Very interesting. I'm planted my first peach tree this year (I'm in FL), and am just learning. Mine did terribly - and I blame the high humidity in summer. So much disease pressure with the combination of high temps (at least 2 months of upper 90s) and very high humidity. My poor tree is on the ragged edge of survival, not even close to giving fruit. But I do wonder if I can baby my tree along to fruiting size if it will then benefit from the humidity with excellent tasting fruit. After all that's the whole reason I bought a tree - I'm tired of beautiful and tasteless CA peaches.

My peaches did great this summer, they were my best crop overall. I would blame it on the lower canopy, peaches in the lower canopy are quite different than ones in the rest of the tree. For example I picked all of the upper canopy of my O'Henry tree last week and the lower canopy peaches are still hard as rocks every time I check. They will not be nearly as good when they come in. I have on the kitchen counter the lower canopy peaches of my Indian Cling and some of them are quite unsweet even though they have softened. They should still be good cooked with lots of sugar added. I haven't noticed this extreme upper vs lower difference on any of my other trees, only the peaches.

Scott

Scott, if you had the same kind of drought there we had here, I would consider that pretty good evidence to exclude high heat with low humidity, but otherwise I'll still consider it quite possible that it is a combination of factors.

I'm not that pleased with the overall quality of peaches coming from other sites unaffected by frost. Most of my clients have better sites for frost avoidance than I do although this is the first time it's ever cost me. For the first time better exposed sites seem to have lower quality peaches than shadier ones. Still, this is all very unscientific.

I haven't had peaches for 6 weeks here, because i'm so limited in what i can grow in the ground. I really need to expand my container selection and try some of these later varities that actually have flavor and taste (Reliance is a dog).

I just want to add the store bought peaches this year are the best i've had. The worse have probably been the California grown fruit, although they seem to be the biggest. The peaches from MI/IL/GA have been great, with the Colorado and Idaho peaches have been outstanding.

I doubt that humidity has anything to do with quality problems. Colorado has very low humidity and they grow great peaches. Same can be said for CA or here. And I doubt that it has been too hot. It has too get really hot to ruin peaches.

The canopy position thesis sounds more likely to me. However I don't see that with the nectarines. They are usually just as good underneath as up top. I do have reflective fabric on the ground.

Where I see canopy position or sun exposure issues is with apricots. They were as much as 5-6 brix lower under the canopy than up top this year. And that happens every year with cots. I've also seen it some years with peaches. But I don't grow enough peaches any more to have any recent experience.

Colorado peaches are grown at such a high elevation that I can't even start to put them in the calculation. Cool nights and more intense sun would come with that territory.

I'm not saying humidity is needed to grow quality peaches only that there is a point where heat becomes so excessive that quality peaches can't be grown and that point is lower, temp wise, when there is low humidity.

Now if you grow just as good peaches in Texas when temps are in the 100's as when they stay lower, I'll certainly concede the point. I'll also have to rethink my theory about the cause of the declining quality of CA peaches.

In southern CA we never even tried growing peaches. People would grow all kinds of J. plums and some Nectarines but the peach trees I'd see were never successful. This might have had more to do with chill hour requirements than anything else, however. It was 40 years ago.

Certainly plants can thrive in much higher temps when humidity is high, as can be proven in my poorly ventilated green house.

Hman, we did have that horrible high heat and low humidity early in the summer .. never seen that before. It didn't affect the peaches in any bad way I could notice. I had hoped it would bake away all the brown rot but it came on with a vengeance with the later rain/humidity. The native range of peaches is hot and low humidity so they should do well with that.

Scott

I'd have to say it is likely a combination of factors as peaches do great here in the high heat / low humidity. I don't think you can blame it on those factors alone. I can definitely grow quality peaches with temps of 100 degrees, but we do get cool nights (60s) and I think that plays a major role. Also, we don't get any rain, so I can control the water that my trees get and keep it to a minimum.

It has actually been cooler and more humid than normal this year (especially this spring), so everything is late for me. My Elbertas are still at least a week away from being ripe. If your theory is correct, they should be better this year than last year... I hope you are right, they were outstanding last year and it was definitely hotter and drier last year than this year.

OK, you folks have convinced me to rethink my diagnosis and CA theory of high heat of the interior damaging quality- thanks all.

I had read long ago a commercial Georgia grower who claimed that his peaches got baked on the trees when temps went above 100 and the texture turned to sawdust. The idea stuck with me because CA peaches often start the season being quite good but change to sawdust towards mid-summer- at least that's been my experience in recent years.

I do love this forum.

The temperature at which CA peaches are damaged is above 110F. I'm not sure how much above but probably 115-120. I heard about this happening but it never happened to mine or any others that I was aware of in 4 yrs there. I would think shaded fruit would take higher air temperature than sun exposed.

I'd be concerned if my greenhouse stayed above 120 for very long.

