Bob, don’t waste your time, efforts and land with peaches. Topwork them to nectarines. Check my other post:
I have 3 peach trees (vs. 23 nectarine trees) as hedge, for years that nectarines will freeze out.
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PLEASE send some of that rain our way, SW Ohio. We haven’t had a decent rain ( no more than about 1/2" at most about every three to four weeks) in a couple of months. Still no rain in the forecast for the next couple of weeks.
I feel sort of ridiculous posting this is so far over my head . However, if I find something that is helpful to me I want to thank the person who posted. I’m only a guy trying to grow a few peaches for a family .
and I have been bagging them with great success however, I have also been randomly removing leaves in the process, probably not the brightest idea. I saw one of the other post that the heat and humidity might also be a factor. My heat and humidity is off the charts the last two weeks in June and the first week in July. Thanks
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Are you asking a question as well as thanking me. In case you have a question about removing some leaves to bag the fruit, I think that’s a very good idea so the leaves aren’t pressed against the fruit and encouraging rot. Leaves outside the bag should serve the fruit just fine- Supposedly it takes about 30 leaves to nourish a peach to high quality.
I really did not have an additional question. It was just a thank you, but the added information is most beneficial. I just thought I was doing something really stupid by removing the leaves
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I’m so sorry, but I have to disagree. 
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8.5 inches of rain over night last week. Surprised the only cracking I saw was on some tomatoes. I do have sandy soil that drains quickly. I do get fruit splitting from rain but not this time. Perhaps it happens more when the fruit is growing.
I’ve grafted a decent amount of nectarines on and have noticed something. They are much more likely to be stolen by animals than peaches. I don’t know if that is because the branches generally aren’t as big, so it is more likely to lose them all, or if it is because they have higher brix and the animals like that too.
Just yesterday I noticed a nectarine that both the animals and I missed. It was the only one on the graft and based on how wrinkled it is, I must have missed it’s normal harvest window. I believe it is September Honey, which Tomorrows Harvest says is “September-October”, But, it was 26 brix on a somewhat reasonably thinned (only 1 broken branch) tree of 12 brix peaches (Victoria?) which are just starting to ripen. Maybe some will get up to 14.
Bottom of 26 brix nectarine:
top:
I feel like in a greenhouse nectarines would be the obvious choice- no animals, cracking, or fungus to destroy them, and I could leave them on the tree to get really ripe. I’m nudging the idea along with my wife…
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A screenhouse might work better than a greenhouse here. Strong enough to throw a tarp over to allow buds to withstand late freezes. It won’t stop thrips but neither will a greenhouse, I guess. It would likely stop stinkbugs.
I threw most of my chips into the nectarine bet for their higher brix, although I learned a while ago that the low acid varieties are generally too hard to harvest before they are destroyed by pests. But even though the lower brix- higher acid varieties more often give me good crops, they are not nearly as easy or reliable as peaches.
Unlike you, I don’t buy fruit, except watermelon in the summer and some mangoes and Kaki persimmons in winter and spring. My palate has adjusted to my lower brix peaches which are hard enough to protect from brown rot this year. Hardest year ever for that disease here. I still treasure a perfect peach. I haven’t measured brix, but they must at least be over 13 to taste so good.
Small woodpeckers are now requiring me to net my plums if I’m going to get perfect, fully tree-ripened ones. Every year has its challenges. This one should have been much better with the huge improvement in ripening weather over the previous 4 years, but it has been a battle for a different set of problems. Stink bugs have required one extra insecticide spray, for one thing.
I would have guessed brown rot would have decreased as an issue with the vast reduction in rainy fully grey days over the previous few seasons, but not so. Maybe warm nights are the cause.
For me, my troubles mean I won’t be giving away much stonefruit this year. I have plenty in my freezer to take me through winter. But what a waste of labor!
September Honey is an excellent, low acid yellow nectarine. Last year I had a dozen only, on my second leaf tree, and I picked them soft ripe between Sep 11-19. Its flower buds survived the early Feb cold snap better than all other nectarines that I have.
Yes, my experience this year (which exhibited very high PC and BR pressure, and also is my first year cropping 4 varieties of peaches) is that peaches are much easier to grow than nectarines! However, they can’t even get close in taste department. The only one that had interesting enough flavor in my growing conditions was Baby Crawford (haven’t tried Red Baron and Kaweah yet), but the sweetness was much less. I am growing my peaches, first to try these varieties when home grown, and second, as hedge for years I lose my nectarine crop to spring freeze.
