Peaches and Nectarines Pt 2
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Washington peach production estimates are out from the USDA and looks to be about 21% higher than last year at right about 10,000 tons.
And this, Washington State Fruit Commission president, BJ Thurlby says is the peak time of the season for many of our peach and nectarine varieties …
THURLBY … “As far as soft fruit goes, peaches and nectarines are the exact same timing for the most part. Now there’s, you know, many different varieties and some are earlier and some are later, but we pretty much have peach and nectarine varieties to cover the whole spectrum. So, we usually start in the middle of July and then we go through the end of September.”
Thurlby says peaches are more widely grown here in the Northwest because nectarines are harder to grow …
THURLBY … “Of all the trees, they’re the most susceptible to cold damage. They’re not as winter-hardy as a lot of different things we grow up here. So, it’s just a challenge and it’s just all, it makes me so happy every summer because we still have them and people are still planting them. And we just roll right through peach and nectarine season any more pretty quickly.”
As for the weather, Thurlby says Northwest peaches and nectarines faired pretty well in the heat …
THURLBY … “That’s one of the things, over the years, that’s always been most interesting is, we get this heat in and the soft fruit growers start to smile, where the cherry growers and the apple and pear growers are kind of scratching their heads going, you know 90 is okay. After that, we’d rather just see the temperatures below 90.”
Washington state peach production is forecast this year to be the nation’s sixth largest.
