By Clint Thompson
Peach season has come and gone for Alabama producers. For those growers located in the central part of the state, it was an average year, says David Lawrence, regional Extension agent in central Alabama.
He alluded to multiple external factors that could have impacted the region’s fruit this year.
“It was okay. It was average; to some growers, slightly better; to some growers, slightly worse,” Lawrence said. “Some guys were comparing it to last year. We weren’t as good as we were last year. Some varieties did really well. Bacterial spot was an issue this year. We had a lot of misshaped, mis-sized fruit out there.
“I don’t know if it was the result of some cold injury we didn’t realize that we had gotten. We were extremely dry last fall. We didn’t get a drop of rain in October last year where we are. Trees were really stressed going into dormancy. It could have just been a poor fruit set based on the dry conditions we had last fall.”
Alabama’s peach crop this year was on par with the 2024 crop up until harvest season. Harvests did not finish that way, says Edgar Vinson, assistant research professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Horticulture at Auburn University.
“It was kind of a mixed year. It was not necessarily a bad year; we just did not have the yields that we had last year. Weather events, chilling and all of that was similar to last year, so we kind of expected the yields to be the same, but the yields were off,” Vinson said.