My peach trees all come from the Carolina’s. The peaches on them look like store-bought peaches the first year. (At least the old store-bought peaches before they ruined them.) After the trees relocate to Z6 and get acclimatized, there are lots of cosmetic issues with the peaches and hard to let them ripen on the tree before the animals attack them. What makes the Carolina’s so good for peach growing?
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Compared to California it’s not that good. Compared to most of the area east of the Mississippi, the Carolinas are pretty good. They have sandy soils good for peaches, enough chilling most years, plenty of season and heat, and low incidence of spring freeze out. Downsides are serious peach tree short life issues and all the issues that come with humidity and rain. Just recently they had bad years due to lack of enough chilling and spring freeze damage.
California best stone fruit areas almost never miss a crop. I do wonder though if the excess heat there might not catch up to them at some point. CA has also seen a loss in winter chilling but that can be overcome via breeding lower chill varieties.
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It is the soil there that makes the difference. The blueberries are the same way. The blueberries they grow there in North Carolina are better tasting than any other blueberries I have ever had, even blueberries from Maine.
Probably due to the amount of spraying that they do and what they spray… and the abundance of cheap labor that does all of that spraying and thinning and maintenance. Same reasons why they are so good for chicken/turkey etc farms.
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Out of 114,000 acres of peaches grown in the U.S. in 2022, only 1,273 of those acres are in North Carolina, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture.
Quote below from NCSU 2024 article on history of NC Peaches.
“Early census USDA records show that in 1920, there were 4,869,409 peach trees in North Carolina, primarily the four Sandhills counties of Montgomery, Moore, Richmond, and Anson. In South Carolina at this time there were 1,207,575 peach trees. The majority of peaches were shipped up north by rail to the urban centers.”
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The first thing I planted was peaches, due to learning stone fruits thrived in sandy soil, and I don’t have sandy soul; I have sand. I have never sprayed but I will need to next year as I had some wormy late peaches. I will use some surround next year. I think find what succeeds easy in your area and start there, then push the boulder up the mountain next.
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