Wow! I’m going!
Nectarines are my absolute favorite. Last year Sam’s Club had variety after variety - in 3lb. ? bags. The varieties were marked - even advertised - on the bags.
I let my Sam’s card expire . . . so I’ll check out our Costco. Thanks.
Just read some earlier posts for the first time - about PC on nectarines. I definitely have PC. But for some strange reason, my nectarines are very clean! ? Plums got bitten a LOT . . . but I sprayed and must have (accidentally) at the right times - because later fruit shows very very little damage. I should ‘knock on wood’ . . . because it seems that every time I share a good report - then ‘Uh Oh’!
I used Bonide fruit & orchard products. And Immunox. And sprayed Imidan 2X. That seems to be the ‘ticket’ for me, here in VA.
Anyways . . . I am VERY excited about the nectarines, which came with all sorts of warnings about their difficulty to grow . . . more so than peaches. I am not finding that to be the case. ?
I also missed the posts above about PC on nectarines. I have had sporadic problems with it, some years not much damage and some years a lot. One thing I do to address it is not to thin so much. My Summer Beaut got nailed by PC this spring, but it had a massive set which I did not thin much of so I still have a full crop. This is with Surround. I also hit nectarines much more heavily with Surround, you can tell by comparing it to the other peach trees by it, it is whiter.
My nectarines have gotten hit by thrips every year. but more this year (maybe, there are more thrips around since I never got to kill any in years past.
As for PC, it has damaged my peaches more than my nectarines. Not sure why. This year PC and OFM damage has been minimal as I switched to zeta-cypermethrin, instead of Surround and Spinosad.
We lost all SpiceZee nects to PC this year, despite Surround, Indar, spinosad and Clemson bags. It was demoralizing after heavy fruit set, thinning and bagging to have no fruit. Only able to harvest 1 heavily split Arctic Jay (had heavy spring rains x 1 month). Tropic Snow peach fared better with 1 dozen juicy fruit. Adding Avaunt next spring because darn it I want some good nects.
Ate my first ever Honey Kist, from a third leaf tree on Citation. Even though it was only 18.5 Brix (due to somewhat rainy weather the past three weeks), the flavor and sweetness were excellent! I love the Honey series… thanks @fruitnut for advertising it to us.
I did a search and did not see any posts about Durbin on the forum. All posts on the socials seem to be very high praise…looks like a high chill mid ripening. Bred for the SE and seems to have been highly disease resistant (back then).
Pics are sparse…but found this one on the social medias…
It’s a high quality nectarine for those that like a sugar acid balance and it’s one of only two yellow nectarines I grow that is holding a crop this year. Not sure it it’s location or variety though, although the nect next to it has almost no crop.
Good to know. I planted one this year, although it’s on Nemaguard - planted it on a mound hope that will help. Does yours set consistently in our spring weather?
Since planting over ten years ago and learning along the way,how to manage,the tree has gone through changes.
I didn’t know much about pruning and so there is a lot of bare wood,down low.
There may be no more fruiting Nectarine branches.They either died or were grafted over to other Nectarines/Peaches,(which only lasted a season or two)Plum types and Apricots,that are doing fairly well.
Peach Leaf Curl,happened in the Spring,then Earwigs and Stinkbugs went after the fruit,until finding out about bagging.
These were from 2018 after bagging.I haven’t any pictures of the bug eaten ones,from the previous couple years before then.
It is strange and must be another case of frozen ovaries because the bloom was fine as was attendance by pollinators. But why is the J. plum crop heavy when they were so much further along on Mar 19th. We got about 19F.
Not looking like a stellar year in my orchard unless everything else goes well from here on in. I don’t need a real high percentage of my potential crop to be satisfied. Maybe my TangO’s won’t rot this year. They could fill my freezer instead of nects. They are the most difficult variety of stonefruit I grow- my site is just too much a protected hollow that holds moisture.
Worst comes to worst, I can swap plums for peaches with my customers.
Could be the rain during bloom? It rained for several days during peak bloom of cots, nectarines and Japanese plums here, and I had severe case of blossom blight on all my cots except one that I sprayed in bloom with Infuse (this one had no bees on it, so I was able to spray it), >90% loss of blossoms to the disease.
Initially, I was not worried about nectarines because they are self pollinating (and because they’re not as sensitive to blossom blight), however 3-4 of my nectarine trees (out of ~25 trees) suffered badly from blossom blight, loosing 90+% of their blossoms/fruitlets; I even be saw a few dead twigs. Now I know these are susceptible varieties, and will spray them in future years if it rains during bloom.
Japanese plums seam unscathed, and I have excellent fruit set on ones known to be good setters.
