Baby Crawford may be under appreciated

I am getting some ripened Baby Crawfords now, wow, very impressive flavor! It is a rich creamy flavor, the classic Crawford peach. I have it grafted to Early Crawford which is much more sour than Baby C. I’m going to let BC take over a good chunk of my EC tree now.

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I’m surprised no one has mentioned that it’s “The best-flavored peach, according to California Rare Fruit Growers in the Santa Clara Valley area” (http://www.davewilson.com/product-information/product/baby-crawford-peach).

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I was at Andy’s Orchard yesterday. Baby Crawford is the signature peach there, most talked about. It is medium to large in size with mostly yellow skin and minimal fuzz. It is so flavorful, juicy and pleasant tasting. I tasted at least 25-30 other varieties of peaches and nectarines, Baby Crawford is one of the very best tasting of them all. I don’t understand where the “Baby” comes from, I should have asked.

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Baby Crawford is prone to significant over-setting and if you don’t thin heavily you will get small fruit. I visited Andy’s orchard several years ago and the “Baby” Crawfords there were bigger than softballs … clearly he knows how to surmount that obstacle :grinning:

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Scott do not know what happened to my Early Crawford this year. I still have a number hanging on the tree. The peaches are still small, green and very hard. One has a hint of blush. What is up? In the past they were ripe by now.

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Now I wish I could get a hold of a Baby Crawford tree for my urban orchard.

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Mine are ripening soon and yours should be several weeks later so I would say its still early for them. They often don’t size up well at all, especially if they are not thinned heavily. Sometimes peaches just stop growing due to lack of nutrients to the fruits, but the tree has to look pretty sad for that to happen.

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The tree is very healthy, so that means I am impatient. :relaxed:

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From my experience at Andy’s Orchard, his fruit is about 50% larger than normal (compared to what I grow and what I see at other places). A volunteer at Andy’s Orchard told me that Andy makes foliar sprays with some type of kelp fertilizer to increase the fruit size (I don’t know any more details). Also, I think Andy irrigates much more than I do. For example, his Afghanistan apricots were at least 50% larger than mine, but not nearly as sweet and flavorful.

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I thought Andy was the master fruit guru. That sounds more like just another commercial fruit grower. Guess I won’t make a special trip to see his orchard.

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Too bad, I really wanted to visit this place but from what I have heard from others here multiple times, his fruit is oversized, overwatered and just not as flavorful as it could be. That’s not a great combo unless you are a commercial grower, where people cant taste fruit first, just buy for size and color. At least he has a lot of varieties!

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Dave Wilson description of BC: “Small, intensely flavored yellow meated freestone, with golden orange skin with slight blush.” Weird how the documented descriptions don’t match real growing experiences. You’re pictures look nothing like the standard pic’s i’ve seen of BC’s. Also interesting that they can also actually grow to large peaches.

I would love try BC but i stay away from anything with more than 500-600 chill hours. I’m walking the 8A and 8B zone type rope.

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Certainly, Andy has so much more varieties than a typical commercial fruit grower. He also contributed a lot to fruit breeding and brought so many worthy cultivars from obscurity (Baby Crawford being an example of that). I also think he does much more fruit thinning than many others. All in all, if you don’t grow your own fruit, Andy’s Orchard is probably the best place to get high-quality fruit in the Bay area. Still, he is a commercial grower and has to make a profit to maintain his business. He cannot just grow fruit for himself, family and friends as many of us do.

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That sounds more like just another commercial fruit grower

Andy’s Orchard is NOT another commercial orchard. I did not notice any watering going on there, the soil everywhere was dry and dusty. Fruit is picked, by visitors (if you go there) or workers at or near the peak of ripeness from the trees, commercial growers pick the fruit hard and store it for months in huge bins chill then warm up the fruit for grocery store customers. Much of the fruit is grown in his orchard that IS NOT commercially viable including many rare heirloom varieties that will bruise easily during shipping. I do not understand where these rumors come from on this forum, The purpose of Andy’s Orchard is old time fruit growing preservation for the most part.Go there, it is worth a visit. You will now have to wait until June 2018.

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That’s a very low hurdle to overcome. :wink: If you compare to similar operations (rather than supermarket suppliers), there are dozens of U-Pick orchards in Brentwood where you can harvest fruit at any level of ripeness that you like. Compared to these, Andy’s fruit is maybe marginally better if at all but for about twice the price (of course, the variety of the cultivars that he offers significantly exceeds anybody else’s). And it’s my humble opinion that you can grow better fruit at home (in similar conditions, i.e., in California). The fruit quality issue is completely separate from Andy’s merits at preserving and popularizing old and rare fruit cultivars, which nobody questions.

During the June visit, as long as I followed the guide (i.e., in the rows with the fruit that was ripe at that time), the ground was dry. When I wandered away to areas where fruit was not ripe yet (specifically, plums and pluots that were then a few weeks from the harvest time), the ground was so wet I couldn’t proceed.

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The best way to answer FN is to buy some fruit and do some brix readings. Refractometers are cheap and testing fruit is easy. Andy may get large fruit by watering early and turning down the spigot in the final month or two of ripening creating a product that is big AND sweet. Of course, thinning is something that most commercial growers don’t do adequately for best fruit when they can’t do it chemically. Labor is expensive and difficult to direct precisely.

I would love to know his methods and the actual quality of his fruit, in terms of brix. A debate with actual information is much more interesting than ones based only on opinions. I’m sure Fruitnut would also be interested to know the exact time water deficit does the most good.

For me it is mostly just out of curiosity. I can irrigate during dry springs but can do nothing about wet summers.

Incidentally, commercial growers may store fruit for a couple of weeks, but, as far as I know, only pears and apples are stored for months by growers in this country. Some varieties of plums and pluots can also be stored for up to a month or so- the Zaigers have focused on that. .

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Well, they try to make it sound all personal by calling it “Andy’s Orchard”, but he’s Andy Mariani. His family is the definition of commercial fruit grower/packer. I enjoyed visiting for a fruit tasting, but there were a few things that unsettled me.

  1. Volunteers. He uses volunteers on his farm, and pays them in fruit. I doubt they get enough fruit to cover minimum wage. Totally illegal.
  2. When I was there, the baby crawfords tasted so bland. Several people around me remarked that they get better grocery store peaches and I agreed.
  3. They act like all the fruit was grown on the farm, but they buy in fruit for the tastings.
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Wow, that is sad, and so Scrooge-like!

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I agree. No one stores the stone fruits Andy grows for months. There is no reason to hold it for any significant period. There are always other varieties coming with later picking dates. Summer apples aren’t stored for long either.

The stone fruit we get from Chile in winter is on container ships for longer periods. We know how that works out, very badly.

That’s really disappointing

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Aren’t the volunteers just CRFG volunteers for the tastings? I don’t think they are regular orchard workers. Yes Andy is a commercial grower and might be watering his fruit more than we would like, but from everything I have seen he is a very ethical guy. He has also helped popularize many rare heirlooms. When I went to a tasting at his place I thought the peaches were very good overall.

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