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I think low acid sweet peaches such as Saturn, spring snow, sweet bagel are all very worth growing. Black boy is not very sweet but that raspberry taste is nowhere else to find. Yes, baby Crawford is a great peach, but Nanaimo (surprise to me and very few people outside of NWP area grow it) is not far behind and probably easier to grow.
I didn’t get a great set of plums, but have still had enough for a couple dozen over the week or so. Vision are huge and 16-20 brix and Muir Beauty(very precocious/productive) have been 19-23 brix. I like the Vision ones better, as they have some tart to them. I also picked a few of a 3rd variety, which looks like Stanley based on the neck, which were a bit small and 19-20 brix. I’m not sure they were all perfectly tree-ripened, especially the Vision, but they were plenty good.
I’ve kept adding them, but the proportion of the harvest is still very small.
What advantage would a screen house have, aside from price? I effectively did that with one pluot (Geopride) this year. It protects from animals and wasps nicely, but there are still some downsides.
- It is a bit of a pain to put on with just 2 people (manufacturer recommends 4).
- Rain goes though, so there was quite a bit of rot inside, even though I did a fungicide spray before putting it on.
- Blocks some light, even though what I fruit I got was still pretty good.
In past years I’ve used it on a Korean Giant asian pear and it worked very well.
The brix was a bit lower, but I got 95% perfect fruit, without wasp or animal damage.
Yes, I’ve been feeding most of the peaches to my wife and giving them away. I eat a few when cutting them up for her, but I far prefer the organic nectarines I’ve been buying from Whole Foods. I had a white one with 23 brix the other day and some yellows around 20. I got a few nectarines last week at the farmer’s market (a yellow, probably Flavor Top or Fantasia based on the seller and timing), but they weren’t much higher brix than my peaches, around 12-13.
Sounds about right to me. I have some (maybe) Victorias which are starting to ripen which are close. Maybe over the next week they will get to 13-14, though right now they are maxing at 12.
It’s a bit random. when cutting them up, I hit on one white peach with 17 brix, mixed in with a bunch of 10’s. Of course, the other half of the same piece of fruit was only ~12. Maybe the 17 is what I could get if I thinned it to extreme levels.
Are they ripe for you yet this year? If they take until the 2nd week of Sept for you, my season must be pretty far ahead.
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This year they are still small, but the tree is loaded and I didn’t thin well. With 60+ trees to thin and bag, some will have to slip through 
.
I have Stark Saturn (the donut) and it is two steps below Arctic Sweet, and way below Honey Kist (which ripen around the same time) in eating quality. If I was living in the west, with dry, sunny summers, I am sure I would have a few peach varieties as strong competitors to nectarines, but on the east cost nectarines win 10:1.
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Hard for me to figure out disease and fungus cycles. I’ve had terrible brown Rot the past few years but not this year. Last two sprays on peaches were July 8th with Luna Sensation and Captain and August 17th with Captain only.
Regrets? Only that I don’t have more of them, and of course brown rot… With the mention of fungicides, a related question. Are any fungicides effective against brown rot in peaches/nectarines, and are not systemic? If my research is correct:
Indar - Systemic
Luna Sensation - Systemic
Captan - Non-systemic
Is Captan effective? Is there something else which is and which doesn’t permeate the flesh of the peach itself?
I use both organic and synthetic pesticides, I live in the hot/humid south so it’s just about impossible to be anti-pesticide. I do prefer products which aren’t systemic though, which don’t spread to all parts of the plant and fruit.
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My main problem with low acid nectarines, when they set fruit, is wasps, stinkbugs and birds, whence my screen suggestion.
You should be growing Carene if you love the high-sugar low acid type of nect. It fruits earlier enough to avoid the wasp problem and even bird predation is lower early. Possibly birds are still prioritizing protean early in the season when still feeding their young.
It’s just a matter of developing a taste for systemic fungicides .
I don’t like the idea of eating fungicide either but hate absolutely hate losing a crop to brown rot. If you’d like some comfort in data, I have a farmers safety study that indicates that even farmers that regularly expose themselves to a lot more pesticide than you will ever get by eating lots of sprayed fruit vastly outlive the average citizens of their respective states. They are also much, much healthier and get a lot less cancer.
It is in the application that you are most exposed and those systemic fungicides have no evidence of being a health risk to consumers as long as you follow label instructions.
That said, I still would rather not eat them, but the older fungicides that wash off are generally more dangerous than newer ones. That is generally true of all common tree fruit pesticides as products become more species specific and are not very poisonous to mammals.
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