North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>]

On Jan 22, 2006, at 8:46 PM, Spidra Webster wrote:

> For the last several years I've found that store nectarines are a 
> better bet than peaches.  But the last season or so nectarines have 
> seemed just as bad.  I hardly got a good peach this summer but I think 
> it might be due to the fact that I wasn't getting out to the Farmer's 
> Market or gourmet stores enough. 

Grocery store peaches are almost always terrible as they're almost always picked too green. If you wait till they're close enough to ripe so that they'll develop full flavor, they're too close to ripe to ship very far.

Many many years ago I did a brief stint picking peaches in Washington State, while wandering around the country. We were told that we might as well eat the ripe ones, they couldn't be shipped anyway. A revelation. Probably one reason I'm farming today.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly