Furthermore, heavy suckering from lower parts of the tree causes management problems, and normal development of next year's fruit buds can be impaired. Reduced Fruit Set and Buttoning. Flowering, in response to insufficient chilling, often follows the pattern seen with leaf development. Bloom is delayed, extended, and due to abnormalities in pistil and pollen development, fruit set is reduced. In many peach cultivars, flowers drop before or around shuck split, but in others such as 'Jersey Queen' and 'Harvester', buttons form.
Buttons result from flowers which apparently have set but never develop into full-size fruit.
The fruit remains small and misshapen as they ripen. If you cut these fruit open, the seed is dead. Because buttoning is not apparent early in the season, growers can not thin off the abnormal fruit and the developing buttons serve as a food source and overwintering site for insects and diseases. Reduced Fruit Quality. The effects of insufficient chilling on fruit quality are probably the least discussed but appear to be very common especially in central and south Texas.