Here is my peach report after the end of the 2025 growing season. Please feel free to add assessment of your own peaches this season.
First some comments.
This Spring things looked pretty dismal, as far as peaches were concerned. We went through a pretty tough winter and it didn’t look like we had much bloom. I commented on that in this thread (Peach variety report after winter 2024/2025).
However, some combination of later blooms and blooms I couldn’t see well, ended up making the peach season somewhat better than I had expected.
We did have weather issues of some late frosts, which thinned the crop even more. But still had about 20% crop in the end. Very few trees required much thinning.
We also had periods of rain deluge (like 3, 4 inches per day) followed by periods of really hot dry weather. This caused some peaches to want to turn brown in the middle (It happens in years like this.) We also had some peach trees which ripened early and tasted bitter.
Here is my report by variety:
Harrow Diamond -21: I have this variety in two locations. The upper location produced full crops and required heavy thinning. The lower location, produced partial crops. However, it was very rainy and cloudy preceding this harvest window. This variety had very poor flavor. I sold just about all of them as seconds for baking. I have been wavering back and forth between Earlystar and Harrow Diamond for this window. I am back to recommending Earlystar after this fiasco of a year with Harrow Diamond.
Earlystar -21: Good production in one spot, not so good in another. But the peaches were good and sweet.
Spring Snow? -21: This variety never produces a lot. This year I expected nothing. But it actually produced OK. As always very high quality white peaches.
Early Redhaven -14: Produced very lightly. Peach is OK. Nothing great.
Garnet Beauty -14: Ditto description of Early Redhaven.
Risingstar -14: In my report earlier in the year, I thought it had disappointed me and would have a very light production. But…this variety did not disappoint. It ended up having pretty close to full production, and as always had delicious sweet peaches despite a lot of rain close to harvest. The trees required thinning. This peach always has excellent flavor grown here. I think if I could plant only one peach, it would probably be Risingstar.
Flat Wonderful -14: I grew this one years ago in my yard. Decided I perhaps wanted another donut peach for this window, so threw one in this spring as a trial.
Glenglo -13: Produced basically nothing. It’s a good large peach when it produces, but Risingstar ripens in the same window and is much more consistent in production. I plan to remove all my Glenglo trees because they are old.
PF Eightball -11: Produced nearly full crops of nice fruit.
Orion donut -10: First year of production. White donut peach. Not a huge amount of fruit, but good enough considering the bad winter and spring weather. Peaches were large for donuts (about the size of TangOs, maybe a little bigger). Flavor was slightly better than Saturn, but perhaps not quite as sugary tasting. They don’t have near the stem tears as Saturn. Evaluations are very early, but for now, I’d like to plant more of these.
Wisconsin Balmer (which I’m certain is a mislabel and not Wisconsin Balmer) -8:
Produced nothing.
Clayton -5: Produced decent crops of small but good tasting fruit.
PF9a-007 -5: Produced nothing.
Saturn donut -5: Produced decent crops. Customers love these little donuts which taste like sugar. IMO, that’s about all they taste like, sugar. But customers can’t seem to get enough of these. They have a lot of stem pick tears.
Reliance -5: Another peach I grew years ago. Planted 3 again this spring as a trial because of it’s reliability. Of course no fruit.
Harken -4: These trees are gone this coming winter. There is really no reason to grow this variety. PF9a-007 is bigger and tastes better. Clayton tastes better and is much more reliable.
Redhaven 0: Good crops of good quality fruit. Required some thinning.
Sweet Joe 0?: Supposed to ripen with Redhaven. These trees have just gone through 2 seasons, so no fruit yet.
TangOs +1: Basically no fruit. This is a hard variety for me to grow and too inconsistent. It does produce very unique tasting fruit, but not consistently enough to make any money on it here. So most of these trees will be removed. Most of them are old anyway.
PF14 +4: Produced nothing. Been trialing this tree for lots of years. Total loser of a variety. Plan to remove.
PF15a +4: Produced something. May keep a few of these trees around.
Blazingstar +4: Really great tasting peach, but doesn’t produce consistently enough here to be profitable.
Johnboy +5: Produced a few peaches. Nice size and quality.
TangOs II +6: Produced some peaches, but most of them cracked badly. I’m not sure I want to keep this variety or not, but probably not.
Challenger +7: In my earlier winter report, I had mentioned I was disappointed in this variety. I didn’t see many blooms when I originally looked at it. But in the end, it produced an OK amount of fruit. Somewhat light crop, but still OK. It produced more fruit than any other variety I had for this window. Good tasting too.
Ernies Choice +11: Produced a decent amount of fruit. Flavor was intense like always. I recommend either this variety or Intrepid for this harvest window.
Blazeprince +11: Produced some fruit. Flavor was good. I still plan to get rid of this variety based on inconsistent production in my area.
Allstar +11: Produced nothing. This peach really isn’t worth planting. Ernies Choice and Intrepid are much more consistent.
Glohaven +13: A few peaches on the trees. Not much.
PF17 +13: Some fruit. Not a lot.
Tubby Dubby +14: My mislabeled variety. Very high quality peach, when it produces. This year the trees produced almost nothing.
Harrow Beauty +14: Produced nothing. Don’t recommend.
Winblo +14: Big disappointment this year. Especially since I have a whole row of these trees, plus more in another location at the orchard. They produced virtually nothing.
Intrepid +14: Very happy with this peach so far. Trees were loaded and required heavy thinning. Fruit is medium sized and tastes great.
PF19-007 +19: Produced very little. Paul Friday claimed this tree was extremely cold hardy. I just haven’t found that to be the case in my location.
Loring +19: Produced nothing. Just have 3 trees and plan to remove this this winter. Not to be replaced.
Mr. Ed +19: A mislabel I named Mr. Ed. This variety produced well this year with quite good quality fruit. I only have one of these trees which is pretty old, so I need to make some more copies of this tree before I lose it.
Veteran +19: Full crops. But the weather was on/off flooding and super hot sunny. All these peaches had to be sold as seconds because they wanted to turn brown on the inside.
Contender +21: Produced full crops which required thinning. Fruit quality was OK.
Scarlet Prince +23: Production was actually OK, which was very surprising to me. Fruit taste is very good. But as always fruit was small.
Baby Crawford +23: Almost no production this year, which was surprising.
Sweet Breeze +23: Medium production this year. Nice sized delicious fruit.
Sentinel +24: No production this year.
PF24c +24: No production this year.
JulyPrince +25: Excellent production this year, which required thinning. Excellent peach quality.
Biscoe +25: Full production which required thinning. Fruit quality was good.
Madison +27: Decent crops. Fruit quality is decent.
Sweet Star +27?: Young trial tree. Did not produce.
Glowingstar +27: Thin production of good quality fruit.
Redskin +28: Almost no production this year.
Carolina Gold +29: Good production, but the rain then hot weather caused this to ripen and turn brown on the inside. I believe that’s the first time this has happened to this variety.
PF27a +30: Almost no production this year.
Encore +33: Full crops, which tasted good.
PF35-007 +33: Almost no production this year, which was surprising.
PF Legendary +35: Trees are young and produced very little fruit.
Tiana +38: Produced some fruit which was high quality.
Laurol +38: No production this year.
OldMixon Free +40: Trees are young and just produced one fruit.
Autumnstar +43: Very light production.
Victoria +50: This was the biggest surprise. Full production, but most of these trees are in the highest spot in the orchard. Excellent quality fruit, especially for a late peach.
Slappy +55?: Planted this tree a couple years ago, so no fruit yet.
