Another big peach

[thecityman]

@Olpea

t

I just planted a Carolina gold so I’m glad to hear you like it for that window. I tried to find Gold Dust (I only checked a few places) because I was thinking you were a big fan of it as an early peach??? Is that true? I know others have said good things, but now I’m thinking maybe I mixed up Gold Dust and Carolina Gold as the “gold” early peach you like?

I did get a big order (well, 12 trees) from Vaughn this year (my first time), and I was and am very, very happy with them. Granted, their trees were small, but they weren’t tiny. The grafts were well healed, they had good roots, and the price is incredibly cheap compared to others (most of my trees were $8.50 !!!). All but one has already started pouring on new growth, and the one that isn’t is likely my fault because I didn’t plant it for a few days. Anyway, I like Vaughn so far is my point.

[Olpea]

Vaughn’s prices are incredibly cheap. Trees are smaller, but still well worth the price. While other nurseries are selling trees at $30 a pop, plus exorbitant shipping, Vaughns is plugging along at less than 10 bucks a tree and actual shipping costs.

They are nice people and I encourage anyone ordering from them not to take advantage of their generosity and order at least 5 of the cheap trees. I’m pretty sure they lose money on super small orders at their prices.

Undoubtedly some people will think, why should I order that many trees when they can’t get their business model right for small orders. Understand it’s a culture thing. I retail fruit and trees. Sometimes (i.e: most of the time) I sell small orders at a loss just because I want to serve customers.

If you don’t think they have their business model right, then by all means push them to change it, through petty orders, to something like Grandpas orchard which charges $30 per tree plus $50 shipping.

Back to your question Kevin, I have grown Gold Dust. For me, it was a nice tasting peach, but production was so sparse, I couldn’t afford to keep it. That’s the thing, a peach variety doesn’t have to be loaded year after year to be a keeper, but a tree which produces 20 or 50 fruit on average doesn’t cut it for me. I suspect it doesn’t cut it for most home growers either, if there is a clear choice of another variety in the same ripening window which consistently produces 200 peaches per tree of roughly the same quality.

The caveat is that I only grew Gold Dust for a few years, so never really let my one tree of this variety really have a prolonged test. However, there was at least one other experienced grower on this forum who mentioned the same lack of productivity, so I think I made the right decision to cut my trial slightly short.

Carolina Gold on the the other hand ripens at the opposite end of the season. I had some trouble getting my first Carolina Gold to really jump start it’s production. However, once it got going, it has produced a reliably and profusely crop of delicious beautiful peaches in the latter part of the season. The flesh is a beautiful clean yellow flesh color with no red in the flesh. The skin has a light attractive blush. Very nice peach. As a result of my experience with this variety, I have quite a few other Carolina Gold trees planted, but not yet in production.

[thecityman]

That is amazing what you said about hoping people don’t abuse vaughns because I had exactly the same thoughts. When I first talked to the owner this year I asked if he would sell me just a few trees and he had no idea what a “few” meant when he said to me “we’d rather sell 10 or more but we hate to turn down orders of any size, so we’ll try to take care of you”. That was almost an exact quote and endeared me to him. I ordered 12 and let him know it was partly because I felt I owed it to him based on his prices and shipping costs and I wished I could take more. Honestly, I think it would be perfectly fine for him to just advertise a minimum order of 10 trees. Heck, 10 trees from Vaughn’s would still be cheaper than just 4 trees from most other vendors. And while the trees were smaller, they weren’t THAT small and they had good roots and almost all of mine have taken off like crazy. In fact, I sort of like the small size- I find them easy to get into the shape I want (ie spread open, fairly evenly spaced vertically, etc). So yes, Vaughns is great and I hope others will place reasonable orders and not take advantage of their desire to provide great customer service even if it costs them money to do it.

I appreciate the review of Gold Dust. I’d heard many great things about taste but the low production hadn’t been known to me. I am glad you like Carolina Gold, since it was one of those I just got from Vaughn’s. I knew it was a fairly late peach but temporarly confused it in my last post as being in the Gold Dust window. In spite of me having somewhere around 25 varieties of peaches, I’ve done a very poor job of spreading out my harvest. Probably 85% of my trees all ripen within a 2 week period. I desperately need to get more early and late peaches. That’s what I have concentrated on this year and as my own trees die or get removed by me I’m going to do more of that.