By Clint Thompson
Cool weather this past winter combined with mild temperatures this summer added up to almost perfect conditions for Georgia peach production this year. The results speak for themselves.
Jeff Cook, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Agriculture and Natural Resources agent for Peach and Taylor counties, said the crop produced was about 80%.
“When we say 80% of our crop, that’s pretty much a full crop. We could have had a few more if we hadn’t lost some earlier stuff, but nobody’s having to take out any extra loans or anything,” Cook joked. “They ended with a bunch of really good peaches. Everybody was really happy.
“We had a little more disease pressure this year. Not that we had any more rain total, but we had a lot of days of rain in areas. Disease pressure was a little higher, but we got good chill over the winter; we made it through that (early) April freeze. We stayed pretty mild. Up until the last couple of weeks, we hadn’t really had hot temperatures. We had a little spurt there in June where it got a little dry and hot. Other than that, it’s been a fairly nice summer.”