By Clint Thompson
Georgia peach harvests are moving at a normal pace following a sluggish start to the season.
“I feel like we’re rolling about like normal now,” said Jeff Cook, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agriculture and natural resources (ANR) agent for Peach and Taylor counties. “We just went past one of the packing sheds, my son’s with me; we just went past one of the packing sheds, and I was like, that’s a good sight to see when you see seven refrigerated trucks out front.
“You know, there’s peaches coming out of there and they’re coming out for, you know, in larger volume.”
That’s a sight for sore eyes after a tough beginning to harvest season. A mid-March cold event froze out much of the early varieties that had already started to bloom. Cook also confirmed that the fruit’s quality was impacted as well.
“We had to search for them, you know, and quality was a little bit off early as far as like size. I feel like size was off a little bit,” Cook said. “But it feels like a normal pace right now.”
Cook estimated that harvests will last until about the end of July, into the first week of August, but it winds down towards the end of the last week of July.