Honey Blaze nectarine at 28 brix

fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TXJune 18, 2013

This is a cross post with DWN forums. 

Harvested Honey Blaze grown with some water deficit.  The brix averages 28 on the tip and 22 by the stem.  These are luscious through and through.  The richest flavor of any fruit I grow.  Size runs 2.3-2.5 inches, about 0.5-0.75 smaller than when pumped up on water and nitrogen.  Flavor goes flat when over watered.  To me the low acid nectarines are only really great flavored when very sweet and at least for me that takes some water deficit. 

Honey Fire, Honey Blaze, and Honey Royale all take on the richest flavor when grown at a water deficit.  Of the three I'd take Honey Royale as best overall.  It can be great at 18-20 brix and that's not too hard to reach.  Honey Kist available on Soft is in the same ballpark on taste. 

The fruit grown like this is kinda rough looking, dark colored, and covered with sugar speckling. 

You can tell those are sweet!  I've got to ask...are those container grown or in the ground?  Any idea of commercial growers grow those varieties on a large scale in California??  Stop tempting me from planting those! :) 

I envy you for growing such nice fruit.  I've tried growing nectarines on and off since the late 90's, never with any success.  I do have Honey Blaze and it has set a small crop of fruit, but I don't expect any to reach maturity.  What I've found is that here and other places in the Northeast, nectarines require a much more diligent spray schedule than any of my other peaches, stone or pome fruit.  Otherwise, I've found it to be the most heavily hit by PC and later by brown rot.  Here, growing this fruit is only for the very committed and regimented among us. 

In the greenhouse nectarine are easier to grow than sweet cherries but more difficult than peach, pluot, or apricot.  I'm cutting back on sweet cherry in favor of apricot, especially Orangered apricot.  I'm planting about 10 Orangered this winter.  It's better than the sweet cherry even when the cherries are 25-34+ brix and matures for me at the same time. 

To really grow good stone fruit in the Northeast one would need a high tunnel.  Properly designed this could solve the excess water issues, solve many pest problems brown rot included, and provide the warmth necessary for best fruit quality.  I'm surprised more home growers haven't caught on yet to that idea. 

I high tunnel even excludes Jap beetles.  They don't fly in open ends because they don't have the right wavelengths of light to see under poly.  It looks like a black hole to them.  I'm not sure if PC would be similarly affected. 

I agree about nectarine...i've tried them here before and the PC hit them more then anything and then brown rot hits them too...i will say i've got them to maturity but the fruit were very ugly looking. 

Fruit-
Really you would only need plastic for maybe 2 months...June and July...the would keep the beetles away and you could just do a few weeks of spray in May to protect against PC. 

Is brown rot totally the result of rainfall or does humidity also cause it? 

High humidity contributes to brown rot.  But under poly with no rain or dew to wet the fruit, I think there would be little to no brown rot.  There must be data out there on this subject.  The universities are growing quite a bit of fruits in high tunnels.  There are also small roadside operations out east under high tunnels. 

The issue with high tunnels and fruit in the northeast isn't their effectiveness it's the economics.  Very hard to turn a profit. 

The high tunnel is something I'm considering doing in the midwest, but I need time to evaluate the need yet.  My trees are young.  We have a lot of moisture here, but low humidity, and no japanese beetles in my area.  I have never seen them here.  35 miles away ton's of them at my cottage.  It rained 2 inches, and in 24 hours my pots were bone dry, the humidity is so low, I can't seem to water enough.  My problem is not enough water.  I have no trees in pots, and they only will get rain for water unless it becomes too dry.  It probably will in July and August.  Humidity goes up, but rain amounts go way down. 
So I need to see and evaluate what problems I have on mature trees, once I have mature trees!  It would be pretty easy to make a tunnel with my set up. 

I'm only 2 hours south from Clemson, and I have a hard time growing nectarines.  Besides the problems already stated, I've found that borers love them more than peaches.  I just lost my last one to them, and although I'm tempted to try the Honey series, I'm going to stick with peaches. 

Fruit
Pardon me for borrowing your thread, but I've struck out on finding a nursery that sells Santa Fe SHB.  Although Island Grove is licensed to sell it, they don't because it has such a low propagation rate and is too expensive for them to offer it. 
Where did you get yours? 
Thanks Ray

Got my Santa Fe in 2004 and don't know where to get another now.  I've heard it's hard to propagate.  Sorry I can't help.  It's not good enough to want more but I'm not ready to dump the one I have either. 

Fruitnut all your posts make me really nostalgic for the dry farming in southern Iran.  Wish I could tour you guys some of the dry farming there one day which is becoming a bit more rare there but still commercially exists... grapes, mountain figs, dates, mandarins, plums, pomegranates... all to die for.  One of the best fruit I've ever had was a dry farmed vinifera grape, quite small grapes, slightly golden... just heaven.  There's so much diverse growing land from the south to north and even just within southern Iran--it's quite crazy--I guess partly because of all the mountains.  Mountain villages known for dry farming their grapes, base of mountain the pomegranates, dates, citrus start in my small hometown.  40 or so km away in another mountain the amazing wild figs start.  Really wish all the passionate fruit growers could take a visit one day. 

Drew- I bought the bender on line, the top rail fencing (10'6" i think) at Menards....plastic on line... then i'll have to get some wood, door and a vent.... not going overboard...going to keep it as simple as possible.  I also have to figure how i want to hold down the plastic. 

Thanks Frank, keep us updated on progress.  As I said I wish to see if I really need a high tunnel first.  I do have a good environment, luckily.  What sucks in about 5 years I plan to move.  I will lose all my trees .  Well not all, I have some at my cottage and have no intention of ever leaving. 

Update on Costco honeyblazes.  it's about 10 bucks for a carton of 12 i think and it's worth it.  easily amongst the best grocery store bought fruit i've had.  im certain fruitnuts are even better--but these are definitely worth the $ for those in climates where it's tough to grow nectarine.  this weeks batch in Newport News, VA seemed to finally have a touch of aroma indicating to me some very basic level of tree ripening so I bought some and wasn't disappointed. 

I went and bought another box from costco couple days later, not nearly as good first batch... not notably sweet and even had tad of bitter off taste.  still juicy and excellent texture though.  my first batch was truly excellent.  and it was store bought?  wow.  Fruitnut i think I can extrapolate what yours must taste like... wow. 

Yes I just tried half of two Spice Zee nectarine fruits off the same tree.  One was 24 brix the other 16.  The variability between fruit from different orchards could certainly be even greater.  I see this kind of variation all the time.  Most people who try my fruit think after one bite that they have a total and final picture of what that fruit is like.  Not so.  It takes years and many tastings to get a good idea what a fruit can be like. 

Fruitnut, I just harvested my Neckerines from 2 trees and--- not one was eatable!  They all were split at the stem and after cutting them open the pits are split open.  One thing surprised me-- there were no worms!  What happened, we had a awful amount rain this spring , could that be the problem?  They were also Honey Glaze.