Peaches and nectarines are essentially the same fruit, their primary difference being that peaches are fuzzy and nectarines smooth-skinned.
To follow this system, each year cut away all but four canes. Tie two to the wire and cut them back to 6 to 10 buds each; cut the other two back to two buds each. The tied canes will produce the current year’s fruit, and the two-bud canes will produce canes for the following year’s fruit.
A type of pruning that is especially suited to such European varieties as Black Monukka, Blackrose, Cardinal, Emperor, Muscat, Pearl of Csaba, Red Malaga, Ribier, Tokay and White Malaga, as well, as most wine grapes, is called spur pruning. Each vine is grown against a single stake, and each year the growth of the current season is cut back to two or three buds. In parts of the Southwest where there is a deficiency of zinc in the soil, daub each cut with a zinc-sulfate solution, 1 pound to a gallon of water, within two hours after pruning.
If the stems of the grapevines seem weak, feed plants in early spring with 1/4 to 1/2 pound of ammonium sulfate scattered widely beneath each vine.
Except for muscadine varieties, whose fruit are shaken from the vines onto a cloth, grapes should be harvested by cutting off entire bunches with small hand shears. For best flavor in dessert grapes and for making grape juice or wine, allow the fruit to attain full ripe color on the vine. For jelly making, pick them when they are a bit underripe because they have a higher pectin content at that time and produce crystal-clear jelly. Fresh grapes stored dry in a refrigerator will keep for one to two months.
Most recommended varieties have red-and-yellow skins; the colors pertain to the flesh of the fruits. Peaches are usually classified as clingstones, with flesh that clings to the pit; freestones, with flesh that separates easily from the pit; and semiclingstones, with flesh that clings to the pit before fully ripening, then is generally free.
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