 My name is Mark Morgan from Clarksville, Johnson County. We're here at Peach Picking Paradise. We grow peaches, about 25 varieties, spread out over about seven weeks or so of harvest. And today we're going to be answering some questions about peach production in Arkansas. Okay, so the first question is, you know, there used to be a lot more peach orchards in Arkansas. Maybe how come there aren't as many around today? You know, there used to be a lot more peach orchards around. I remember even just growing up, there was more orchards in the state. I think it's a combination of things. You know, it's a very difficult crop to rely on cash flow. There's good years and bad years. And it's very difficult from a financial standpoint to keep that even. The other thing is labor. We still do so much with peaches, as far as hand harvesting, hand-proving, you know, thinning. It's a lot of shoulders and elbows. As far as, you know, the mechanization is, you know, tractors, things like that, they have in the row crop side. We haven't got as much of that in our industry. And so it's, you know, finding labor at the right times is definitely a challenge. All right, the next question, how long will a peach tree bear fruit? You know, if you're going, if you're planting in the ground that hadn't had peaches on it, you know, you really should be able to get 20 years, maybe even or more out of that tree. As far as us, we've been in commercial production kind of on the same soils for a while. We're really shooting more for that 15, just because it's had so many peaches on it in the past. But, you know, really 20 years or longer, you know, if you take care of it, it'll, it takes about that third year to really start producing them. But yeah, 15, 20 years in all itself. All right, our next question was kind of, you know, as far as peach, what the calendar looks like, what we're doing certain times a year. We usually start, we're in bloom now, obviously. But we usually start in January doing pruning. We prune January, February, hope to be done before bloom. We've got a little bit left here. But that's really whenever we're coming in and pruning. If we're lucky enough to have, you know, this is the time of year, we start really looking for freezes. We want to avoid those to have a crop. You know, April, May, June, sometimes you can have too full of a crop where a peach will put on way too many peaches that it could stand. So we have to come in and thin that. Then there'll be harvest season, coarse irrigation, you know, mowing around the trees, keeping the weeds down, stuff like that. And then in the fall, after we're done harvesting, we come in, do some, do some work to, to really get ready for the next year's crop as far as, you know, looking for peach tree borers spraying and really helping that tree have the best set up it can be for the next year. So when is the peak peach season in Arkansas? You know, in Arkansas, we can grow peaches, June, July, August, really even September to October. Mostly for us, it's July. You know, we start mid June and really go through August. But July, you know, we try to be going by July 4th. We've got the Peach Festival in Johnson County the third week of July. July is really whenever we get going here in Clarksville. All right. The next question is, why do peaches have fuzz or what is the peach fuzz on the peach? The fuzz really is a defense mechanism. You know, it keeps certain insects from either, you know, traveling over the fruit or laying eggs on it. So it's really, it's a helpful thing to, in defense of some insects. We, you know, if you look at the, some of the newer varieties, the old timers used to talk about all the fuzz, you know, being in the air and the packing shed. And I think the newer varieties have a little bit less fuzz on them than they used to. You know, there's also the nectarine and nectarine is a peach, you know, pretty much it, on the inside it is. It just does not have fuzz on the outside. It has a recessive gene that doesn't, doesn't put on fuzz. So all right. Our next question, the difference between a freestone peaches and clean peaches. So on a peach, you know, it's going to have the stone or the seed in the middle. You know, a freestone will just break right off the, off the seed. The first freestone really developed commercially with the Alberta. Since then they've developed tons of freestones. A lot of people prefer the freestones, but we also, you know, the cling, you can't just break it apart. It's going to stick to the seed. But a lot of the cling varieties we grow have a pretty big following in that people would come, you know, just specifically to get that cling, you know, if you're just cooking with it or whatever, the freestone may be a little bit easier. But if you know what you're doing with the cling and really are used to that, you know, more traditional taste, it has a big following as well. The next question is, can I plant a peach pit and grow my own tree? Yeah, you can't, you can grow a tree from a pit. The issue is, is all of our peach trees are grafted. So, you know, they have a rootstock and then the variety grafted onto it. So it's kind of a hybrid tree. So the seed you plant, you're not going to get exactly, you know, what kind of peach it came from. There's going to be a little bit of variance there. But yeah, it will grow a tree. You can, you can get a peach tree from a pit. So do animals like deer and squirrel like to eat peaches? Yes, yes and no. We often, you know, we have to have a deer fence. We've got so much deer pressure that the deer don't necessarily eat the peaches as much as where they really hurt us as they eat the leaves. Especially on younger trees, they can come through and just, you know, eat all the leaves and then all of a sudden you don't have any leaves, the tree's dead. Squirrels, they're going to, you know, you'll see squirrels going out and taking ripe peaches out all the time. You know, our theory on that, you just got to grow more than they can carry out. They're going to get their share. Got another question about like, how do you keep insects off your peaches? Well, it depends on the time of year. You know, this time of year we're in bloom. We don't want any insecticides or anything because we've got our bees working. Now later in the year, whenever you start getting closer to harvest, we have to keep a pretty routine spray schedule to keep insects off of the fruit. You know, your local county extension agent can provide all kinds of spray programs and things like that. It's, you know, something that you kind of need to stay on top of, but you also, you know, need to do scouting to go out to see what your issues are because sometimes you may go out and you may not have any issues. Sometimes you may start, you know, seeing the development of something that could turn into a bigger issue. So, you know, scouting and contacting your county extension agent would be my recommendation. All right. And the final question, why do people say that they're feeling peachy when they're feeling happy? You know, I really don't know. You've always heard that or peachy keen or all that stuff. You know, I just know that, you know, when it's harvest season and we've got fresh fruit out here and it's, you know, it's from an Arkansas peach orchard and they can taste it. You know, I think to me that's what feeling peachy is. You know, it's just that fresh, you know, hadn't been processed. It's just right there and fresh and that's sure hard to beat. And so we're looking forward to having a good crop this year, so far so good. Hopefully it'll stay with us and, you know, go eat some local Arkansas peaches this year. It's your local peach orchard.