Spice Zee nectarine (nectaplum). Very good nectarine, productive in low chill areas.
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Midpride peach. Fruits in late June/early July for me. Fruits really heavily for me. Definitely requires aggressive thinning. The flavor is good but I would not rank it in the top tier the way everyone else does. This may be because it is so hard to thin optimally. Do I need to prune 2/3 of the thinner twigs it more so that I have less work removing fruit?
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Snacktime, aka Rapunzel. Sold bare root for 1 year last year by Burchell nursery during the short time Ed Laivo worked for them and they sold to home growers. I think it can still be purchased through their Tomorrow’s Harvest online store. Despite being a pretty fruit, the flavor is its appeal. It was a favorite of my son and I at Andy’s tastings last year. Since it is blooming early, we can hope it is productive in our chill range here.
If I were starting over, this would be one of my first few nectarine trees I plant in any Southern California yard, though adaptation testing has not yet been done, to my knowledge.
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Desert Dawn nectarine. Stated to be the earliest fruit on the Dave Wilson harvest calendar, but is a bit later for me, fruiting in mid-May, a couple weeks after other cultivars.
Early no longer matters to me. I get plenty of cherries now. The fruit is very small. My kids love them though. These also require a lot of thinning.
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Arctic Jay nectarine. I avoided this because I thought it was higher chill. It is blooming earlier than Arctic Glo. That does not prove it is lower chill but I can hope it will fruit here in inland Southern California.
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Flavor Delight aprium is the first to bloom. It was good but not as good as Blenheim, which fruits abundantly. Last year was a cold and late year but it seemed to offer no advantages over Nicole, which is the earliest high flavor apricot in Southern California. I am giving it more time to get to know the fruit better.
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Minnie Royal, Royal Lee, and Royal Crimson cherries are in perfect synchrony this year. On Maxma 14 in the same area, they actually all released their first flowers today.
This winter had very little deep chill. Most of the winter the highs were the 60s and the lows were the 40s. While the chill number was a lower chill count, the chill quality was probably better. Avoidance of those 85 degree December or January days probably helped.
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Here are the chill hours for 2023-2024 for a weather station north to me, in Escondido. It shows chill portions around 25, which is lower than typical years which can be as high as 35. Chill hours were 313. Normal years can list as high as 600s, though my exact area probably has less chill than this. See next comment for interesting thing about the 2023-2024 winter.
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Miramar (south of me, more coastal) shows 150 chill hours. No surprise. That is a typical year. But look at chill portions from the dynamic model. 35! 35 is a number you can get lower chill cherries with. Not saying Miramar can get cherries beyond the 3 low chill Dave Wilson cultivars. But I am saying that we had a very interesting winter, where the hours from 32 to 55 were actually greater in the coastal San Diego areas.
My wife thought this was the warmest winter we have ever had. She hardly ever turned up the heat beyond our normal settings. Yet my fruit trees so far actually act like they had a great winter. Moderate chill cherries are showing signs of getting ready to bloom right after the Dave Wilson low chill cultivars.
The key is we had very few of those very warm days in December and January that interfere with good dormancy.
The dynamic model (chill portions) counts 32-55 as chill, instead of only to 45. And it takes away credit for higher temperatures. It may be a better model for low chill areas like Southern California. People growing in coastal Southern California can comment if this winter was a better year for productivity. The 35 chill portions at Miramar suggest that it will be.
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Current weather where I am is attached. It was basically like this the whole winter, not the normal extremes but compressed to a 15-20 degree difference between high and low. Most years we have frequent 30-40 degree differences (low in 30s, high in 70s, maybe even 80s). This winter was low of 44 (often) and high of 62-65 (typically).
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Very similar for us in Irvine. So far, I’m getting a lot more bloom/buds this year than in previous years. Though tree sizes change and trees grow (since most of mine are still small) so it’s harder to compare. I do have a Satsuma Plum that’s in a pot and stayed pretty constant in terms of size and that has a LOT more flowers this year. So you are maybe on to something in terms of the chill hours in SoCal being better represented by Chill Portions. Last year was also weird because of the massive amounts of rain that washed flowers out and prevented insects from coming out to pollinate.
My quick stats:
Chill Hours: 126 so far this year, vs 95 (2022), and 178 (2021).
Chill Portions: 34 vs 52 (2022), vs 30 (2021)
Very similar weather patterns or yours in terms of highs and lows though the chill portions would indicate last year was better… we will see I guess 
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In terms of bloom:
Anna Apple - about 90%
Flavor Queen - about 5%
Flavor King - about 10%
Dapple Dandy - about 5%
Satsuma - also about 5%
Spice Zee (on citation, not doing well as a tree): about 10%
Santa Rosa Plum: nothing yet.
Branch of Saturn Peach: has only a few buds and a big cluster of them are open. Very pretty flower.
August pride: about 70%
Mid Pride: close to 100% though very few buds due to severe pruning needed due to various issues.
Sapodilla (Hasya): just bought in a pot from the nursery. Has a bunch of flowers and some tiny fruit.
Bearss Lime: heavy bud set and some are “popcorning”
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Fairtime is a late peach with a good reputation for flavor. It flowers here, fruits here, but the fruit is rather small. The tree, on citation, is stunted and has never grown well. If someone wants late peaches in inland Southern California, this is worth trying. I have given up on late peaches due to oriental fruit moth and am leaving this specimen in the ground for curiosity only. If I were really into late peaches, I would buy a Red Baron and graft all the other late peaches into it and then compare outcomes.
