As I teased in last week’s newsletter, the first Peaches of 2025 are in your CSA boxes today. Many folks do a double-take when I tell them we start harvesting peaches in late April or early May: “I thought peaches were a summer fruit?!”. Generally speaking, that is true. But in a world where the climate is changing in front of our eyes, summer seems to come earlier each year.
First, a primer on Peaches and Nectarines (which are half-peach half-plum but grow more like the former than the latter). They are deciduous perennial trees that go dormant during winter, flower in early spring, and ripen their fruit once it gets warm. On any given peach tree, all the fruit ripens over a 5-7 day period. But there are dozens if not hundreds of varieties, each bred with a combination of fruit characteristics including color of the skin, color of the fruit, sugar levels, acidity, and firmness when ripe. There are also variations in adaptation to various climate regions. In areas with very cold winters, for example, the trees must stay dormant for longer to avoid being damaged by freezing
There is also a built-in clock in each peach variety that determines when the fruit will ripen. Called “Days to Maturity” (DTM), it is the time between when the tree blooms and when the fruit is ready to pick. Peaches of a given variety planted in different areas will ripen on different dates, but the DTM will be roughly the same. At Terra Firma, we have almost 40 varieties of peaches and nectarines that ripen in succession over four and a half months. And we are still in the process of extending that season.
Objectively speaking, summer here now lasts for 6 months most years. Fruit tree breeders are working to develop new fruit varieties that are adapted to this new climate reality. The two varieties of peaches we harvested for your boxes this week, called “Mayzee” and “Earlitreat”, were introduced in 2018 and we planted them in 2019. We harvested a small crop last year but this year we finally had enough for all your CSA boxes. Prior to this year, our earliest peach varieties ripened closer to mid-May.
Early ripening fruit is not for the faint of heart farmer. Peach blossoms as well as the developing fruit are sensitive to cold, and a freeze below 28 degrees will kill them. This can happen to any peach, but the probability rises for ones that bloom early. The varieties in your boxes today began to flower in late January during the mid-winter warm spell we had. Most of the varieties in our orchard started blooming fully a month later. We lucked out this year as the wet weather in February and March kept the nights from getting too cold, but it’s fairly common for us to have sub-28 degree temperatures during that time. I certainly would not plant a large orchard of these varieties here without making a significant investment in frost protection that we don’t currently have for our peach orchard.
We are also in the process of extending our peach harvest at the other end of the season. Autumn has gotten warmer and drier here in the last 20 years: perfect peach weather. So in January of this year, we planted several hundred trees of a new peach variety that ripens in late September and into October — a month later than our latest-ripening varieties. Next year we will plant even more. In contrast to the early-ripening varieties of peaches, these ones bloom extra-late, reducing the risk of freeze damage to the blossoms.
As far as other characteristics of the peaches we grow here: we focus primarily on “old-timey” yellow-fleshed varieties with a nice ratio of sugar to acid and plenty of juice — as opposed to so-called “low acid” peaches that are crunchy and have little peach flavor. Having said that, I will note that the peaches we send you are not “ready to eat” when you get them. To stay ahead of the local birds and avoid bruising during the packing and shipping process, we harvest our peaches “firm-ripe”. You will need to finish ripening them at home, which should take 2-3 days at the most.
The Mayzee and Earlitreat peaches in your boxes today look to mark the start of a very abundant stone fruit season at Terra Firma. Just about all the varieties in our orchard are loaded with fruit this year, as is our Apricot orchard. You will see some sort of peach, nectarine or apricot in your CSA box just about every week between now and Labor Day. We should also have plenty of bulk fruit available for folks who like to make preserves, pies or other culinary methods of highlighting the season.
Thanks,