than they recommends- a no-no, I know. . But I genuinely believe my insect pressure isabnormally high. I’m sure everyone thinks their bug problems are the worst, but I’ve read and seen lots of photos and heard lots of stores and explanations right here on GF that have all helped me compare my insect activity to that of others and I am absolutely convinced that for whatever reason, I genuinely do have more OFM and PC activity than almost anyone. I guess I tell you all of that in defense of my pending answer to your question. I.E., I sprayed Imidan every 7-10 days from golfball size to harvest (+ 1-2 times from petal fall to golfball). If it rained during the interval, I’d spray on the 7th day and if not, I’d wait until the 10th. I almost feel like I should apologize since I know you and others are likely to condemn that frequency and I can’t blame anyone who does. So I concede that this approach probably exceeded the boundaries of good health and environmental impact, and next year I’ll try hard to do better. I wanted to be honest in my answer. But it was my first year to get a lot of really good fruit on my tree(s) and I was determined to not let it become bug food! And because I’m sure you’d never spray imidan that often, my answer also doesn’t give you any kind of useful guidelines for protecting your own outdoor nectarines- if you have any. But I felt I needed to be honest since you and others need acurate information.
Perhaps my other answers will be more useful:
The taste of these guys truly was wonderful. Generally,I want sweetness above all else in a fruit, and these were sweet. But they also had a lot of what I guess you could call “sourness” but that doesn’t seem like the right word. Definitely they were quite acidic. They just had a lot of flavor- They were the opposite of bland. They weren’t all that juicy to be honest. Not dry, but also not that run-down-your chin kind of juiciness than a lot of peaches have. In short, these were really good fruit.
Sorry I went so long, but of course thats nothing new for me!
Congratulations Cityman, on such beautiful and tasty fruit. I know you’ve had so many disappointments (with the herbicide incident, and OFM) I’m thrilled to see you harvest a good bunch of fruit.
Regarding your spray schedule, I know you didn’t ask my opinion, but you might consider experimenting with a little longer spray interval with Imidan. Commercially, recommendations are 7-10 days in early sprays, then stretch to 10-14 days for cover sprays for general insecticides.
Additionally, organophosphates tend to be really strong insecticides. In other words it takes a very small amount to kill the insect, in spite of the fact that large doses are sprayed on the trees, which also helps protect the fruit for longer intervals (or rain wash off).
I’ve personally never used Imidan, but have used the organophosphates Diazinon and Lorsban and can attest they seem to have long activity. Lorsban works so well on borers, that only one application per year is all that’s generally required.
I understand if you don’t want to risk the fruit you’ve worked so hard to get, but if you wanted to, you could perhaps experiment with a few less sprays on a couple trees to see how it works for you.
@thecityman I know this is an old thread, but I saw June Princess at the store yesterday, so I did a Google search to find information on it. This thread was the very first result that came up. I thought that was pretty cool, and that you’d get a kick out of it!
(Even though you gave it raving reviews, I didn’t buy it. It already had blooms, which indicated it was a very early bloomer, and I’d likely lose fruit every year due to late freezes).
That is pretty cool! and it is a slightly early bloomer…certain not one of my earliest blooming peach/nects but earlier than most. This year I lost most or all fruit on several trees to the two 13 degree nights we had a couple weeks ago. But June Princess still had pretty tight buds and came through really well.
but yea, I always find it very cool to do a google search and find the answers right here
I saw one site that said 800 chill hours, but it if its somewhat early blooming in zone 7a, that would indicate less chill hours than 800.
I tried to find info on the origin of June Princess and came up empty.
Also, I could not find anything on its relative disease resistance.
Hey there! I hope and pray that it will be as good for you as mine has been for me! In fact, my opinion has only improved since this post started. That is one of my only stone fruits that has fruit each and every single year since I planted it 8-10 years ago. Always LOADED, fruit is always large and tasty. Seriously, I just can’t say enough good things. This past year I lost a very large scaffold on my tree…but to be honest that is more of a reason to love this variety than to hate it: It broke because even though I thinned twice, the fruits still got so large and so heavy that they broke off a big limb. But its hard to blame a tree for making too many, too big fruits!!! That is 100% on me to manage it better. Also-in general- I find nectarines to just be harder to grow than peaches (again, in general/on average). Bugs like them more, birds like them more, fungi and diseases seem a little more prone to them, they can split (not JP- not EVER), and so on. JP is the exception to all of this. It actually is easier to get good fruit from this tree than from most of my peaches. If I could only keep 3 of all my peach and nects, this would very likely be the first one I’d save. Good luck, my friend. As close as we are surely you’ll have good luck with yours
I picked up a June Princess and a Rose Princess nect. Both trees were about 3 feet high and had lots of fruitlets… so i assume that they are going to be very productive and precocious.
Rose Princess is also the name of a peach. from Australia i think and is patented. So that will show up in a good search. Almost nobody growing the nectarine that i can find…not much info on it.
I found it neat that June Princess was chosen specifically for this ale… i read a little on their social medias and they only use this certain nectarine for their ale. Picked from Clemson University’s Musser Experimental Fruit Research Farm
Both of these nects seem to have been carried by Stark Bros years ago but can mostly only be found at box stores randomly now.
I put June Princess on a multigraft nectarine next to mericrest and harko last year. This year was around average or better for frosts and freezes. Harko and mericrest both outperformed JP by a good margin in fruit set. I wont have to thin any of them. Maybe performance will improve with age.
I got the same trees from Freedom Tree Farms 3 years ago for 14.99 each at Kroger. I also bought bunch of other stonefruits, flowering trees, and blueberries. BTW, I called the office and they said the rootstock was for their stonefruit was Halford, so the tree should get big. It was a bummer that I didn’t see Freedom Tree farms this spring at Kroger.
Also, I don’t have those nectarine trees fenced in so deer are challenging those the growth of those trees. But those nectarines trees are still larger than my other peaches on Citation.
Not sure what happened with Kroger not selling trees… my walmarts have no trees either really… maybe they will in May when people like to plant things?
