The 2024 Peach Season Is A Bust

I am sorry to have to report that the 2024 peach season is a bust as far as we are concerned. That will include the nectarines. I believe the apples and apricot trees are still too immature to produce any meaningful amount of fruit so we are just going to have to look forward to 2025.

So what happened ? Well, we had a significant low temperature event in January. Specifically, the low temperature here in our orchard dropped to -11f on January the 17th. We were hopeful that the harvest would not be affected and have been keeping a close watch on the trees, including spraying for fungus in late January.

As the year has worn on, however, the blooms failed to materialize and the leafing out to date has been minimal.

Today I went and checked the trees again for signs of bud swell, which precedes blooming, and blooms. Normally, the blooms would precede the leafing out but that is not the case this year. We have far more leaves than blooms. In fact, on of 700 trees I counted a total of around 10 blooms. I was even searching for buds to see if they were still alive and I found very few, indicating to me that a lot of the buds have already fallen, been blown, off the trees and the remainder that I checked are dead.

I checked with the Smith Orchard on 166 highway in Pulaski and Tim and Susan over there appear to be in the same boat. The Gwen Orchard in Spring Hill, where the temperature dropped to 8f on 15th January, has also apparently reported losing their entire crop.

We can do all we can, but in the end we are at the mercy of nature and, this year, as last, we were defeated by freezing.

Nevertheless, we will continue on, praying for a successful crop in 2025. God bless you all, we hope to see you next year.