I enjoyed reading your peach adventure. It is great that you don't have to spray to get peaches. Keep pruning to 'open the center' of the tree. This allows light in to color the peaches and to disinfect fungi. Garnet Beauty is an early season peach so there is not time to build up sugar on a tree with a 'Ton' of peaches. If you remove peaches now, called 'thinning', the trees sugars will concentrate into those peaches more, better taste better flavor. Thin to about eight inches on a thick branch. I thin more on small branches so they don't break or bend.

Whiplash,

Ace has given you some good advice.

I agree about the water. I've found too much water will produce fruits you describe. I generally have more of a problem with strawberries vs. peaches because strawberries ripen during the brunt of the heavy early summer rains. It's the period close to ripening that heavy rainfall seems to destroy flavor.

I have several early peaches that I've found the flavor very good. The earliest start ripening late June/early July after the heavy rains (most years). This year will be the first time fruiting Garnet Beauty for me, so I don't have any experience with the flavor of this peach. But I've not seen anything in the literature to suggest the problem you describe is common with this variety. But if Garnet Beauty turns out here to be anything like you describe, I'll pull it out.

Garnet Beauty is supposed to ripen 10 days before Redhaven, which may provide a clue as to whether you have Garnet Beauty or something else. Last year, as I recall, we started picking Redhaven around July 20th here. You could probably add a week to that in your area since you're a little farther north.

My focus is also on tasty peaches.

Mark
www.tubbyfruits.com

Weather can do it. 2009 was the "year without a summer" here. Started off extremely wet, then got pretty dry after about the end of June, finally rained again around Labor Day.

Entire summer was way below normal temps. Had more than a handful of nights in July that hit 37/38/39, just above the temp where frost might form. Coldest July on record at Detroit.

Peaches looked nice, tasted like Kleenex. I didn't even bother picking most of them, just let them drop. Luckily, by that point in the summer, I have a lot of geese wander up from the lake at the end of the street, and they do a good job cleaning up almost all of the windfalls if I don't.

Last summer was the opposite, never extremely hot but always very warm and muggy, especially at night, and pretty dry in the middle to end of summer. Peaches were excellent.

I would say both not hot enough and too much water. If you are not having a heat wave, I would recommend putting black plastic entirely covering up the root zone, at least 2 or 3 weeks before your harvest date, withholding all water until the peaches are ripe. If you ARE having a heat wave, use some other color of plastic (not clear!) to keep the root zone absolutely dry. And try leaving them on the tree as long as possible.

Carla in Sac

Carla-
e
That was my thought too... I grow peaches in large pots so I'll just wheel them into the garage if a big storm is coming :)

Is the recommendation to withhold water once all the fruit has fully sized up? Or are you really supposed to work backward from some average of a harvest date?

My feeling is that just cutting off the water right before harvest might help but isn't optimum. In essence all your doing at that point is dehydrating the fruit. You could do that after harvest with a dehydrator.

To receive the full benefit the fruit should be grown at a modest water deficient for a long period before harvest. I'd estimate that water use at about 66-80% of full use would be about right. The tree adjusts to a modest water deficit very well and the only visible sign is cessation or slower growth. Adjustment is by increasing the osmotic potential of all plant tissues including the fruit. Sugars are the primary osmotic agent that is used. This all results in smaller fruit with smaller cells and higher dry matter including sugars.

You need a long period of deficit that reduces fruit size. That's why talk of growing huge peaches turns me off. Big fruit is all about looks and making the sale, not taste. I could be all wet but this is my take.

Fruitnut,

I agree too much N and water will increase fruit size and correspondingly reduce fruit quality. However, big fruit, in and of itself, is not an indicator of fruit quality. Some cultivars are simply larger than than others by virtue of their cell count.

I'm sure you're aware, for peaches, cell count increases (much like a baby embryo) until the pit hardening phase. Cell size and count remain stable during pit hardening. The final fruit swell stage cell size alone increases. Almost all of the increase in cell size is due to water, which dilutes the sugar concentration. So from a phenological standpoint I don't see how reducing water prior to the fruit swell stage could increase brix. Reducing water early in the season might even inhibit carbohydrate formation, which would later reduce potential for higher brix.

As you know there has been a lot of focus in this area regarding wine grapes, and to my knowledge, water deficit near harvest produces the highest brix grapes.

I've experienced the same with strawberries, but since it's generally dry (relatively speaking) during peach harvest season, and since I don't irrigate, I've not seen it with peaches. I've also not seen any negative correlation between fruit size (I'm referring to fruit size dictated by cultivar) and fruit quality. As an example, the most intensely flavored peach I grow tends to be very large, while a cultivar like Reliance produces small peaches of only canning quality.

Mildly disagree with fruitnut. I think its better to size the fruit up as much as possible and then cut way back on water when the fruit first starts to color up.

I live in a very dry climate, however, so I usually have to give in and squirt a little water on the soil even though I want to reduce water to the minimum. That is, I don't have to worry about a late rainstorm or even high humidity upsetting my plan.

The longer I do this the more aggressive I get about thinning. That's key to quality too. Also, I don't think it makes that much difference in overall yield from the tree--just fewer and heavier peaches. My practice is to thin in waves. Its much easier psychologically speaking. First, I go through and pull off any slightly misshapen fruit I can find when they are BB size. then a couple of weeks later I go through and thin some more. then a couple of weeks after that, I thin to one closed fist width or more. fruits are still only pea sized at this point. If you can't bring yourself to do it, ask a friend.

I like my fruit large as well. And there are many ways to increase fruit size that also have potential to increase eating quality. Heavy thinning stands out as an example. Opening up the canopy also helps both size and quality. But both heavy thinning and opening the canopy reduce yield if done enough to really increase fruit quality.

Irrigation advice on peaches usually, if not always, says that plentiful water during final swelling is essential. I'm saying that it is essential to maximize size but is probably detrimental to eating quality. This is where you influence cell size and brix to a large extent.

So my plan is for some deficit of water after pit hardening but not during the early phase where cell number is being determined.

Hey all - just wanted to check in and say thanks for the input. I'll be thinning things back shortly and (if my ADD doesn't flare up too much) will let you know how things turn out.

Jason

Jason explains the tree was 1)not thinned, 2)set a ton of fruit 3)that were all huge. Thinning is definitely required and the predominant advice is thin, thin, thin...a lot, early, and often.

But many posts reveal folks who thinned sufficiently were very *unhappy* when the rain came: cell bursting caused the peaches to "ooze" everywhere yielding complete crop failure.

Perhaps a word of warning if he lives in a high rain climate? Should he approach thinning differently?

Cebury - I wouldn't say I live in a "high rain" climate. The Omaha area (where I live) generally gets around 30 inches of rain per year, and a roughly-equal amount of snow.

Cebury,

I've not ever seen young fruit burst from too much rain. It's in the fruit swell stage or ripe fruit that cracks.

However, sometimes over-thinning will cause more split pits in varieties prone to it.

The general recs on thinning peaches seems to be 8" for late varieties and 12" for early varieties (projected distance b/t fruits at harvest). Anymore I've decided to thin everything at 12". Even though later varieties still size the crop at tighter spacing, the tree won't carry the crop, at least not with KS wind. The branches break down under the heavy load.