Concord, GA |
At Gregg Farms in Pike County, this year’s peach crop is shaping up to look a little different. A warmer-than-normal winter followed by a late frost has left producers adjusting expectations, with a shorter crop translating into a shorter season for customers.
“This year is going to be a little shorter. It got warm earlier, and we had a late frost about a week before Easter — and since all the peaches were bloomed, it got a lot of them,” said Stuart Gregg of Gregg Farms. “We’ll still have a crop this year. It’ll just be a little bit shorter. We might not be open every day or have you-pick every day, but we’ll have something throughout the summer. It just won’t be like other seasons when you have a bumper crop.”
While the late frost caused significant damage, Gregg says the timing spared some later-blooming varieties, softening what could have been a total loss for certain parts of the orchard.
“I’d say about fifty percent of the peaches got damaged. A lot of the early peaches are at a loss, but the others just kind of got thinned out — so we’re not having to do as much thinning this year due to that frost,” Gregg said. “We’ll just be a little bit later opening, because most of the early peaches were in full bloom while some of the others weren’t all the way bloomed yet.”
According to Gregg, timing is everything when it comes to cold weather and peach trees. The trees require a certain number of chill hours while dormant — but once they bloom, even a brief freeze can quickly turn a promising crop into a challenging season.
“Cold weather is good and bad for peach trees. After the trees go dormant, they have to have over a thousand chill hours — anything below forty degrees,” Gregg explained. “This year was a little different because it was a warmer winter, so we didn’t get our chill hours until way later. Since we were still able to get them, it really didn’t affect the trees. But then it finally got warm, everything started blooming, and we had that late frost. Once the peaches are open, they’re real susceptible to cold — and that’s what happened.”
Beyond the frost, dry conditions across the state have added another layer of uncertainty for peach growers. For now, Gregg says their trees haven’t been significantly impacted — but he’s watching the forecast closely.
“It’s still early. The peaches are still growing, and there’s still a little bit of water in the ground. We just had a rain, so that’s really helped,” Gregg said. “But if we were to keep getting this drought, it would just be a bad year overall — peaches wouldn’t be that big. We don’t have irrigation on the peaches. We irrigate our flowers and our blueberries, but the peaches are just at the mercy of Mother Nature, like with the frost.”
As if weather challenges weren’t enough, rising input costs are adding financial stress to an already difficult start to the season. Fuel, fertilizer, and other operating expenses have climbed sharply in recent months, squeezing margins for producers like Gregg.
“Everything costs more — fuel, fertilizer, all inputs have just increased the cost of everything,” Gregg said. “It’s going to affect the end consumer just like it affects us. Everything’s more expensive. It takes more to get things done, and you can’t skip out on stuff just because it’s a little more expensive. It’s just making it tougher and making you stretch the dollar a little bit further, trying to get everything ready for everyone to come out.”
Despite the challenges, Gregg Farms is pressing forward — and Georgia peach fans can still look forward to a season, even if it looks a little different than years past.