Midstate peach growers say crop looks good so far

A few months ago, Middle Georgia peach growers were concerned that a milder-than-usual winter would mean their trees wouldn’t enough chill hours to make a good crop.

During their dormant months, the trees need to get enough chill hours, which is when the temperatures drop below 45 degrees. It they do, the buds know it’s OK to bloom in the spring. But if a tree doesn’t get enough cold weather, the bloom is delayed and could be devastating for the crop.

By mid-February, the chill-hour total was not where growers would like to see it. Some varieties are fine with about 750 hours, while others need up to 1,000 hours.

Until recently, Cynde Dickey, co-owner of Dickey Farms at 3440 Musella Road in Musella, wasn’t sure how the early varieties of peaches would turn out.

“We have had peaches for about three weeks, so we are busy,” Dickey said last week from her family’s Crawford County farm. “Our crop is looking real well. We were very nervous about the chill hours, but we have found the peaches were able to produce despite the lack of cold weather in some cases. Most of the crop got the minimum (number of) chill hours needed, and that helped a lot. But you never know. Mother Nature can be kind of fickle sometimes. So we held our breath even until the first day of picking.”

Three years ago, Dickey Farms lost about 65 percent of the crop “in one night,” Dickey said. But it wasn’t because of a lack of chill hours.

“It was too cold at the wrong time,” she said. “It was a real small crop that year.”

Last year the situation was reversed, and the farm only lost about 30 percent of the crop. Dickey Farms, which has been growing peaches since 1897, has about 1,000 acres of peach trees with about 800 of those in production.

“So, this year, I don’t know exactly where we’re going to end up because we’re still nervous about the entire crop,” Dickey said. “But we’ve started stronger than either one of those two years.”

The peach harvest usually begins in mid-May and runs through mid-August, but some trees produce until late August or early September, said Jeff Cook, an extension agent in Peach County.

“We’ll see some quality issues but as far as the crop goes, we’ll have a full crop,” Cook said. One of those issues may be that some peaches on a tree are ready, and some won’t be ready until later so there might not be a uniform crop.

Walter Wainwright, co-owner of Taylor Orchards at 1665 Fall Line Freeway on the outskirts of Reynolds, said he figures his orchards got about 723 chill hours this year.

“They look nice on the tree. Those later varieties for July and August still have a good crop on the tree,” said Wainwright, grandson of the farm’s founder. “The rain we have had has been good, and we could get a few more rains. But if we don’t, we have the capability to irrigate most of our later varieties.”

The Wainwright family farm has more than 3,000 acres of peach trees, and about 2,600 acres are producing peaches now.

“We plant trees every year,” he said. “Trees produce for about 12 years or better. ... They usually begin producing the third year” after they’re planted.

Both Taylor Orchards and Dickey Farms are picking some of the Prince varieties now, such as Spring Prince and Gold Prince. Usually the stone-free peaches ripen by mid-June.

“We are moving very quickly into what’s called the semi-cling peach, and we will be in those about 10 days and move very quickly into stone-free varieties all the rest of the season,” she said. “They have been on the tree longer, so they are a little bit sweeter. But these first peaches ... they have been so sweet.”

Both growers not only sell on the wholesale market, but they also sell peaches directly from their farms and also at some of the farmers markets across the state.

The farm gate value for peaches in Georgia for 2014 was more than $53.5 million, according to the Center for Agribusiness & Economic Development. The farm gate value is the value of the product when it leaves the farm after marketing cost are subtracted.

Perhaps not surprising, with 2,500 acres of peach trees, Peach County has the most acres of the juicy fruit in the state, followed close behind by Macon County, which has 2,060 acres.

This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 2:51 PM with the headline "Midstate peach growers say crop looks good so far."