I thought I’d start a thread of this years peach evaluations. I apologize if someone has already started a thread. I’ve had very little time this summer to read the forum. Wild busy this summer.
Our peach season is still going, but we are starting to wind down. We were both busy and exhausted all summer long. I can’t remember the last day I actually did nothing with the orchard, so it’s been a 7 day/week job all summer.
We had loads of rain, which produced lots of big fruit, but it was a big struggle to get the sugar up in peaches, especially until mid season. Plus I over cropped some varieties, which further reduced sugar. Some varieties were so poorly flavored we sold fruit off whole trees as seconds to beer makers.
On a positive note, the fruit size was generally good, except in extreme cases where we just left way too many fruit on. During peak season, we had sold 1000 lb. days, and probably averaged 750 lbs./day, or more during our peak weeks. We’ve never done that before off our little orchard.
Although I like productive trees, flavor is also a big factor in evaluating peaches. Most of my business is return customers. This is my eleventh year in selling peaches I’ve grown. I’m proud to know some customers are still buying our peaches eleven years later.
I’ll start off the thread with my evaluations, but look forward to reading others.
In order of ripening:
Spring Snow (-21) I continue to love this white peach. This is my favorite white peach. The tree and fruit has no symptoms of bac. spot. The fruit is very tasty. This is coming from a palate which generally doesn’t like white peaches. It has problems producing a full crop though.
Earlystar (-21). A very nice early yellow peach. Generally my favorite for this window. My only complaint with this tree is that it produces very little renewal wood, except for straight up growth. Once you cut the straight up growth out, it leaves a lot of blind wood. So the tree is hard to manage from a pruning standpoint, but produces some of the best tasting early peaches out there for the Midwest. It also has a vigor problem, so requires regular, and perhaps heavy, fertilization.
Harrow Diamond (-21). Generally not as flavorful as Earlystar, but this year they were very good. Much easier to maintain the tree. Produces lots of good renewal wood. Still, over the years Earlystar has produced a better quality peach, if you can tolerate the extra baggage of Earlystar.
Garnet Beauty (-15). This variety did very very poorly this year in terms of flavor. I overcropped these trees. Although the fruit was good size, the flavor was too bad to sell as number one peaches. I sold the crop off all these trees to beer makers for peach beer.
Early Redhaven (-15). See Garnet Beauty
PF7a (-15). See Garnet Beauty, except this one colors better.
Surecrop (-15). Same as Garnet Beauty, except the fruit was smaller.
Risingstar (-14). I’ve always liked this peach. This year it really shined in the wet weather. Despite being overcropped like others, these trees produced some nice sweet fruit. This should be the standard for this window. I added a bunch more of these last spring, and am still planning to add more coming up.
Glenglo (-13). Like Risingstar, this is also another wonderful peach for this window. It’s much bigger than Risingstar, and tastes almost as good, which I still consider quite delightful. My only complaint against this variety is that it can be a bit shy bearing in challenging years. This year it produced abundant crops.
PF9a-007 (-5). This is my favorite peach for this window. Big fruits, even if overcropped. Productive peach which tastes good.
Clayton (-5). A great tasting peach. Smallish and drops badly. The drop issue may not be a challenge for a backyard orchard though. It’s definitely thing for a commercial orchard. Production poundage is definitely less for Clayton compared to PF9a-007, so the latter wins in my orchard.
Harken (-5). It’s OK. I don’t get real happy about this peach. Flavor is good. Production is OK most years. Nothing to get excited about.
Nectafest nect (-5). This is the last of over a dozen nects I used to grow. I like it the best out of all of them. The problem is that it is a minimalist bearer in challenging years. This year it produced well and produced some super flavorful nects. Still nects don’t sell well here, so I may remove this one nect tree I have left.
Sureprince (-5). The second year I’ve had this one test tree produce a lot. Lots of double red peaches, clean of bac. spot. The problem is that the flavor is pretty marginal. I plan to remove.
Saturn donut (-4). These are generally remarkably popular with customers. It’s the sugar which does it, because they don’t have much flavor, imo. They are cloying sweet in imo. Very perfumed, but who cares. Perfume is for sniffing, not eating. Nevertheless, customers love these little things. They have a cult following. The have a terrible stem tear problem when picking. For that reason, I sell these as Upick. Customers snap them up. I always find myself planting more.
Redhaven (0). This is the standard middle season peach. I overcropped these, so the flavor was compromised. Still they produced boatloads of saleable fruit. They could have been a lot better and bigger if I had my guys thin them properly. This variety is a workhorse which will produce some very very nice peaches, if not overcropped like I did this year.
