Sweet talk on peaches
The sweet, sweet smell of ripe summer peaches is wafting over the Hill Country right now. At numerous orchards along the 15-mile stretch of U.S. 290 between Fredericksburg and Stonewall, farmers began harvesting the first wave of clingstone peaches in late May.
It was a late start for many growers, who typically begin picking peaches 10 to 14 days earlier.
“Everything is a couple weeks behind schedule because of lack of rain and freezing temperatures in March we weren’t expecting,” said Lindsey Jenschke, who owns Jenschke Orchards outside Fredericksburg with her husband, Barrett Jenschke.
And the peaches they are picking are smaller and less abundant because of those weather conditions, several growers reported. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for peach fans.
“The big story this year is the drought is keeping the size of the peaches down,” said Jamey Vogel, who owns Vogel Orchard a few miles from Jenschke Orchards. “But less water means higher sugar content. Peaches generally fall between six and 18 on the Brix scale (the higher the number, the sweeter something is). We tested some out at 16, and that’s outstanding.”
Vogel Orchards has about 70 acres planted with peach trees. A good year’s harvest will typically net Vogel about 9,000 bushels of fruit, but he expects that yield to be smaller this year.
He’s not complaining, though. Vogel said many growers were worried there wouldn’t be much of a season at all thanks to an unseasonably warm winter. For most Hill Country peach varieties, the trees require around 450 to 1,200 chill hours, or time spent below 45 degrees, between November and the end of February.
“We were very concerned as late as the second week of January. It was looking like we weren’t going to get enough chill hours. I mean, Christmas day was 85 degrees,” Vogel said. “We did not get enough chill hours for all of our varieties. But being optimistic, it wound up better than it was looking in early January.”
The Jenschkes have been in the peach game for a long time on a family orchard planted with more than 30 varieties of peaches. It’s one of the most diverse selections available in the roughly 600 acres of land dedicated to peaches in Gillespie County, which is home to both Fredericksburg and Stonewall.
The Jenschkes are also the only Hill Country orchard owners who allow customers to pick their own peaches, a time-honored tradition many Texans grew up doing with their families.
But that all changed during the pandemic. The Jenschkes used to allow walk-up visitors to go pick freely in the orchard. When the pandemic hit, they limited that option to smaller, socially distanced groups of guests who made a reservation through the orchard’s website.
The new system turned out to be a big success for a number of reasons. Foremost, it allowed the Jenschkes to promote and book specific picking times at the time certain varieties of peaches were becoming ripe, preventing the fruit from spoiling on the tree.
When they open the pickyour-own program later this summer, that reservation system will remain in place.
While the drought will likely keep Vogel’s and the Jenschkes’ peaches on the smaller side this year, Vogel did note that midseason rainfall can plump up some of the fruit. But the overall arid conditions this summer are unlikely to affect next year’s crop.
“The trees will always show signs of stress from year to year, but luckily they’re very resilient,” Jenschke said. “We irrigate enough to keep the trees alive, but it’s not the same as rainwater. Rainwater is liquid life, and it makes all the difference in the world.”