Bacterial spot can be bad anywhere out of the dry areas of the US. I have a few varieties it can be a real problem on, e.g. O;'Henry. This year the combination of spot and cracking (which spot makes worse) was really bad on them, I got few peaches. All Califormia-bred peaches are a risk for that reason and brown rot is a second big risk on them. But, the dice roll and sometimes the roll is good - Rio Oso Gem, Kit Donnell, Gold Dust, … - many fantastic western peaches are doing very well on the spot and rot front.
… on the topic of the August Flame, I emailed Burchell and got a very nice reply I thought was worth sharing.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for stopping by our site and ordering a peach tree.
No doubt you could get a tree for a lot less at your local garden center. What makes our site and products unique and our prices higher is that we ship you a bigger tree in a 5 gallon container ready to go. Not many sites can offer year round shipping of fruit trees, in soil, big, ready to go. Our unique packaging ensures your tree will arrive undamaged. Because of the size and weight of the tree it is considered oversized for the shipping companies. They charge more for the size and our shipping charge just covers what the shipping company charges us.
I see you bought our August Flame peach tree. That is a great peach, large and full of flavor. It is a variety we developed in our breeding program so not only will you find large trees shipped year round at our site you will find varieties not offered any where else. We have been growing and developing new peach varieties for over 70 years and we have introduced some outstanding peach varieties such as O’Henry and Elegant Lady.
I hope you will be happy with your purchase. Please let us know when your tree arrives. It is our goal to provide unique, quality varieties of fruit trees, shipped year round and ready to go.
Happy gardening!
Tom Burchell
So, the prices are high but not as off-base as I was mentioning above. I did not realize they were 5-gal container trees.
Speaking of late season peaches Paul Friday has Fashionably Late +54 days.
Friday is still producing new peaches, although the man is getting up there in age. A new +50 nectarine is out. Even an apple now.
I kinda wanted to try this one, but I think I will skip it, thanks for the info. I don’t have much room, so I have to limit choices to proven winners for my area.
It had leaf spot problems, but I have little problem with leaf spot on anything these days. The fruits come through very nicely. It is definitely more prone to leaf spot than your average variety.
I do not buy any advantage to shipping trees in 5 gallon pots already leafed out and I find it somewhat offensive to read of a nurserymen hyping it as an advantage to a customer beyond the fact that if you are not a planner and into instant grat, you can order and plant a tree during the growing season.
Bare root is always superior in a small tree if it comes with a reasonable amount of root (which can’t fit into a 5 gal pot anyway).
This is more true of peaches than anything else I grow. I bare root 2" caliber trees with massive root systems that often plug in with no delay and can bear a good crop the very first season. Peaches do not transplant very well from containers. I don’t even offer them from containers in my nursery anymore- they suffer even in 25 gallon containers once they get any size.
I believe Augustprince is probably better peach than Flameprince, especially in terms of bacterial spot which can be a big problem in my area. With similar names like “fire” or “flame” it hard for me to keep many of the Georgia peaches straight.
In some cases it was necessary for me to purchase the second or perhaps the third best peach for a given ripening window because the variety I wanted to purchase was not available. Also, I used to get a lot of good information from the peach variety evaluation section of the Clemson web site which now requires a password. The Clemson research was very helpful for me since their climate is very similar to my climate. I made an inquiry to the Clemson helpdesk to see if the peach variety research is still open to the general public.
There is no comparison of these two here. Victoria ripens about 2 weeks later under a different sun.
O’henry proved itself a very unreliable producer here in S. NY before it died this season. Winblo also died which makes me question if either is hardy enough for Z6
As you know, our original comments were written 2015. Quite a few of those peaches I commented on, I had only one year’s experience with harvesting fruit (always dicey to comment on a variety without much experience with it).
That was the case with Victoria then. I had harvested O’henry for quite a few years already though. As I recall from memory, I wasn’t as negative on O’henry because it hadn’t shown it’s complete unproductive potential to me. Now I fully disavow this peach at my location because of it’s lack of productivity.
I don’t consider Winblo any poorer on hardiness than others in that window. It’s actually grown on me the last few years. It can be shy bearing, but generally no worse than other peaches for that window, like Ernies Choice. Allstar is very productive for that window, but doesn’t taste as good as Winblo or Ernies Choice. Ernies Choice is the strongest tasting peach for that window. Of all the peaches I’ve grown, I’d say EC is the closest flavored peach to a nectarine. I’m not saying EC tastes like a nectarine, but the closest peach to a nect in terms of flavor, of the peaches I’ve grown. Winblo is also very nicely flavored, but much milder flavored, imo.
One thing I like about Winblo is that it produces very uniform large peaches. Very beautiful.
Here Coralstar does the same, but Winblo may have been slightly higher brix- impossible to be anywhere near sure from my evidence.
Your evaluations have the advantage of several or many trees of the same variety in a row with same conditions and full sun. You compare them to other varieties also with multiple trees growing in almost identical conditions.
My observations are based on much more scattershot samples often in different soils and microclimates.
We both see things the other misses so it’s great to be able to pool both and all the other input from our diverse members.