Peach blooms abundant throughout N.J.
Peach blooms abundant throughout N.J.
Peach blossoms are now at their peak throughout New Jersey. Blossoms are quite heavy this year, as weather has been cool but not cold.
“We had a little thinning of some buds on our very tender varieties,” Santo John Maccherone, chair of the New Jersey Peach Promotion Council and owner of Circle M Farms in Salem, NJ, said in a press release. "We still have a near-full crop of most varieties and look forward to having a normal growing season for both our fresh markets and processing markets for Circle M Foods LLC.
New Jersey peach blossoms are now at their peak.
“A mature peach tree may have 5,000 flowers with only 5-10 percent needed for a quality peach crop; that leaves room for a lot of error, whether caused by the grower or weather,” said Maccherone.
“We are looking at a good peach crop, based on what we have been seeing during bloom,” Lewis DeEugenio Jr., owner of Summit City Farms and president of the Jersey Fruit Marketing Cooperative in Glassboro, said in the press release. “We may be a few days later than our normal bloom time, but that can all change depending on weather, as we wait for peaches to start ripening in July and finish up in September.”
Summit City has recently opened a winery, specializing in fruit, especially peach, wines
“I have great crop of peaches setting up,” Tom Holtzhauser Jr. of Holtzhauser Farms. Holzhauser, who sells both retail and wholesale out of his packinghouse and warehouse, is looking forward to a good growing season.
Both Holtzhauser and Maccherone are directors of the New Jersey Peach Promotion Council, a voluntary organization of growers, marketers and others associated with and servicing the peach industry. The council was organized more than 80 years ago to promote the orderly marketing of New Jersey peaches.
