New Jersey peach growers optimistic 

New Jersey peach growers are looking for a big season.

After an excellent winter and early spring with mild/ cold temperatures and abundant rainfall and snow, New Jersey peach growers say they anticipate an excellent crop of peach flowers, with full bloom in early April.

This bloom date would be historically earlier than normal, according to Jerry Frecon, professor Emeritus at Rutgers Jersey in Southern New Jersey, according to a news release.

“With the unusual winters and overall climate change we’ve had in New Jersey, the term ‘normal’ means full bloom from April 15 to 20,” Frecon, now a consultant for the New Jersey Peach Promotion Council, said in the release. “This can be problematic for our industry as statistically we are further removed from the possibility of frost and low-temperature injury to the developing peach flowers the later bloom occurs.”

“We always have cold enough winters, so we don’t have to worry about the lack of chill hours in New Jersey,” Santo John Maccherone, owner of Circle M Fruit Farms in Salem, and vice chair of the New Jersey Peach Promotion Council, said in the release.

 “My crop of flowers is heavy on all peach and nectarine varieties,”  Maccherone said in the release.  “In spite of the recent crazy weather and the pandemic in 2020 we only picked half of a crop. We expect better in 2021.   We grow a full line of white and yellow flesh peaches and nectarines, plus flat peaches and oriental plums.  It’s unusual, but everything has a full crop of flowers so far.”

Maccherone expects to be marketing peaches from early July into September, according to the release.

Recent statistics published by the National Peach Council estimate New Jersey growers are producing about 5,200 acres of peaches and nectarines and should harvest between 40 and 45 million pounds of fruit in 2021, according to the release.

For further information, visit www.jerseypeaches.com and find “jersey peaches” on Facebook and Twitter.