Flavor King to me,has a deep fruit punch flavor.These are lighter,at least this one was. Brady
There was a bloom,that I didnāt clean off,but yes,fairly dark,with a little red,near the stem. Brady
Oāhenry is a fine tasting peach, but is a very inconsistent cropper here. It ripens about +33 here. Itās pretty bac. spot susceptible, but that may not be an issue in many places.
I have 10-15 trees of Oāhenry and this year. I doubt all of them will produce a bushel in total. Whereas decent producers like Redhaven produced at least a couple bushel per tree.
I plan on removing the Oāhenry trees at some point.
It is a great tasting peach Phill. Mine look exactly like yours. No red in the flesh makes it look a bit exotic too!
Peaches canāt be biannual, like apples. They fruit on new wood, so if they grow any new wood, they will have fruit buds.
Itās likely the spring or winter was just too cold for Redhaven. Contender is slightly more winter hardy than Redhaven, and Iām thinking Contender blooms a bit later than Redhaven (at least the last flowers to open are a bit later).
Itās probable the spring cold temps got most of the Redhaven flowers because it sounds like perhaps the flowers at the base of the shoots are the ones which survived? The flowers at the base of the shoots are generally the last to open.
In a normal year, Redhaven is a better quality peach than Contender. Itās a bit sweeter, and doesnāt have near the fuzz of Contender. I suspect the reason the Redhavenās werenāt as sweet is because the only ones available were in the shaded part of the tree. Peaches heavily shaded arenāt very sweet. Also, if there was a lot of rain/cloudy weather prior to the ripening of Redhaven, that can also make them tart.
Mike, have a look at the Dave Wilson Nursery website, check out variety recommendations. There is write up on the recommended varieties for zones 5 to 9. Both O Henry and June Pride are highly recommended along with Suncrest, Indian Free, Sno Beauty and White Lady. You donāt need bushels if you are not selling them, just to have some fresh, high quality peaches some years may be all a homegrower wants. I would be happy to send you scion if you would like to try grafting, peaches are a bit stubborn but I think you would do fine. Let me know in December so I can harvest the scion before the buds swell in January.
Thanks Bob, you are correct, the dd on left and flavor king back right. Both are very good but I find FK to be superior in flavor, definitely in my top 5 fruits, actually number 3 this year behind June pride and Flavortop. Kids get one in their lunch every day and love them. We usually have fresh fruit for dessert and the kids will eat them right after eating ice cream, so they are plenty sweet.
@MikeC, I would not trust Dave Wilson recommendations outside of the west coast, those guys are clueless about the disease pressures we face. I expect these recommendations are for the corresponding west-coast zones.
I have grown OāHenry for 15 years in Maryland. The taste is excellent but it gets very bad spot and is prone to splitting. My tree finally died this year and I am not going to replace it.
Iād be interested in a good east-coast peach to replace it with, the only good things I have ripening in a similar season are white- and red-fleshed peaches. Well its pretty close to Late Crawford, thats an excellent yellow peach. It was not producing well at all for me but I grafted it to a new spot and its looking a lot better this year.
Lucky kids. Are your other top two fruits nectarines?
So, how long did it take your trees to start producing? How do you train your pluots, open center?
What other peaches would you say rate as high (or dare I say higher) than baby crawford?
My top two fruits here in Ca are a peach that eats like a nectarine (June Pride) and a superb nectarine (Flavortop). Of course I havenāt tried everything but I have tried a lot. We are blessed to live in a super climate to grow fruits, so these may not do good everywhere, but what hurts to try, you never know. Most fruit trees here produce after a few seasons, but give them 4 to 5 to see the best fruit. I prune almost all my fruit trees open center, with the exception of some cherries.
In my opinion for zones 7-10 in CA:
Peaches: Mid-Pride and the old Saturn (not the donut) propagated by DWN.
White Nectarine: Snow Queen, with very high brix and good acid balance.
My only experience with yellow free-stone nectarines is in ultra-low chill, so I hesitate to mention them here.
Swenson White grapes 19 brix, Edelweiss grapes 17 brix. These are very similar. Edelweiss is bigger, Swenson White is sweeter and slightly better.
Iām still getting Alvaro melons, they average about 13 brix for me.
Had a Yongi Asian pear drop for no obvious reason. The others arenāt ripe yet and neither are my Shinseikis. This one tasted good at 15 brix, but something about the texture was a bit off. I wouldnāt say it was rubbery, but it wasnāt as crisp as normal.
