Saw that you plan to plant peaches in NH, zone 5b. I am in zone 6a and have grown peaches for about 12 years. In our area, late frost and fluctuating temperature in late winter and early spring would wipe out peach production like this year.
You hope growing peaches would be low maintenance. In our area, I say it is not. If lucky, you may get nice peaches for a year or two before diseases and insects show up in droves. They will find your trees.
Use the search engine here and put in “peach diseases”, “peach problems” and read up. You should get yourself ready.
Interesting they are still collecting royalties. The plant breeder was at the last Peach Grower meeting I attended a few years ago when they discussed Montgomery Gold. They needed $1000 for the virus test and certification before the variety could be released and were asking the Peach Grower Association for the money, so I’m guessing the University did not have the funds.
I have no idea where the royalties go. I noticed that Vaughn and other nurseries are charging royalties on varieties that I though were off patent too.
I believe most of the high chill hour peaches came our of Dr. Werner’s program,
I can’t find anything out on this peach on the internet. I can’t even find the patent, much less anyone who sells the trees. Any idea where Montgomery Gold trees would be available?
My guess is that Montgomery Gold is not patented. Don’t see it for sale at Vaughn Nursery who often attends the NC Peach Grower meeting, but I bet he would know.
I did find one grower who sells Montgomery Gold peaches so I expect the trees are available somewhere.
Here is a grower who has that peach listed on his website
It would be nice if you mentioned your location in your post. I figured it out from later responses and posts, but not all of us read regularly and know the regular posters and where they are located so it is helpful. Thanks
Most folks here provide more info about their location and interest on their profile icon if you click.
Here is mine:
"Very small commercial grower of Blueberry and Blackberry for 30 years. Now trying High Density Apples and Peaches
Zone 7B, outside Greensboro, NC about 700 feet elevation
Like @blueberrythrill mentioned, if you want to know where forum members live (a general area like a county and state), Just click on their avatar. Their profiles with such info will appear.
For your profile, I suggest you list the state you are in. Zone 8 in one location can be vastly different from a zone 8 in another location.
FYI, according to the NCSU plant breeding programs webpage, there is no peach breeding going on. Only blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.
Hi Mark, what happened to the Old Mixon peach tree, did it not produce this year or removed? I am wondering as I have heard good things and was planning on getting scions next year
I cannot imagine losing 100 trees just about mature enough to fruit! I am not even sure I have a 100 trees. I hope you get a great price on them.
Erratic weather is heartbreaking, I am learning to not get excited about sprouts or blooms or even fruit on a tree (you might not to even be the final taster!).
I was looking at your fruit names and I don’t have any of the varieties you have.
I have Rio Oso Gem peach, Silver Logan peach (both tiny trees), honey halo nectarine, supreme red #1 nectarine, Harko nectarine (my biggest and oldest tree) and now an accidental Spice Zee nectaplum (mislabeled). I hope I get to taste all of them someday but who knows if I will.
I heard soooo many good things about silver Logan and Rio Oso gem, but I have no idea if they are good commercial varieties or not.
Those are very popular in California. They are also great tasting peaches for me in Maryland, but Silver Logan is extremely prone to rot. I took it out when I was 100% organic but now that I am using synthetic disease control I have added it back again… hopefully my new regimen will keep the rot off. I also had re-added Flavor King which is another horrible rotter and it’s been doing great with the synthetics, so I am re-adding several top fruits which had rotted too much. Silver Logan is definitely the best tasting white-fleshed peach I have tasted, I grew several dozen of them. It may be too soft for commercial production though. Rio Oso Gem I think should be less soft, but it is not so vigorous and the productivity may limit commercial growing.
I had Silver Logan at one time, but can’t remember why I removed it. Or maybe it bloomed too early. Check the chill hours if you have issues with spring frosts like we do.
Rio Oso Gem is supposed to be prone to bac. spot I believe. Perhaps that’s why I removed Silver Logan?
Bac. spot doesn’t seem to affect homegrowers as much as commercial growers.
I’ve had one or two Old Mixon free peaches one year from a graft on another peach tree. The one or two I tried didn’t have enough sugar that year. I went ahead and made a couple trees of it though, and planted them out. Not because of my own experience, but largely based on Scott’s and others experience.
I’d like to have a few reliable flavorful white peaches, which is why I’m trying Old Mixon Free. As I recall @scottfsmith said it was somewhat similar to Raritan Rose or Indian free, I think.
I am still kicking myself for not adding flavor king to my order.
We have flavor supreme and flavor grenade pluots. I know you’re not a fan of flavor grenade, but we go nuts over it. Ours has not produced, but we buy a lot of them from the farmers market.
I so wish I could get honey punch.
After reading about how hard it is to get fruit on flavor supreme I feel like it was a bad choice. I heard flavor queen wasn’t very exciting so I didn’t pick that one.
It is very similar to Lady Nancy… almost identical. Some years it can be low sugar, I don’t know what causes that but as the tree faded it got worse. I have a new tree of it now.
Re heirloom peaches, over the years I have removed more and more of them. The only ones I have now are Oldmixon and some red flesh ones. Oh I also still have Foster.
Re rots, @DragonflyLane you are in CA so there is not so much rot. Wetness and warmth are both needed for rot. Also I think you should be able to get fruit on Flavor Supreme where you are, it seems to do much better in the west.
Thank you Scott I hope you are right. I will report back when I do get fruit which may take a while because I’ve only had our pluot trees for a year. I saw that there are two blossom buds on FS, looks like the rest coming in are leaves.
Our emerald beaut is covered with leaves and blossom buds, It’s quite spectacular. Some of the blossoms are starting to open. I bet it’s going to be something when they’re all open.
Unfortunately, I feel like it’s too early for anything to have blooms because we often get hail in May.
For this reason, we might have better luck with the European plums, which most are just starting to wake up and some haven’t even bothered trying yet.
We might not get rots, but I’m betting that cold plus wet equals peach leaf curl, because we sure get a lot of that. I sprayed twice with copper while dormant in hopes that there will be less of that this year.
