Thanks for the info. I will order a tree at next opportunity. I wonder when they will ripen here- probably not until mid-July at earliest.
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Nectarines may be better, but man are they difficult to grow where it rains and is humid 24/7. Iām going to graft my nectarines all onto a few trees and then grow them under plasticā¦there is no other way unless you have your spray bottle full of fungicides///bird protection///etc. We had just .13 of rain yesterday and i see a few of my summer silk have long cracks in themā¦they are still very unripe. The A glo look like hellā¦a star/rose both have a ton of spot as does raspberry red and most of the peaches. Tough stuffā¦very discouraging.
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And I have had problems with Methley and Santa Rosa plums splitting. Next year Iāll try putting black plastic under some of the trees when July arrives to reduce moisture.
Fruitnut,
So far, except for one variety, Iāve not had to thin any nects. They havenāt set real well for me. It seems like they are more fickle to spring weather so far. Probably under good weather conditions, they would over set. We rarely get ideal spring weather conditions here.
Last year I spoke with a commercial grower who grew peaches for 20 years a couple hours drive south of me. He had a fairly sizable orchard (by Missouri standards). His orchard produced about 90 bu. per day during the season. He said of the twenty years he grew peaches, he had 4 years of full crops, 4 years of no crop, and all the rest of the years were partial crops. Thatās more or less what Iāve seen, that the norm here is more like partial crops because of the marginal weather.
Itās during those partial crop years where I see the most potential to move the productivity. In the 20% of the time there are full crops, variety doesnāt matter, since everything will set full crops. In the 20% of the time when there is no crop, variety doesnāt matter because pretty much everything fails. The rest of the time (marginal years) there are varieties which still set full crops, along with varieties which are pretty much blank. Iām really working to try to identify varieties which are still productive in marginal weather, and taste good, and donāt suffer too much bac. spot.
As an aside on the bac. spot issue, last winter I got rid of a lot of my worst offenders for bac. spot (mostly white varieties) and I seem to have seen less bac. spot this year on the remainder of the fruit trees. This is just the first year since I removed so many bac. spot prone trees, so itās a little premature to draw any confident conclusions, but initially there seems to be less bac. spot in general, despite some really rainy wet weather in early summer.
There is one variety of nect which sets very heavy, Hardired. It sets heavy, but even when thinned properly, the fruit are much smaller, so the yield is lower.
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We had one very cold night in mid-feb that seemed to affect nectarines more than peaches. Lots of runts that stop growing and rot instead of ripen and get the rot spreading through the tree, quickly infecting the most cracked fruit nearby. It seems all the nectarines have lots of these dangerous midgets. Peaches have none and arenāt cracked either.
Before I grew a lot of nects I did have this happen to peaches one year.
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Usually Iām too lazy to measure Brix since I know that fruit grown in my conditions is almost always very sweet (some very early fruit like May-ripening apricots can be an exception). Just for the sake of this discussion, I measured today two Spice Zee NectaPlums ā one is the last of four fruits from my first-leaf tree (fully ripe, may be even a bit overripe) and another is from a batch I bought from an orchard in Brentwood (I would call it firm ripe). Mine was 27 Brix and the purchased one was 18 Brix. Both were quite good, although in somewhat different ways. Frankly, I would ideally prefer something in the middle, as mine was almost too sweet.
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Thanks Fruitnut, that is a huge compliment coming from the Brix master himself!! There is a really good fruit stand, Bocks, just south of Gridley on Hwy 70. They always have very good tree ripened fruit, hard to find as most orchards sell their best commercially, offering only seconds, just like most farmers markets. So I got to talking with the owner on how their fruit was so great. Three sisters run the place and the oldest is very helpful with info. She told me they water for size a lot early and then hold the water back a month before harvest, creating super sweet/rich fruit. My brother in Fresno says his farmer friends hold water back in watermelons before harvest as well. I then started reading gardenweb and saw your info and beautiful high brix fruit. Followed you all over here and 3 years ago replaced our front lawn with my dream orchard! I learned a lot from my backyard orchard thatās been in for 7 years now and did the front right! We disked the soil, which was fairly hard about 8 inches down. Then an inch of compost and 3 inches mulch help preserve water. Then, in spacing and pruning everything open center to allow maximum light penetration. I believe lots of scorching hot sun exposure is critical! We do not fertilize trees unless needed, and then only organically. I believe our semi wet springs help size the fruit while the late spring/summer heat and water deficit sweetens them up! And finally, my trees are about 8 feet tall and 10 foot diameter, supposibaly the recommended water for a tree this size according to the book, The Home Orchard, is 145 gallons a week. We are watering exactly, this is juicy, twice a week 6.25 gallons, for a total of 12.5 gallons a week per tree starting in mid April to early May depending on spring showers. The trees are showing some brown leaves but seem to be doing fine, small price to pay for supreme quality fruit!! I actually prefer firm ripe fruit, texture thing, so the extra brix really helps my fruit quality!!
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That might be part of why TangO gets rot so badly. There are always a ton of tiny fruitlets that donāt size up. But I donāt think it is the whole story, as the tree next to it (Carolina Gold) doesnāt get anywhere near as much, even though it is only 4-5ā away.