TangOs (0). I moved this peach back to ripening with Redhaven this year, because it does start to pick with Redhaven. This donut picks for about 3 weeks, so it’s a bit hard to set a window for it. We had some real skin issues with this peach (inking on the skin) from all the rain. Rain tends to destroy the skin of this peach, despite the best fungicide sprays. The flavor is very unique and customers very much like this peach, once they get over the shape and color.
Starfire (0). For years, I thought there was no peach which could compare to Redhaven for this season. But I am starting to warm to Starfire. It won’t produce as good as Redhaven in challenging years, but the color is a bit better, and this year the flavor was a smidgen better. I’m not ready to replace my Redhavens with Starfire, but I may add a few more Starfire in the future.
Raritan Rose (+3). This is really the only other white peach I care to eat (other than Spring Snow). It can be a shy bearer in challenging years. This year it produced abundantly. It drops very very badly, and like most old white varieties, bruises if you look at it wrong. It’s a difficult peach for even a retail sales commercial grower like me. But customers find it very appealing. It has some nice acid to go along with the sugar, but unlike similar peaches, like Lady Nancy, it doesn’t produce any “tart” peaches. The drops are quite annoying though.
Blazingstar (+4). I love this peach when it’s on. This would rank one of my top peaches in terms of flavor in my climate. They can be really delicious and intense. I mean super good. Some years this variety can be very shy bearing. Size is smaller too. I figure this peach deserves some presence in any but the more challenging climates. I’ve grown this peach for a decade, and it’s really good, except that some more challenging years, it won’t produce.
PF14 (+5). Test variety. First year of decent size. Very shy bearing so far. Will continue to evaluate.
PF15a (+5). I moved the ripening date back for this one this year. It is really a good peach. It is so red it sunburns badly, if not careful. Always a heavy producer. It produces some really deep red sweet peaches.
PF Lucky 13 (+5). I’ve grown this one for probably a decade. Despite a lot of supposed popularity among peach researchers, I find this one a loser. It is so fickle about production in challenging years, it’s not worth it. Some years this variety is blank, while the rest of the orchard has a decent amount of peaches. Totally a waste of time, on balance.
Johnboy (+5). More reliable than Lucky 13, but that’s not saying much. Johnboy produced big peaches like normal this year. Nice tasting, but never like Blazingstar, which is about as productive, if not more so. Blazingstar is smaller, but clearly a better choice imo, than Johnboy.
TangOs II (+6). A white flat peach. Green skin when ripe. A unique flavored peach. Very sweet when fully ripe. Not as popular as Saturn as a white flat peach, but better imo.
Challenger (+7). I had a lot of hopes for this peach. I cropped these hard this year. With all the rain they were decent, but not near as good as last year. Still they have wonderful color and the flavor was acceptable this year, as opposed to great last year. They are durable and a regular cropper. I still like them, even if this year wasn’t their best.
Ernies Choice (+11). I generally love the flavor of this peach. It tastes more like a nect than a peach. This year I overcropped these trees and had some tart fruit. Still this is a wonderful variety for this window. Some years I have problems getting a full crop. But still this peach has so much peach flavor, it deserves a place in the traditional peach hall of fame, imo.
Blazeprince (+11). Once again, my one test tree of this variety produced hardly anything this year. I’m going to keep it another year, but yield from the last couple years, strongly suggests this one has some serious production issues.
PF 17 (+11). An OK peach for this window. Nothing remarkable.
Allstar (+12). A productive peach in all but the most challenging years. Must be picked firm, or can get mealy here. It’s a good peach overall.
Glohaven (+13). A bit of a shy bearer most years, but produced decently this year. Peaches were huge. Tons of split pits which were unsaleable. Flavor was very good. I won’t be replacing these with any trees which die. Too much baggage.
Harrow Beauty (+14). Like Allstar, can get mealy if left on the tree to get soft. Allstar is a better choice for this window.
Winblow (+14). More uniform size than just about any peach we grow. Nice flavor too. It can be a shy bearer in challenging years. Good peach.
Intrepid (+15). Relatively new to this peach. Supposedly frost tolerant and winter hardy, like Challenger. It was a decent peach this year. Too early to really evaluate.
Canadian Harmony (+16). I really don’t like this variety overall. It gets bac. spot badly here. Not that productive most years. Nothing special here.
Loring (+19). Big peaches as usual. Not productive in marginal years. Productive this year. Wonderful flavor. One nice thing about this variety is that in a year with so many peaches with split pits, this variety had less than most, despite really big peaches, as normal.
