Hi!
Our peaches have been nailed by hail twice while still green. Ive thinned the tree and on examinationwe have nearly 95% of each of our three trees with some level of damage. Looking online most commercial growers remove any damaged fruit for looks, these are all for us and i dont care about “ugly” - we can cut off blemishes.
I cant decide what will rot, what will be fine and generally what to do. The thought of losing a whole summer crop makes me want to cry.
Take out the worst and leave the rest. Some will rot as they ripen but you’ll get quite a bit of eatable fruit. Apples and nectarines show the damage even worse. But you’ll still get some fruit.
They should be thinned 80% of their fruit off anyway. Otherwise, the fruit quality will suffer and your trees’ limbs could break due to the fruit weight.
I would keep the ones that look like the ones in the 2nd to last pic.
Hail really killed my apples a few years ago. When I first heard the storm approaching I thought it sounded like a freight train in the distance. The fruit was fairly young, and dimpled badly throughout.
That was my thought too. What about the first where it is a bigger wound but also has the fiberous light colored scab? They arent weeping and dont look as bruised.
Like @fruitnut said, keep the best looking ones. Use your jugdment. You may need to thin a couple more round. Don’t worry that you have to get it right all at once,
Hey folks, i wanted to update this for anyone else searching as i found very little on the net when i was looking.
After our couple of hail storms while the peaches were green i kept fruit that had medium to light damage. A lot more medium than light because our storms were substantial.
We ended up with very little rot. A couple had wasps or japanese beetles that used the injury to get in, those were immediately picked and discarded. A couple had woonds that oozed or never really got fiberous/scabby, those were picked and discarded.
Her is the range of what we ended up with, many not pretty but all edible once the woulds were cut off. Most were not deeply bruised, some were. Worst case scenario we got half a peach from the hurt ones (beats the pants off of no peaches)
None are grocery store peaches, but there is a ton of edible fruit we wouldnt have had if we discarded all of the damaged ones. I think the key was to look for “healed” damage - wounds not weeping, not still open. Need a fiberous scar or a scab.
Anyway, hope that helps someone. Ill be the psycho out there waving my hands trying to catch next seasons hail befor it hits the trees.
