I had problems for years with nectarines not sizing up well, but I am finally getting decent-sized fruits. Mericrest in particular took forever to get out of the golf-ball phase, but they are finally OK this year (not baseball but at least racketball). I also had problems with too many bugs and rots but now that I have my spray program tuned they are coming out well. Lack of setting is one problem I never had, except on some of the old varieties like John Rivers. I was out propping up all my nectarine trees this morning, they were bending to the ground with their load.
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Labor is a pretty big deal when selling fruit. Really the main deal. If you have something which sets a lot of good tasting fruit, compared to something which is more exotic but generates hardly any revenue, there isnāt much comparison.
It makes it even worse when the exotic takes more pruning because it sets very light. Such is the case with nects here.
Here is a Summer Beaut nect. I havenāt picked anything off it yet, and it has 5 fruit. Itās a fair sized tree and every year it produces pretty much nothing. Iāve already pruned it back this season, otherwise it would be bigger.
Hereās a Redhavens close to it. Probably 250 fruit of same sized tree.
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Hereās a pic standing back a little from the Redhaven.
I canāt tell if it shows up in the pic from my phone, but it has a lot of fruit.
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None of my peaches on peach roots had blooms this spring. The two cold hardiest peaches I have are probably Contender and Redhaven. The first peach tree I planted 15 years ago, a Hale Haven starting decline, is now dead. I also saw a number of dead year-old shoots on some of the trees, something I havenāt even seen when the winter low was -18ĀŗF three years in row. I think they got zapped by a sudden, late drop in temps going into winter. It was unusually warm into December. Other than that, the winter was average between mid-December and mid-February.
On the other hand, a small Sunglo and a small Mericrest had some blooms and set some fruit. Hardired impressed with a small crop over the whole tree. It was the only thing on peach roots that had a reasonable crop.
All these trees have identical conditions and get the same treatment. I wonder why the nectarines were more hardened than the peaches. I have more nectarines than peaches this year, despite having 3 or 4 times as many peach trees.
Hardired was one nectarine I grew which set tons of fruit. It required lots of thinning.
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AJ,
How good is Sunglo?
Dax
Mark,
Atfer seeing your Summer Beaut with barely any fruit, I can understand why you want to remove the tree.
I have one nectarine tree, Easternglo that I manage to stunt it. It is 4 yr old and about 4 ft tall. This year it set a lot of fruit. I think I left too many on a small tree. I also grafted 3-4 varieties of nectarines on a peach tree. Arctic Glo and Arctic Star set a number of fruit as they were grafted since 2016.
Besides, the brown rot, the usual pests (OFM. PC), my nectarines have one extra trouble, thrips. Thrip damage is obvoius on my nects.
After several days of rain this week, my peaches and nects have sized up noticeably. Gaining size and probably losing taste in the process.
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I feel like the last one to the party being this far North. Iāll admit to a slight bit of envy, seeing everyone enjoying their fruit!
Mark, your Redhavens look to be about as far along as my Early Redhavens - almost ready, but not quite thereā¦
The Redhavens below are finally showing a touch of color on some of them.
And the PF24C Has a really long way to go.
(Not even looking at OāHenry yetā¦)
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Nice-looking trees!
I was going to thin it harder this year, but nature beat me to it. It seems like they have firm flesh for a nectarine, but it might just be the smaller flesh/skin ratio creating that effect.
Fruit quality is excellent, around tennis ball sized with soft melting flesh. The acid/sugar/flavor balance is more āheavenlyā than intense. I just wish it would set more. I havenāt had it long so Iām hoping the low set has been circumstantial.
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Thanks!
I imagine boise and spokane are pretty similar in terms of fruit harvest time and climate. Do you spray anything? I seems to get away with just triazicide sprayed at the base for borers. I will probably do a dormant spray this year too, but so far it hasnt been needed. Do you have stinkbugs?
Hey Phil, My spray experience has been a little tough. I spent 18 years in an older neighborhood down by the Spokane River. I had apples, cherries, pears, and a Redhaven peach. It was tough to keep the worms out of everything but the peach. All I had to spray for was peach leaf curl. It seemed so easy and there is nothing like a tree ripened peach.
