I have a three years old nectarine tree on my backyard. It is Double Delight variety. It started to fruit for the past two years but the fruit skin looks ugly, but the inside is fine - see the photo. Could somebody in this forum tell me what I have done wrong?
Thank you in advance.
I have another nectarine tree - atomic red, it is two years old. It starts fruiting this year, and I don’t have the same problem as the double delight variety.
Its skin is very smooth - see photo below. I am very confused as of why there are different in appearance. The trees are just only 10ft apart.
Like @Stan said in another thread. It’s thrip damage. Your younger tree will get them, it is only a matter of time. Thrips are hard to manage because your need to spray insecticide during blooms, risking killing bees.
I just live with the damage since my nectarines are for my own consumption. Some scars are fine with me. If they get worse, I would need to spray.
Look up thrip damage.
Interesting. I did sprayed some insecticide but maybe I did it too late. Now that I know I will make sure to keep an eye on it next year.
I suggest look up old threads about how to get rid of thrips on nectarines.
Most other fruit we spray petal fall and after fruit starts to set. For thrips, that will be too late.
Here’s one thread about thrips.
My plums looked like that once after spraying with captan. Burnt them bad!
What if you sprayed just before bloom with a heavier amount of nu-film?
Don’t know. They are inside the flowers. Even spraying at bloom is not anbeasy task.
So dar, damage on mine is not excessive so I don’t spray.
I had the same experience with captan on my peaches. Burnt them really bad. Found that if it dries very quickly, burns are reduced or avoided. If it dries very slowly so the fruit is exposed to the liquid chemical for a prolonged period, burns occur.
After doing more online research, I am still pondering whether my nectarine problem was caused
by Thrip damage OR chemical spray. As mention on my original post, I did sprayed fungicide right
after petal fall, as I recall the weather was still cold at that time in Dallas, and I was not totally convince that if Thrip even showing up yet during such cold temperature.
What kind of fungicide did you spray?
As I recall. I noticed somewhat the same symptom on some of my santa rosa plum too but not very severe as the nectarine. I used the same above chemical for all my trees right after petal fall.
I’ve never seen such ingredients used as fungicide. Hopefully someone can chime in.
It’s still Thrip damage.
Yep, thrips, they are really bad on that variety. We have been growing these in family since I was a kid, many years now and they are always a problem. The double pink flowers seem to be thrips favorite as the nectaplum is also a problem, just not as bad. Its too late to fix anything now but next year wait till its almost done flowering and spray it with spinosid, Captain Jacks, at sunset, as the bees are done working the blossoms at this time. By morning they will dry and be fine for bees again. Just one spray. If you do it this way you won’t have to worry about killing a single bee. There are some better nectarines that I would graft that over too, so you don’t have to spray, like Independence, Harko, Fantasia, and Flavortop. These are all bigger, tastier, and less problematic than Double Delight, but the flowers on DD are so pretty though, I have a branch of it that I keep just for the flowers. Good luck!
Thank you for detail explanation. It makes a lot of sense. Ad I mentioned on my original post, my other nectarines tree (atomic red) located just 10 ft away doesn’t have any problem.
Hi fruitgrower,
What do you know about Snow Queen variety in term of disease/pet resistance?