I picked a Gracious plum today. It is an American hybrid. Bigger than I thought it would be (almost 2"), 17 brix, sour skin and regular plum tasting sweet flesh. Nothing special but not bad. I probably wouldnāt plant it again but the tree seems vigorous and healthy, so Iāll graft more Superior and Toka to it. I also had a 17 brix damson plum. If I could get these consistently at 17-18 brix, theyād be one of my favorites for fresh eating. Unfortunately, Iāve had several galls of black knot show up on it this year. For some reason, I mistakenly thought Damsons didnāt get it and havenāt really sprayed this tree in the past.
I had a couple things today.A Flavor King Pluot and Fantasia Nectarine.
The Pluot was good,but maybe a little soft and over ripe.
The other was just about right and was the first fruit tree I planted.After the first year and the bugs came,my expectations were low,that the fruit was going to be of any quality,until finding out about bagging.Now quite a few are pristine. Brady
Flavor King Pluot
Fantasia Nectarine
Phill,
I think you and I are in pretty different climates. We get lots of rain here during the summer (in a normal year), whereas Boise hardly gets any rain in the summer. (We average 4"-6" of rain during the summer months here, in a normal year). So many of those west coast varieties may work quite well for you.
I have less experience with the west coast varieties. Iāve tried a few, and most donāt work here, so I havenāt tried that many.
I suppose Baby Crawford is considered a west coast peach and it works well here. Another west coast peach I like is Spring Snow (Zaiger genetics). Beyond that most of the west coast peaches donāt work too well here (Oāhenry being one of the better ones, but still not good enough to keep for me.)
For the more wet tolerant peaches (which Iām more familiar with) probably Blazingstar is pretty top notch. I also really like Ernies Choice for flavor. Both arenāt what I would call consistent heavy producers, but both are very very good.
I would actually rate those two higher than Baby Crawford, even though Baby Crawford is an excellent peach. But of course tastes are very subjective.
Another peach which I donāt have a lot of experience with, but looks very very promising is Challenger. This is the second year Iāve harvested some. The peaches are a beautiful deep red and packed with flavor. Also seems to be a very productive peach, based upon the little experience Iāve had with it. It ripens with Blazingstar, and is every bit as good, but perhaps more productive.
Joe,
I had very poor luck getting Coralstar to produce much at all for me. There are some east coast growers here on the forum for which Coralstar has done well, so it might do well for you.
Messina also sets very poorly for me and I will be removing that variety this year. There have been at least one report of it setting lightly on the east coast, so you may want to take another look at that one before planting it. Iāve fruited this variety for 4 years and every year it produces hardly anything (like a dozen peaches per full sized tree).
Iāve seen Alan report that it does well for him in SE NY. Also, I figure since professional orchard in my area grows it then Iām sure itās a good choice in my area (which is very similar to Alanās). On the topic of Coralstars, I let one fully ripen and it lost all its bite. It was just a regular sweet peachā¦ not nearly as exciting!
Iāve still got time to figure out whatāll work best here. After some thinking, Iām leaning towards making sure that we get a continuous peach/nect harvest in August to hold us over between the end of blueberry season and when the apples, pears, and pawpaws ripen here.
I decided to test the brix on some peaches I am eating now. Sanguine Tardeva was 13 brix, Early Crawford was 16 and Athena was 20. These are a few points below the usual due to all the rains but are all very tasty, in fact they were about equally enjoyable in spite of the big brix difference.
Check our these peaches I harvested tonight (the ones in front), I call them Ernies Second Choice
Since we were talking about Ernies Choice above I thought folks might be interested in this odd thing my Ernies Choice tree routinely does. It looks like its aborting about half of its crop, but they in fact just grow a lot slower and only develop partial seeds and are smaller and oddly-shaped. Usually I just ignore them but I tasted one tonight, three weeks (!) after the main harvest on the tree, and they taste just like the big ones did! Very odd! Anyways its a pleasant surprise to get another crop for free on the same tree. The seed is almost non-existent in size so there is a fair amount of āmeatā on those small fruits.
I had a lot of that this yr. I think itās unpollinated fruit that doesnāt abort. Mine have very small seeds. They can taste pretty good.
My Ginger Gold apple does the same thing. Small late unpollinated fruits that are high brix and very tasty. They hang in good condition for weeks whereas the early pollinated fruit goes mealy overnight. The unpollinated fruits mature about 4-6 weeks later than pollinated.
That sounds right; I just cracked open a seed and it was empty inside.
I only get these on Ernies Choice, and I get them pretty much every year on that variety. It also helps make the main crop peaches better as I routinely thin too little and this self-semi-thinning helps the size of them.
Scott can you please slice open the Saguine Tardiva? Would love to see the color inside. Thanks, Mrs. G
Scott,
Your (mostly) organic sprayed peaches looked impressive. I wish mine will look as clean as yours.