This is a new one to me. I haven’t been doing it long, so that doesn’t mean much, but still I haven’t seen this.
What happened that the pit never formed? The seed is still there I think.
That’s the first peach from the tree, so I don’t know if it’s an anomaly or if all of my peaches will have invisible pits.
I would be great that the peaches have no pit. But in your case, maybe the pit looks deformed , may due to lack of nutrients ( Calcium in my mind) or weather related. I am not a expert. Hope someone chime in so we both can learn the causes
We’ve had another peach, and like the first, it has no defined pit. It’s tough, and you don’t want to eat it, but you bite right through it.
The peach is quite good otherwise
Great peach if it has invisible pits!
It seems small and off-center, but looks like there is a pit there, well half of the shell and most of the kernel:
Shell in green, kernel in orange, slice through kernel in blue.
It’s most likely a split pit. Split pit is more likely on early ripening peach and nectarine. Sometime the pit splits into fragments. That looks like the case here. In other cases the pit just splits open. Sometimes the fruit flesh splits open as well. None of this is good. But sometimes you can salvage some good parts to eat.
What was in the big empty crater in the middle of the fruit? It looks like something was there that was removed and that was part of the pit?
The empty crater was just flesh that got stuck to the other side. Here’s a better example. Third peach, same issue.
The white substance seems to be the unformed “shell” of the pit.
The peach is otherwise quite tasty. 3 for 3 so far. Disease? Nutrient deficiencies?
Ah. Thats a split pit … the bits on either side are part of the pit which did not fully form. As @fruitnut mentions it is more common than not on early peaches, but not that extreme in terms of lack of formation of the pit.
We get that sometimes on our earlier ripening varieties. I think it’s cold damage? I think? It’s some kind of stress factor.
What gets annoying is if the peach splits open further, and then the pit gets moldy.
We had a strange winter and everything flowered early, so that must be it. The other two peach trees (scarlet Prince and red globe) flowered a little later, and they are still at the peaches-are-halfsized-and-don’t-do-anything phase.
We’ll see I guess
It’s not cold damage. I have it in my greenhouse that never goes below 37F.
It’s the fact that very early maturing varieties don’t spend much time in the pit hardening stage. Those varieties begin to expand before the pit hardens up. As a result the pit can be split.
Meanwhile the late varieties are still in the pit hardening stage. They are building a pit that’s much stronger and can withstand the stress of the later stages as the flesh expands and grows.
Most of the difference between early and late peaches is time spent in the pit hardening stage. The stage name says it all.
But why do they do it sometimes and not other times?
Lots of variables involved. Growth patterns vary from year to year because weather and other factors vary. On some varieties they recommend that you not girdle the tree. That’s a practice sometimes used commercially to improve fruit size and quality on early varieties. But it can be too much of a good thing and cause split pits.
I had split pits this year for the first time and the only difference was that I dissolved urea 46-0-0 in water and applied it to the trees which I’ve never done before