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A saucer is designed to capture the spill of hot drinks. Saucer peaches do that with rain water. A sphere takes less time to dry after rain or probably even dew.
My TangOās are a disaster this year. Much worse than theyāve ever been. Too much rain.
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Mine were too. I probably lost a good third to half because of rot, even w/ Indar sprays.
I used to think it was their shape which caused rot. Iām starting to re-think that for a couple reasons.
One reason is that my Saturns, which received just as much rain, didnāt have any rot, as I recall. They harvest a little bit earlier than TangOs, but pretty close.
The other thing is that I noticed this year the TangOs rotted on the bottom in the center, regardless of their orientation on the tree. In other words, they would rot on the bottom, even though they were right side up. Or if they were oriented on their side, which would be the best possible orientation for shedding water, they would still rot in the center on the bottom side.
Itās still possible their shape contributes something to the rotting, since once the rot gets started there would be a lot of fungal inocculum to spread to nearby fruit, but Iām wondering if itās something in the flesh or skin itself which makes them prone to rotting?
As an aside, I still think Indar is one of the best controls for brown rot. We received so much rain in early summer. But except for the TangOs, weāve hardly had any rot. Part of it could be orchard sanitation too. We did a much better job of picking up and disposing drops than we ever have before.
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My saturns have been probably the cleanest stonefruit this year. Not sure why. Iāve had 2 feet of rain since April first. Only thing i tried was calcium chloride spraysā¦so maybe that did toughen the skin. I donāt have Tangos anymore and donāt plan on replacing it.
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Thatās a very good brix on your SZ. Thanks for the input.
Alan would like your approach, dry for a month before harvest. Iāll try that next yr outdoors if the weather cooperates. I canāt do that in my greenhouse and I donāt see how one could do it with watermelons. I have tree fruits that mature from April until October. They are planted very close. So I canāt withhold water from any one for just a month before harvest. My watermelons harvest June to Oct. I canāt withhold there just before harvest. But do get very high brix if I donāt over water or over fertilize.
Thank you for your description of how you do things and how others in CA grow great fruit. I have learned a lot this yr about Eastern vs Western fruit production. It seems that brix levels are 50+% higher with properly grown fruit in CA like conditions than out east with all their rain. I didnāt know that the difference was that great. Iām sure eastern fruit is good. Hey they can eat twice as muchā¦!!
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This is very interestingā¦!! Could you post some pictures of your trees. Iād like to see that they look like with that little water in 100F CA heat. Also how deep is your soil and do you know the texture down deeper? I would think you could water more than 12.5 gal/week/tree. But if that works great. A lot depends on tree size, spacing, ground cover, and soil water holding capacity.
Your system sounds the same as my greenhouse. Start the yr with wet soil, donāt water until the earliest fruit is about ripe, and then water all summer at a deficit rate. Iām applying about 2-3 inches per month from May thru October. My soil probably holds 6-8 inches of available water to start the yr. I believe my watering rate would be about 30 gal per week on a 10x10ft area all summer.
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Over here it ripens 4 days after redhaven, or late june thru mid july. The only source I know is Bay Laurel, one of only 4 nurseries in California to carry this peach last year. If you can get full sun I believe you will love it!
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Iāve been growing Saturn for 15 years at one site. It is always the top brown rot magnet there. Always, and not by a nose- by a mile. Nope, the saucer peaches are in a league of their own as far as brown rot, in my experience here, but TangOās gives you something special- major crack potential- not of the flesh like nectarines, but a wide open split pit that creates a hole. You see this year all peach and nectarine seeds have been split so far- every single one on the many varieties in already. When TangOās has a big split pit it creates a hole in the peach. Good luck getting such a peach to ripeness, even if you paint the indar on with a brush.
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My watering schedule is very similar. I give my fruit trees 4 gallons per watering 3-4 times a week, i.e., 12-16 gallons per week. I do additional watering (2-3 gallons per tree every other day) during heatwaves, when temps exceed 100 F.
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Because it was a big job we hired landscapers to do the front orchard. I drew out the plans and they did the work. They were supposed to use the circular drip but just used their standard drip, one on each side of the tree. I planned on changing as trees got bigger, actually this spring, but heat here is making me put it off until it cools down. The emitters say 8 on them so I figured 8 gallons per hour. At 1.5 hours twice a week that put me at 48 gallons a week or 1 third the recommended water for this area. Well when you asked for details I wanted to have exact answers so I checked the drip emitters again, WOOPS!, 8 liters an hour which is equal to a little over 2 gallons an hour times the 2 emitters, which equals exactly 12.5 gallons per tree per week, which I agree is super low. So it was kind of a mistake but the fruit has been sensational!! As the trees get bigger now I will increase the water a bit, probably to around twice this as it is way less than I thought. Al in al the trees are coping pretty well, some pics of the treesā¦no extra water has been applied to these trees.
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Your trees look good with lots of spring growth. They appear to have pretty much stopped growing now which indicates they are pretty dry. Thatās about where you want them. They donāt have any competition for water and a pretty large area of soil per tree. That allows less irrigation.
If the old leaves start dropping they are too dry. If brix gets above 30-32 there can be off flavors. And some cultivars react better flavor wise to a water deficit than others. All things we learn by experience.
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