Peach Season

Peaches are in season in Australia in summer, with fresh fruit on shelves from around October through to April. Makes sense given they're called summerfruit alongside their less furry sibling, nectarines. Peak supply runs from November through to February, when Victoria's Goulburn Valley is in full swing. Outside those months you won't find much. Peaches don't store like apples and there's no commercial cold-atmosphere extension in play.

Peaches are primarily a summer crop in Australia, with peak supply from October to February.

Peach trees (Prunus persica) need cold winters measured in chill hours below 7°C to break dormancy. Standard high-chill varieties, which dominate Victoria's production, require 700 to 1,000 chill hours and are harvested from late October through to late March. Lower-chill varieties from Professor Wayne Sherman's University of Florida breeding program have opened up subtropical growing in Queensland, coastal NSW and parts of Western Australia, per ISHS. Trees take three to four years from planting to first commercial crop. Orchards prune hard each year because fruit sets on the previous season's new wood. Unlike apples, peaches ripen quickly and don't hold well, so growers bring fruit to market within days of picking.

South Australia's Riverland once had a large canning peach industry. SA had 140,000 peach trees in 1945, rising to 469,000 by 1964, driven partly by the 1956 River Murray floods that wiped out Goulburn Valley production, per PIRSA. By 1989 Riverland plantings had contracted to around 189,000 trees as the canning sector shrank. Today SA's share of production sits at around 5.6%, compared to Victoria's 78%. Queensland's low-chill stonefruit industry started in 1972 and has grown to around 1,832 hectares, built largely on varieties from Professor Wayne Sherman's Florida breeding program, per ISHS.