When I moved to my current, newer neighborhood, I planted 6 peach trees and 2 apricots, confident that leaf curl was easy to control. After a couple of years, the Oriental Fruit Moth found me and I got a good taste of what other people are dealing with. This year I pretty much knew what I was up against and put a lot of effort into removing flagging branch tips, trapping male moths with pheromone traps, spraying with Bonide, and removing any worm infected fruit.
My first 2 sprays of Bonide resulted in some burned fruit and leaves. I donāt know if I mixed it too strong or if it just dried too slow. I sprayed a 3rd time mid day on a warm day to ensure faster drying and experienced no ill effects. I do get a few stink bugs, but they are very few and far between. Other than leaf curl and Oriental Fruit Moth, I have to spray for powdery mildew, but nothing else - so farā¦
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Thatās interesting, I have seen a lot of peach twig borer, but no OFM. I am obsessive about my trees, so i get most of them by pruning the tips off the flagging branches like you mentioned. I have a lot more problems with asian pears than stone fruit.
Iāve seen your pictures. The results speak for themselves. Very nice!
My first real crop from my third leaf Arctic Jay startedā¦ The tree had about 60 fruits but the squirrels got about 7 of them (I do count the torn Clemson bags) in the past couple of weeks; I believe the thief is dead now, and making some good nutrition for my neighborhood 
ā¦ Most of the fruits are between 2.2-2.6 inches and are very clean! I picked two on Sat, they were starting to soften, but after eating them I found them somewhat crunchy, I guess I could have left them a week longer, still they were excellent (my kids and wife were so excited, so they were gone before I could measure the brix 
). On Sun I decided to pick another still hard nectarine and leave it to soften in the kitchen cabinet. Today it was soft enough, so I measured the brix and it was 22.5, great fruitā¦ good reward after three years of hard work ā¦
Now I have about 50 nectarines on my tree and the weather is awful (5ā of rain yesterday, another couple or so last Sat night and today and further rain forecast for Fri-Sun). In addition to rain, the squirrels have been relentless (caught 1 yesterday and two today), so I am seriously considering picking them all this Sat, soft or not; what do you think?
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You might as well pick them and ripen them inside by my reckoning, once they get that high brix they arenāt going to get better on the tree. Congrats, you have really succeeded.
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I had 5 on my new Mericrest, protected by a double layer of nets, but I screwed up in checking the ripeness, going by scent. They werenāt nearly ready, but after a few days in a paper bag, theyāve turned juicy and sweet.
But I donāt know what they could have been, left on the tree
Could have been great, could have been squirrelfood
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Thanks Alanā¦ I would not have been able to achieve this without the help of veteran growers like yourself, Scott, Fruitnut and many others on this great forum!
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In spite of excess rain, the Sunglos Iām harvesting are in the 14 brix range which makes them better than last years- itās not my best nectarine. Peaches now areāt getting above about 13 and the difference is obvious to my taste buds.
Almost daily rain is no longer in the forecast so later nectarines may get above 15 which is when they really are delicious. However, much of their fruit now has deep cracks while almost all peaches are beautiful. No wonder commercial growers in the east focus on peaches, but for the home grower, what are a few cracks if the fruit tastes better?
My earliest nects were mostly above 15 and as high as almost 18- then the monsoon arrived.
The most amazing thing is that I can give away big beautiful peaches with brix below 13 and people still exclaim that they are the most delicious theyāve ever eaten- truly an indictment of the American fruit production industry. There is money to be made for the person who introduces truly delicious fruit to the professional class in this country. If Americans will pay high prices for other gourmet foods they could certainly be persuaded to pay for real peaches and nectarines if they were introduced to them and assured that their status would benefit by serving guests the best (as with good wine).
If I was a big grower in CA of great stone-fruit, Iād cut a deal with Amazon. Amazon could get fruit from the farm to the consumer most places in the U.S. in 2-3 days. If it was part of Whole Foods, theyād use refrigerated trucks.
Of course, that might be very bad for my little business- so donāt tell anyone.
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