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Scarlet Halo. A high flavored donut style peach. Planted in a tough part of the yard, I will be happy if it survives. So far it has surpassed expectations by blooming mid-season.
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Saturn peach. Now on its own tree. Blooming mid-season. A high flavored peach, not a saucer shape. The best way to find stone fruit for your yard it to buy a tree known to grow well in your area, and then test graft 10-20 things on it (or 100, if you want), and from there, learn what you like and what works well for you. I was really surprised by this one. I consider it one of the best peaches I have ever tasted from my yard. Very pretty bloom too. This is among the top 5 peaches for any Southern California yard.
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Blenheim, Tropic Gold and Redsweet are all in bloom (they are pretty similar in pedigree). Next week they will be at peak. The large flower here is Nicole. This is a test graft within a Blenheim tree.
If you want to find a pollinizer for your tree, don’t graft the pollinizer into the fruit of interest. Instead, graft the scion of interest into your pollinizer. That way you can test what it does when it is SURROUNDED by ample amounts of pollen. Of course, that can be hard to do but sometimes the backyard enthusiast gets an opportunity to try something.
Nicole, when grafted into Blenheim, is always LOADED with fruit. It would break the branch if I did not heavily thin it. Nicole does not synch perfectly with Blenheim. It is usually about 3-4 days behind. It does not matter too much in my yard but if you want to ensure pollination, plan ahead for Blenheim flowers to be right next to it.
Originally I did test branches of Apache and Nicole, not expecting anything in particular. Apache is not worth trying here, though it will occasionally fruit. But Nicole is early and delicious. It is by far the best early apricot I have ever tried. And it is highly productive if you give it pollination.
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That’s very encouraging James! I have a sideways branch of Saturn on a multi-graft where all the others died and the Saturn is looking like it survived so far. Excited to try some fruit this year maybe. I have a similarly beautiful flower so I’m hopeful it is actually Saturn.
Great write up so far, James.
Here are my observations so far this year that I shared on another group from March 12th 2024. I grow here in central San Diego by SDSU on a north slope. 10a/b. A lot of these trees were new last year but spent last summer and winter my yard. I am surprised how much overlap in bloom there is at the moment.
Here is a picture of my chill accumulation that I started recording early January. I annotated it with some bloom times. The arrow points to midpoint of bloom. My actual accumulated chill is probably a little higher since I did not count Nov/Dec but hardly any traditional “chill hours”. This could be useful to see for others. I use a SwitchBot Hygrometer and import it to Excel and use the UCANR formulas for Utah model.
Flowered, Leafed out and full of fruit:
Flordaprince peach, Desert Delight nectarin already thinned
Full bloom
Mid Pride, August Pride peaches. Both exhibited bottom half of the tree blooming first, due to more chill from shade.
Arctic Star nectarine, Spize Zee.
Leafed out, no bloom
Splash and Emerald Drop Pluot. I am not sure if this is normal behavior to flower after leafing out? First year.
Started to bloom
Dapple Supreme, Flavor Grenade and Flavor King pluots
Santa Rosa plum
Candy Heart pluerry
Swollen buds about to bloom/leaf
Flavor Queen, Flavor Finale pluots
Flavor Punch and Sweet Treat pluerry (I have read sweet treat usually blooms earlier than most other plum relatives)
Royal Crimson and Minnie Royal Cherry
Dormant
Red Baron Peach
Weeping Santa Rosa, “Home Depot Green Gage”, Beauty, Inca plums
Burgundy is mostly dormant looking but 1 branch is in bloom.
Flavor Delight aprium
Sauzee King and Double Delight nectarine
Lapins, Stella, Royal Lee cherry (all small grafts)
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The bloom times for plums and pluots are the real trick. This is good to know about Splash and Emerald Drop waking up so early! I just added those this year for the sake of Candy Heart. And then I am mostly grafting them over to Flavor King, but will have enough flowers to pollinate Candy Heart, if they synch for me.
Here is my first pollinizer graft flower on Candy Heart. This is Beauty plum. In the foreground are new Candy Heart flowers opening. 2 weeks late but this should achieve some pollination.
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Minnie Royal and Royal Lee cherries:
-Perfect synch in one location
-Minnie Royal is slightly earlier in another
-Here in the photo, with microclimate from the shade of an oak tree, Royal Lee was substantially earlier.
Minnie Royal in the foreground has its first flowers, while Royal Lee in the background is approaching peak bloom.
The lesson? If you want cherries (or anything highly dependent on pollination) in Southern California’s scattered bloom winter, graft a pollinizer branch into the tree. The weather is so mild here that the bloom times will vary in ways that seem random. I am suspecting that in New York, places 12 miles apart are not reporting 2-4 week differences in bloom times, like we have for pluots, or the inconsistent asynchrony we see in otherwise productive cherries.
The foreground tree has a pollinizer branch, and generates at least 50 pounds of cherries per year. The background tree has very late pollinizer branches, but misses peak bloom, and has substantially lighter crops.
My own problem is probably going away now that the other trees in my yard are quite large and will cross-pollinize greater distances. But if you have only 2 trees, either plant them in the same hole so they have the same conditions, or try the pollinizer graft,
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