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By Andrew White | Staff Writer

The recent heavy rain in May and June could affect Chilton County’s prized peach crop in three main ways according to seasoned professionals in the field.

In May, Chilton received somewhere between 12 to 14 inches of rain and has already received four to five inches of rain in June. This may affect farmer’s ability to work the crops, it may affect the disease pressure that the crop receives and it could slightly affect the flavor of the crop according to David Lawrence, a Horticulture Extension Agent in Chilton County for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

The main disease that farmers need to look out for is brown rot which is a brown and green cottony growth on the peach. This can be prevented with fungicides, a pesticide designed to prevent this type of disease.

“Most all of our diseases like warm, wet conditions and that’s exactly what we’ve had the last six weeks,” said Lawrence.

Brown rot will not have massive effects on the peach market, and it is only affecting a small portion of the crop according to Lawrence.

“You’re always going to see a spot of (brown rot) here or there, looks like the forecast has it pretty wet so we’ll see,” said Lawrence. “It hasn’t been terrible though, and most of the guys around here — they’ve been doing it a long time and they’ll be able to keep a management on it.”

Another thing that the massive amounts of rain may affect is the peach flavoring. Large amounts of rain will water down the flavoring of fruit, but for the most part the rain has not affected the flavor of the peach crop so far this season.

“The peaches I’ve had, they’re still good,” said Lawrence.

Though the forecast may include a lot more rain in the coming days and weeks, this rain should not have any massive impact on the peach market. If there is any impact it will be because farmers will not be able to work their crop.

“Our growers around here, they do a good job and they can handle it… As far as the market is concerned, I don’t think it’ll affect it much,” said Lawrence.

Other weather concerns that have caused minor changes to Chilton’s peach crop are the cold temperatures that occurred last winter. Across the whole county there have been some undersized peaches that may have been caused by cold damage according to Lawrence. Cold damage occurs when the weather drops near freezing during the blossom of a peach fruit and it can cause fruit to be undersized and then fall off.

“Most of the trees have a decent crop on them,” said Lawrence. “Some of the peaches just aren’t sizing up like they should be. Probably due to a cold injury.”

For some later varieties of peaches that will bloom in late July and August, they may not have had enough cold weather in their dormancy to produce the maximum amount of strong peaches.

“On paper, we had enough cold weather, but I feel like maybe it was not the right timing of cold,” said Lawrence. “By no means has it wiped out the crop, I just see small effects and as far as the market goes most of the growers will have a good crop going into mid and late summer.”

The peach crop should remain strong for the most part, and there should not be any major effects on the peach market in Chilton County.

“But we got to have rain, if we didn’t have rain the last six weeks we’d be talking about how dry it is,” said Lawrence. “We just got to be happy with what the lord gives us and do our best with it.”