Ugly doesn't bother me at all. Usually the small ugly fruit tastes the best. Reason, water deficit reduces fruit size while increasing sugar. If they are small for another reason that may not be good. For instance they may be too thick or leaves might have been lost to disease.

Yours has some bacterial spot or something similar. That's cosmetic only unless it gets bad. The cracking is probably caused by rain after a dry spell. If some matures adequately you may have tasty fruit.

Could you post a picture of the fruit on the tree. From that I might be able to tell you a lot more.

I can't really tell what those brown spots are but cracking comes with growing nectarines in the humid regions. You should be pleased to have nectarines that appear to be ripening without so many cracks that they require constant fungicide just to stop from rotting.

I expect a high percentage of cracked fruit but the quality makes it well worth it. Nectarines are easiest to grow in the east with very good eastern exposure to get the dew of the fruit as soon as possible. Peaches have much more elastic skin and if you want pristine it's much better to run with them. That's why there's little commercial production of nectarines outside of CA but lots of eastern peaches. That, and the fact that they don't tend to size well.

Spots that are dark, round and similar diameter like that are usually peach scab. Those nectarines look nearly identical to what my Mericrest fruits look like now.

Looking at your spray schedule it looks like you did not spray a fungicide at the nickel or so sized fruit stage which is when peach scab is just getting going but is vulnerable to sprays. I did do a spray or two of sulphur then, and many of my nectarines are looking pretty good, but not the Mericrest. There are better fungicides for peach scab, looking at the midwest guide for example they mention Adament and Gem as being excellent (never heard of either); Captan is considered a bit better than sulphur. I would add a post-shuck-split fungicide to your spray schedule to help control scab. Scab can lead to runting and poor maturing on some varieties (other varieties may look bad but it doesn't effect the taste/size). The scab seems to make the cracking worse as well, but nectarines are prone to cracking and depending on when the rains come you could always get unlucky. They are also much more prone to brown rot. I am trying half a dozen different nectarines now in hopes of getting one or two more reliable ones.

Scott

Planted as a whip four years ago the tree is now about 12 feet in diameter with probably 150 nectarines after severe spring thinning. The first harvest was about 10 apple size nectarines with the most memorable tangy sweet flavor, last year had problems with bugs/fungus/etc. and maybe got 10 small nectarines out of 100 which made me want to try harder this year.

I recently used a copper spray which was maybe a little too concentrated which i think maybe caused a few dead leaves shown in the picture. Tree is severely pruned each fall.

Thank you for the spray regiment suggestions, and yes it was dry for ~ 3 weeks and the last week has been much wetter and the nectarine cracking started to appear. They are at that point where size didn't change for a month and now they are blooming with size increases.

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I think your tree looks good. It's not growing vigorously at this point but has plenty of leaves for the crop load. The brown leaves are probably from the dry weather. If it doesn't rain too much you may have good sweet fruit.

My trees produce sweetest fruit with a consistent moderate water deficit. The right deficit is enough to really slow or stop vegetative growth but not so bad that leaves fall off or the fruit shrivels. I've had a little of both leaf lose and shriveled fruit this year but not much, just right. So even though I didn't thin enough my fruit has been sweet to very sweet, mostly 18-30 brix.

Water is also important for producing next years fruit buds.