By Clint Thompson
Alabama’s peach crop is off to a promising start with its chilling hour requirement. But that’s not expected to continue, however, according to Edgar Vinson, assistant research professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Horticulture at Auburn University.
“I think we’re off to a pretty good start. We currently have about 258 chill hours. We typically like to have, by the end of December, we’d like to have about half the number of chill hours for the majority of varieties that we grow in our area. That’s anywhere from 450 to 500 or so,” Vinson said. “We actually have more chilling than we had last year at this time. But if you look at the next 10 days, we’re not really expected to get very much chilling; chill hours or chill portions.
“There won’t be very much accumulation if things go as predicted.”
According to weather.com, temperatures are expected to drop to 37 degrees in Auburn, Alabama on Dec. 21 and to 43 degrees on Dec. 22. But that looks like the only opportunities for additional chill accumulation over the next two weeks.
“That remaining week of December may be some opportunity for some more chill accumulation,” Vinson said. “We’d have to depend on January to catch up on some chilling.”
Chill Hour Requirement
Peaches need chill hours to mature. The required chill hours depend on the peach variety, but most growers hope to get around 1,000 chill hours.
“If there’s a pretty big deficit in chilling, then that’s a lot to overcome, but if you have a relatively small deficit, you could still have a fairly decent season. You’d see some symptoms of lack of chilling in the fruit. It reduces the marketability of it somewhat,” Vinson said.
“If you can get about 80% of the required chilling, you should still be able to make a decent crop.