Red haven peach flowers are small and petals are short

Hi,
This is a Red haven peach planted in July 2015. This is the first year I have some significant flower. A first couple flower I noticed the flower is very small, especially petals are small/short. Is this some kind of problem? chill issue? nutrients? (Zone 7b, stored in unheated garage)

Thank you

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I think that is the characteristic of redhaven. I believe it is said to be non-showy. The last three years I have forced blooms in the kitchen window and wondered why I did it. Yours look like mine, mostly pistils and stamens. (Though I mostly force them to test how much winter bud loss I had.)

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Levers101,

Thank you for the clarification. Did you get fruit with this type of flower?

Best,

That’s about what my Red Haven flowers look like. It’s not a very “showy” bloom but I get a bunch of fruit every year.

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As everyone mentions, Redhaven are pretty non-showy, but the flower looks damaged to me. It just doesn’t look right to me. I could be wrong, but the petals look a little too short, and I don’t see a pollen tube.

Allow me to retract my last comment. I’m standing next to a Redhaven now and the floweres are pretty short.

Anymore I guess I look at too many flowers and trees to keep it all straight.

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When does red haven ripen for you olpea?

Generally about the 3rd week in July. Probably be earlier this year.

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So, at least you’ll have some of those this year? What other varieties look like they made it thru this weird weather?

My little scrubby Redhaven pushed out some pink buds a couple weeks ago, but those got bit last week when it got down to 17 for a couple nights. No worries, it’s not ready to produce any fruit this year anyways.

Subdood,

Thanks for asking. It’s really hard to tell at this point. There are quite a few flowers on the trees, but certainly a lot of them aren’t viable.

We had two nights of 18F for lows. Most of the peaches were in pink, but quite a few were in first bloom (one nectarine was in full bloom). According to the charts, those temps should have completely wiped out all fruit potential on anything in first bloom. However, it doesn’t quite look like that’s the case.

Quite a few trees which were in first bloom, appear to have fertilized flowers. However, I’ve seen before where frosted fertilized flowers eventually fall off before pit hardening stage.

So, all in all, it’s just too early to tell about much with any level of accuracy.

A bit off topic, but I wanted to ask you about Saturn peaches, and how they’ve done for you. I’ve seen some sites still offering them this late in the selling season, and I’m a bit intrigued by them, especially their shape, looks really cool. Are they a patented variety still?

I have a seedling that had flowers like this. I grafted onto it and the grafts also now also have flowers like this. My assumption was that it had something to do with the seedling rootstock but I don’t know. The grafts came from peaches that had full, regular looking flowers.

I like Saturn quite a lot for flavor. It’s one of only about a handful of white peaches which I like and do well for me. The biggest disadvantage for me is the extreme stem pick damage. If you let them ripen on the tree, a very large percentage will pull the skin away from the stem when you pick. This pick damage makes it difficult to sell. Picking them earlier helps quite a bit, but I’d rather not pick them so firm (they get sweeter if they hang on the tree).

Several people have noted Saturn rots badly for them. I’ve not seen this at all, but I suspect my scab sprays are also protecting against rot. I’ve not seen any bac. spot. It’s also very productive.

I like the variety enough I budded 10 more of them the previous fall (2015) and moved them this spring. I may tire of the stem pick damage, but right now there aren’t may good peaches which ripen in that window. Clayton ripens at the same time and may become my preferred yellow for that window.

Saturn is actually a fairly old peach and has not been under patent for quite some time.

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This is the first year I had peaches ( that I actually could pick- animals got them all last year before I could pick them) on my Red Haven. I had the same worry about the blossoms. We had a huge freeze right around blossom time but I put some bed sheets over most of the branches. The blossoms looked odd but the fruit was great! Mine ripened about July 8th. It seemed early for this fruit this year. We had some odd weather.

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Yes, early. Mine ripened July 20 in zone 7, NY.

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Mike,
Where did you buy your tree from? A reliable nursery? If not, your Red Haven may not be RH. Many peach trees sold at Home Depot, Lowe, road side farm stands ( some selling fruit trees) in my area are labeled RedHaven. I am not convinced all are labeled correctly.

My first RH I bought died after gonig through one winter here. If it was really RH, it would not got killed by that mild winter.

I bought mine from Stark Bros. I agree with you the fruit trees at the big box stores can be whatever from the many nurseries they buy from.

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