North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Ginda Fisher <list@ginda.us>]

On Jan 22, 2006, at 10:37 PM, road's end farm wrote:

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 

All in all, I usually prefer grocery store peaches to grocery store nectarines.  But it's a crap shoot.  The best "peach" I ever had was a nectarine several years ago, and this year we got a batch of terrific nectarines.  We also got some really excellent peaches form the local produce place, though.  Even the locally grown ones vary a lot.  they were only excellent for a week and a half, both earlier and later they were just so-so.  I'm sure the local farmers grow more than one type, and I'd guess that only one cultivar was both an excellent cultivar and also arrived ripe in the store.

Ginda

eastern Mass., zone 6