Don’t despair quite yet about the possibility of no peach cobblers, peach ice cream or sweet peach slices on breakfast cereal. Recent freezing temperatures likely did not set Texas peaches back much, according to a Texas AgriLife Extension Service expert.

Implementing farm bill is challenging.

The buds of many peach and other fruit trees were not open enough to be damaged by the latest cold front that stormed through Texas, according to Dr. Larry Stein, AgriLife Extension horticulturist, Uvalde.

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Though he doesn’t expect wholesale damage, it’s still too early after the last bout of freezing weather to say for certain what the damage was, if any, said “It got a lot colder than most people thought it was going to get,” Stein said. “Unfortunately, we did have trees starting to bloom. We had some peaches that were bloomed out, but most things were just starting to bloom, so we’re optimistic that we had enough buds that were tight enough that they will still develop and set a crop. Also, the bud set on most trees was excessive due to the low or no crop the year before, so some thinning was indeed needed.”

The problem is not the cold weather per se, but the warm periods in between, he said.

Also of interest:

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