By Clint Thompson
So far so good for Georgia’s pecan crop this summer. That’s the general observation from Lenny Wells, University of Georgia Extension pecan specialist. He indicated a “pretty strong bloom,” despite the Desirable variety losing a lot of its nuts this month.
“For the most part, everything looks pretty good, still to this point. We are starting to see some Desirable drop now, which we always have that drop of Desirable in June, and we’ve already started seeing that. We had a big Desirable bloom,” Wells said. “Hopefully, there will be enough that there will be some left after that drop occurs. They’ll go from being three and four or five nuts per terminal down to zeros, ones and twos, but that’s just kind of what Desirable does.
“Other varieties do it as well, but it’s usually not as noticeable on them as it is Desirable. I think it’s kind of in the genetics of that tree to do that. I think that particular variety has a way of determining, a way of knowing how many nuts it can carry and produce and come back with a crop the next year, and it kind of naturally sheds some on its own. So yeah, it does it a little more commonly than other varieties.”
The Desirable variety is one of Georgia’s oldest pecans and was one of the state’s most popular because of its large nut size. But its popularity has lessened in recent years because of heavy susceptibility to scab disease.