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Titan Peach Farms, Inc.
5 R.W. DuBose & Son Road
Ridge Spring, SC 29129
803.685.5381 Phone
803.685.5885 Fax
888.TITANSC Toll Free
peaches@titanfarms.com
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Dormant Stage
Season: November - February
During this season
the peaches are virtually asleep. Peach trees require a large
number of chilling hours (hours of cold weather below 45
degrees) to awaken and produce a high quality crop. We grow
approximately 45 different varieties of peaches and each variety
requires a different number of chilling hours. The chilling hour
requirements range from 600 to 1100 depending on the variety and
pick date.
Pruning is the
number one manual task during this season. Each tree is
individually pruned by hand. Orchard floor management including
the use of the herbicides is also practiced at this time to cut
down on winter broad leaf weeds. This procedure, aside from
having an aesthetic value, will actually decrease the need for
later pesticide sprays by reducing host plants where insects
live and feed during winter months. Major concerns during this
period are a mild winter resulting in too few chilling hours or
a hard freeze (near zero degrees) which can actually kill the
tree.
Bloom & Growth
Stage
Season: March - May
The bloom and
growth stage is when the production begins to get busy. Our work
force remains the same, however average hours worked per week
increases by 25%-35%. A peach orchard in full bloom is one of
the prettiest sights you will ever see. We are home to many
acres of pink blooms along our roadsides. During this season
many tasks are performed. Peach trees are sprayed almost weekly
to control many different diseases and insects, all of which
have the potential to severely affect a crop’s marketability.
Peach thinning is
completed during both the bloom and peach stage of development.
Thinning is a process where blooms or peaches are actually
removed from the tree by hand. This process is designed to
reduce the crop load on the trees ensuring they will be able to
produce the largest peaches with the best quality. In addition
to spraying and thinning, other employees are busy preparing the
peach packing line for operation as well as maintaining other
equipment needed during harvest and packing season. Through this
stage, peach growers are more vulnerable to Mother Nature. Late
frosts and freezes, hailstorms, and other severe weather
adversities are just a few of the elements that can reduce
and/or destroy a peach crop in the matter of one day.
Harvest &
Packing
Season: June - August
If you do not
have everything ready by now, it’s too late! Even for the
best-organized operations there are not enough hours in a day to
see to every detail. Work forces jump up 300%. There are now
three distinct and separate main tasks being performed
simultaneously: harvesting, packaging, and horticulture tasks.
Additionally there is a crew of employees who must act as
support for these activities.
 Harvesting peaches
is done completely by hand. Pickers pick fruit off the trees and
put them into a bag they carry and then transfer them to plastic
bin boxes. The bin boxes hold approximately 20 bushels and are
loaded five bins to a trailer. A tractor pulls the trailer
through the field with a group of 12 workers picking three rows
on each side of the trailer. With each group is a field
supervisor ensuring that the fruit is harvested properly and is
handled as easily as possible. Since the fruit on a tree does
not ripen all at once, the same picking group will generally
pick a tree five times with two to three days between pickings.
This is to ensure that fruit is harvested at its peak of
readiness, not too ripe that it will not make it through the
packing process, but ripe enough to have that sweet flavor.
Packaging and
shipping of peaches is what makes or breaks a company in this
industry. There are many tasks that must be performed to put a
peach in a box and ship it to a consumer. A company’s reputation
in this industry is built upon the product’s timliness to the
market and how it appears in the box and on the pallet. The
packaging process begins by driving the fruit in from the field
in bins and running them through a hydrocooler. This process
uses water at 34 degrees Fahrenheit to cool the fruit down from
picking temperature (nearly 90 degrees in the summer) to below
38 degrees Fahrenheit. This process stops the ripening process
of the peach and, provided it is handled correctly, will allow
for a storage and shelf life of two weeks or more.
 Once peaches are
cooled properly they are grouped with varieties having the same
color and size characteristics. These groups are placed in a run
order for packing. The run order and the grouping of the fruit
prior to packing are important marketing aspects. It takes about
fifteen minutes from the time a peach is placed on the packing
line to get into a box and on a pallet ready to be shipped.
Packing lines vary in size and technology but this time element
will hold true for most all of them. Through the packing process
a peach will be washed and waxed to remove the fuzz and increase
shelf life. It will then be graded by hand for defects,
blemishes, and any soft places. Soft and defected peaches
(seconds) are re-graded and sold locally at a discount. Once the
#1 peaches complete the grading process, they are sized and
sorted by diameter. Peaches are marketed by diameter with larger
sizes having higher demand in the marketplace. PLU (price
look-up code) stickers are placed on the fruit during the
packing process. These stickers have a number on them
correlating to the peach diameter size. From here a peach goes
to the filler where the it is placed into a box for shipping.
Currently we are using a one-piece, ½ bushel (25 lb.) box. There
are many sizes and shapes of shipping containers in our industry
here in the south. Once in a box, the fruit is then placed on a
pallet and either loaded on trucks for delivery or placed in a
cooler and loaded at a later time.
Marketing peaches
is a tough animal due to the fact that peaches are not sold from
inventory but rather in advance of harvest. We work closely with
our sales agents on projections, however as the weather changes,
making these estimates is an educated guess at best. This is why
grouping of fruit on the run order is very important. Different
buyers  (Harris Teeter,Publix, Bi-Lo, Kroger, A&P, Wal-Mart,
etc.) have different characteristics (color, size, shape, and
flavor) they prefer. One may only buy large fruit and another
may be on ad for a small fruit and may need it tomorrow. One
company may require and be willing to pay for the best color
that you have, while another is more concerned with condition
and quality than color. Knowing your buyer is the key to
successful marketing of the crop. Working with your sales agents
to run the product in specific order is just as important to
guarantee that you get the right fruit to the right people on
time. Many operations use various labels on their boxes. This is
done to protect the integrity of their #1 Extra Fancy fruit.
From time to time, Mother Nature can play cruel tricks on us and
regardless of what we do, our peaches are not up to the standard
that we would like, therefore we may chose to use a different
label. In conclusion to harvesting, packing, and shipping,
remember this process is usually completed within a two-day time
frame of the time the peaches are picked off the tree. The
Southeastern industry prides itself on having the freshest,
ripest, best-tasting, peaches in the country due to the fact
that they are in the stores ready for consumers within three
days of being picked.
If that wasn’t
enough to look after during the season, the peaches must be
continually sprayed for diseases and insects. Also peaches must
be irrigated to ensure proper sizing and ripening. Peaches
require almost eight inches of water from two weeks prior to
harvest through harvest. This is a double-edged sword with
rainfall and conventional overhead irrigation systems. When a
peach gets wet, the protective sprays are washed off and must be
re-applied. It takes a great deal of manpower and machinery to
accomplish these tasks. Major concerns during harvesting,
packaging, and shipping season are numerous but fortunately do
not occur often. Some are as follows: hail storms, floods,
hurricanes, power outages, labor shortages, truck driver
shortages/strikes, supplier problems, product scaring by the
media (as with apples and Alar) and numerous regulatory agencies
who like to visit at our busiest time.
Post Harvest
Season: September - October
Wow! At last
time to slow down! We all use this time to get reacquainted with
our families. These months are spent cleaning up equipment,
orchards, labor camps, and wrapping up all the loose ends from
the hectic summer months. Crews are in the fields removing dead
and broken limbs and we are moving and preparing land to plant
new trees. General equipment maintenance and cleaning is
performed in the packing shed.
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