H-

Maybe it is the warm overnight temps. Over here in Wisconsin, we've set records for longest streak of warm overnight temps/humidity/etc. I'm sure it only worse over there. Its only now starting to finally cool down.

It also could just be a crappy year and next year everything will be good again.

Good thing agriculture is so spread out today, where even if one area has a disaster, there is still another area that had a bumper crop.

I agree that unusually warm nights are quite possibly a factor. There is an issue of greater respiration when night temps are higher and many plants store more sugar and are less vegetative when they respire less at night. I believe that's why the last of the summer squash are often the sweetest.

With apples it varies from variety to variety. Sansa and now Gala have full sugar in spite of these endless "bedsheets only" nights. Honeycrisp, on the other hand, is brix challenged.

I'm on the tail end of this thread here, but wanted to add my observation. Most peaches were very good here this season with high temps and humidity.

I had a problem with a few varieties for about two weeks. They were plenty sweet, but I thought the texture wasn't quite as good, not as dense as I like. Looking back, I think the problem was with me, more than the fruit. I've eaten so many peaches this summer, I got tired of them. I think it was me and not the peaches because my wife and kids still thought they were great, and customers raved over them.

Picked the last Redskins yesterday.

From my research and discussions with vineyard managers, the high overnight temps really hurt the acid levels (especially in grapes). I think the acid level is just important as the sugar for good tasting fruit. Fruit with good sugar can still taste bland if it is lacking acid. It would be interesting to measure the brix, pH, and TA of the peaches and compare those numbers to what you see in a "better" year. You may have plenty of sugar, but just lacking acid.

It's got to depend upon the variety of peaches.

I've had really good luck with peaches and nectarines because the dry desert air puts an end to many of the peach tree diseases that require moisture.

My peaches are less good this year than last, but it is because I had to pick them far too early. The birds went after them when they were still hard as rocks, so it was a choice between only half decent peaches and no peaches.

All my fruit is running late this year. We already had snow a couple of days ago, so I sure hope I end up with ripe fruit before it freezes. Grapes and apples probably need another 2 months before they are ready.

There must not be any bird food out there, because the winged marauders are pecking holes in my rock hard apples.

BYG, I actually think the problem is low acid. I just ate a huge, dead ripe Elberta peach and it almost tasted like one of the Zeiger creations. So juicy, so sweet, so flat even though it had great texture.

We have never had so many summer nights here that stayed in the 70's. Great for tomatoes and figs. Most people would say that Elberta was perfect.

If you've ever tasted the White Lady peach you know what I mean about Zeiger.

I'm voting for the high humidity/respiration theory as it is in essence causing a plant to begin shutting down. Haven't a clue about the acid/sugar balance thought. Cool night temps are needed for sugars in melons to be sure, is it also the case for peaches? My botany classes were far too long ago to be critically useful today unfortunately.

My lower canopy fruit is late, harder and not as tasty, no surprise there. We commonly have 50% +- humidity for most of the season through harvest with night temps in the mid 60s to mid 70s and day temps in the mid 80s to low 90s. If I grew enough varieties over enough years I'd likely be able to detect some differences due to the weather. But alas, just one tree for 5 years.

Good luck figuring it out H-man.

I used to live in Macon, Georgia, and your post got my attention. I remember the summer of 1977 because I had just graduated from high school and was doing remodeling work on the outside of my parent's home before I started college. It was the most miserably hot summer I can ever remember. I looked on wunderground.com to see if my memories were accurate. For much of that summer, both the temp and relative humidity were over 90.

We had several peach and plum trees, which had wonderful fruit that summer. My mother was pealing peaches to put in our freezer, and whenever I went inside to cool off, I would eat so many peaches, she complained that she could barely peal them as fast as I ate them. I know we had one Elberta, which was our latest bearing peach, with a variety of other cling and freestone peaches. The trees were hanging so heavy with fruit, I had propped up all their limbs to keep them from breaking. I did not know then about thinning the fruit, so the limbs were so heavy with fruit they were about to rip off the trunks without support. I drove metal fence posts into the ground around each tree, and strung wire between the posts in a criss-cross star to support the limbs. Even though I had not thinned the fruit, the peaches were still good sized, ranging from tennis ball to baseball size.

We had a really heavy bloom that spring, because January 1977 had been very cold. Several days in January 1977 set the all time record lows for Macon, and several days in June and July set the all time record highs.

The trees were kept mulched with copious amounts of composted straw and horse manure. The summer before I had started growing organically for the first time. I had just learned about composting and was a zealous convert.

I lived in Macon, just north of Peach county where the commercial peach growing belt begins, and also lived in Cordele, "The Watermelon Capital of the World" which is just south of the peach growing belt. I can testify that the summers are both hot and very humid.

Maybe your peaches are just homesick and not in a "New York State of Mind". ;-)

Greg