Is San Jose a good place to grow nectarines?  I love nectarines.  I just decided I want a nectarine tree.  My hubby knows I love nectarines so he came home with a container of them.  YES!  For three days I would walk into the kitchen and touch every one to see if they were ripe yet.  Let me rephrase that: for three days EVERY TIME I walked into the kitchen I would touch every one to see if one was ripe.  I stood there at one point wanting to eat one, but knowing that if it wasn’t ready it would ruin the joy of it.  So I waited. 

Now, they are ripe.  Yesterday I ate two because if you don’t eat them fast they will go bad.  These ones are the eat-it-over-the-sink-because-it-is-really-juicy type of fruit.  Confession:  I stopped at this point in my writing because thinking about them made me want one.  LOVE THEM.  So good.

I was going to post about the nutrition value of nectarines, but I learned something new as I researched how to grow nectarines.  I thought I would share.

I had always thought of peaches and nectarines as being similar but not the same fruit, but the information I am seeing is that a nectarine IS a peach, but with smooth, non-fuzzy skin.  But I don’t think they taste the same.  Do you?  But alas, according to what I am reading, there aren’t really nectarine trees, they are only peach trees that produce a mutated variety of peach.  Dang, I learn a lot writing a blog.  Did YOU know that, Dear Reader?  Did you know that a nectarine is a peach? That explains why people always have peach trees and not nectarine trees.  But that actually makes me laugh because if it is a peach tree with a mutation, it is a nectarine tree.  Odd.  It must be the way “they” classify things.  Everything I look up for nectarine comes up peach. 

A nectarine is in the group of peaches, but it is two peach trees with the recessive “fuzzy” gene that produce a nectarine tree. 

I am sure there are plenty of you who knew that a nectarine was a peach.  Quite honestly,  I don’t need to know, but I am kind of surprised by it.  I thought a peach was a peach and a nectarine was a nectarine, and it is, but it isn’t.  And no, I am not going to compare this to anything and get all philosophical on you because, well, I am just stuck on the nectarine being a peach.  I just find it fascinating.  I love when I am looking for something and I discover something entirely new to me.

Did you know that nectarines were peaches?  Do you like nectarines?  Do you like peaches?