Frost Hardiness in Peaches at the Shuck-Split Stage

Abstract

The autumn issue of the 1950 volume of Fruit Varieties and Horticultural Digest carried an article reporting on the variation in resistance to frosts shown by peach and nectarine varieties during the blossoming season at Blacksburg, Virginia. The article reviewed the literature pertaining to frost resistance and presented data on the set of fruit that escaped frost damage in 1950 on 132 varieties and seedling selections growing in the experimental orchard of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station. A temperature of 18° F. recorded in the orchard while the trees were in the open blossom stage destroyed all the crop on Elberta, Golden Jubilee, Summercrest, Early Crawford, and other less well known varieties and selections. Other varieties such as Marigold, Prairie Daybreak, Prairie Sunrise, Raritan Rose, Triogem, Sunhigh, Halehaven, and J. H. Hale produced a few fruits, while others such as Veteran, Vedette, Redhaven, Erly-Red-Fre, Colora, Fisher, Sunrise (N. J. 133) and some unnamed seedling selections bore good crops of fruit, and in some cases even required thinning of the fruit in order that commercial size of fruit might be developed.