In my orchard the current round of peaches just sucks- brown rot all over my TangO’s, and the brown is the nice rot, the black rot that can cover a fruit in hours is horrifying. There is no controlling it on Tango’Os because it starts from the rotten split pit inside- lots of other peaches and especially nects suffering similarly. And the flavor of the current round is awful- no sugar, spit it out awful, even though peaches look big and beautiful.
Even though half my nectarines are rotting they are my salvation- only Nectafest is a bit bland, but intense compared to current round of peaches- besides the few TangO’s that aren’t garbage before they are ripe.
Because my nects are much more important to me than my peaches, I am fine, but I feel sorry for the commercial growers near me if they are trying to sell similar versions of awful. After being completely frozen out last year, growing peaches in a monsoon is frustrating- what crop there was last year got perfect late spring and summer conditions for high quality fruit and the 2 years before that were almost perfect. The odds were against us, I suppose.
My peaches were doing well, but we have been having lots of rain lately and my peaches and nects are also starting to show the toll. I’m still not getting any brown rot but I’m getting a lot of soft spots from I don’t know what and also occasional black rot which I usually never get (in the past the brown rot probably already ate up any fruit before the black rot could get to it). Also the flavor is OK but not great. So in some ways I’m a lot better without brown rot, but the overall is not any better than usual given all the rains. At least the squirrels are at bay for now …
We have rain about once every 5 days. But when it rains, it pours. Today, it poured more than anyone expected. Flash flood everywhere. I was fortunately that we did not get hails but my brother-in-law living half an hour away got hails.
Squirrels have not raided peaches yet. They are much closer to A and E pears so they have taken those unripe ones so far.
I haven’t seen the black rot on peaches yet (I think), but the brown rot is horrible on TangOs. Here is my complete harvest from a large 6 year old tree. From the plate on the bottom, I was able to get 2 bowls full of peach pieces, by cutting around the brown rot. The flavor was OK, but not great -maybe 13-14 brix for the good parts of the half rotten ones. I think the brix on the all clean ones is a bit lower. This is a bit early for TangO, but if I waited for full ripe, I’d get only rot.
The bowl from the top of the pic was the “clean” fruits, but about a third of them got quite a bit of brown rot just from sitting on the counter over night.
I’ve got some brown rot on my Asian plums (Lavina, Laroda, etc), but it isn’t too bad. At least not yet.
Earlier today I was looking at a Loring tree full of large, clean looking fruit and thinking I might get some decent peaches. At least they should be nicer looking than TangO.
I think they are about 2 weeks from ripe, though there are a couple damaged ones which are coloring up now.
Loring (3 year old tree, next to driveway in full sun):
My Tangos when i had it looked like that in the past…i have some Sweet bagel that look like that now. Spot has been rampant this year on my peaches…everything has it outside of a few Saturn and A Glo… Your loring look good…almost good enough for a squirrel to snack on …or maybe a bird to peck the heck out of
This is a huge problem from year to year in my area. I continue to think this is the biggest problem I have with very early peaches. It almost always rains like mad before and right up to harvest. Things generally have dried out some and the weather starting to get good and hot by the time Redhaven hits.
As I recall, we generally start out the peach season earlier than you, but you catch up as the season goes on. I don’t think it will happen this year. We were picking Redhavens and TangOs some weeks back (although TangOs picks over a long window). We are just starting to pick peaches like Julyprince, Sweet Breeze, Glowingstar, etc. Our season started really early this year, so we are way ahead of schedule.
The strange thin is that Flavor May, Glenglo and Desiree were all good and Gold Dust was OK. It is Summer Serenade that is shockingly awful- it is an early sport of Redhaven and I used to have a RH that produced huge beautiful tasteless fruit on a consistent basis while at other sites the fruit was fine.
Bob Vance, I mange TangO’s at other sites that are more like yours. I actually think my greater thinning may be part of the problem- the fruit is larger than yours with lots of holes through the middles from major split, rotting pits. My round peaches are clean, beautiful and not getting much BR- it is nectarines that are a challenge with rot. In spite of getting spray every 2 weeks the later ones suddenly are blooming scab- which they’ve never done before. I only hope they continue to ripen into fully flavored fruit- I’ve been building up my sequential nect stock for a few years and so far that is what has saved me.
Incidentally my Shiro plums are also awful and subsequent Giant Yellows have blanded down as well compared to first fruit.
The problems are very site specific. The only Saturn peach I manage has some brown rot but is mostly fine and has very good sugar. Probably because the soil really sucks there beyond the relatively small amount we broke up and amended with compost. Rich soil is not necessarily the friend of a fruit grower in the humid region.
TangOS not protected by bagging. About half have insect damage and I have not harvested any bagged ones yet. This is my earliest peach and my first home grown peach ever!
After a few tries, I put them pretty fast. I think you should also bagged the stem where the peach grows from. It will be very sturdy as the strength will be put on the stem instead of peach, and put the peach in the middle of the bag to avoid any other damage.
I am not very gentle and my fine motor skills are not very fine I used Clemson Bags on several of my regukar peaches. Many seem fibe. Some bags fell off or ripped so bugs could get in and danaged peaches.
I used Clemson Bags on several of my regukar peaches. Many seem fibe. Some bags fell off or ripped so bugs could get in and danaged peaches.