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?
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