Bounty (+19). Supposedly this was marketed as a replacement for Loring. What a joke! This is one one of the worst varieties I’ve ever grown. Not only is it more finicky about production, much more finicky, it had terrible split pits this year. I bet half the fruit from these trees had unsaleable split pits. These trees are worthless. I’ve wasted time with this variety for far too many years. It should never have been released. I predict in 20 years, most will have never heard of it. It deserves to go extinct. I plan on cutting down the last half dozen trees of this variety with glee.
Contender (+21). I overcropped this variety like so many others. It didn’t do well with overcropping, but still this is a good variety in normal years with good management (which I didn’t give it this year). It’s so reliable and a workhorse with decent flavor, it deserves to be planted. I don’t like all the fuzz on these peaches though.
Veteran (+21). Overcropped, so flavor suffered. But a good old timey peach. Drops some.
PF 23 (+23). Just OK.
Scarlet Prince (+23). It was small as normal, but unusual that it was poorly flavored. Last year it was more sparsely fruited, but the fruit was better. This year this test tree didn’t produce hardly any saleable fruit. The fruit was just too poorly flavored. We let it drop without picking it.
Baby Crawford (+23). I generally love this peach. But this year, like so many others, we overcropped and the flavor, and size, suffered. This is still a great peach, despite the mismanagement this year. I still plan to add more of this peach. Based on past years experience, I still rate this peach near the top for this window.
Sweet Breeze (+23). I believe I have underrated this peach for years. I thought it was a subacid peach just because they had so much sugar. This year I finally realized, it’s just a super sweet peach, not subacid. These trees produced loads of super sweet gigantic peaches, while everything else was less sweet, for this window. Customers, and my help, loved them. They were money in the bank. They are under patent, so I ordered 10 more from Adams County this year. That was all they space I had for them, or I would have ordered more.
PF24c (+24). A good peach this year. Clearly not as large and good tasting as Sweet Breeze, but supposed to be very hardy. This is the first year these trees really produced well.
Julyprince (+25). A very good peach, which is a heavy cropper of deep red delicious peaches. I added more of these this last spring and have more budded for next year.
Cresthaven (+27). Nothing special about this old peach compared to new ones, imo. It’s a shy bearer in problem years, and gets bac. spot something terrible. I mentioned it to a very well known peach specialist last year at a fruit conference. He said growers up there nicknamed it Spotcrest. Not worth planting, imo.
Madison (+27). An old time dependable peach, even in difficult years. It drops some, doesn’t color well, and struggles with size. But it’s got a nice peach flavor. I have a few trees and never plan to eliminate this variety from my orchard, as long as I live.
PF25 (+28). Another decent peach for this window. Decent production most years. Decent flavor.
Redskin (+28). This peach doesn’t color well at all. Size can also be a problem on heavy crop years like this one. It also drops some. However, this variety always produces something here in all but the very worst years. This year under a very heavy crop load, it produced some very flavorful peaches. This is not my own testimony, but also my main peach picker (without any suggestion from me). It’s a good peach, if you don’t mind the baggage.
Carolina Gold (+29). I just have one test tree in production, but I’ve grown it for quite a number of years. The tree is huge. I overcropped it, but it still produced some decent sized fruit with exceptional yield. I probably picked 200-250 lbs. off this one tree. This is strange to me, because early on, the tree was a timid bearer.
PF27a (+32). Decent peach, but can be a shy bearer.
PF28-007 (+32). These trees are slated for removal. They produce good peaches, when they produce, which is about as often as the stars align.
Messina (+32). See PF28-007, only less productive.
O’henry (+33). These last three peach trees I mentioned for this window all have the np gene (which stands for non-production). O’henry has the added bs gene, when stands for bacterial spot, which this variety colonizes to the point the few fruit are unsaleable.
Encore (+33). Unlike O’henry, this variety has zero bac. spot. It also produces abundantly every year. The problem is flavor. It doesn’t have much sugar. I don’t plan to pull any trees of this variety, but I also don’t plan to replant any more. When this variety culls itself out, it will be gone from the orchard.
PF 35-007 (+33). I’m thinking this variety is the one for this window. Not as productive as Encore, but way better flavor and way bigger. I like it a lot so far.
Laurol (+38). Usual great tasting productive peach for this window. Has some bac. spot issues, which I easily overlook.
Autumnstar (+43). Big peach. Very good flavor. Nice red color. It can be shy bearing some years.
Victoria (+45). Peach we are just now starting to pick. Wonderful productive. Good flavor. Very very nice.
Makes this amateur peach grower feel some better when I do it!!)