Sounds like you are getting plenty of good advice. I’m not even a commercial grower so you probably are best off sticking with the info you are getting elsewhere. They at least know your conditions. If it is based on leaf analysis I think it would be accurate and soil type would likely affect what the leaves tell.
I have known commercial growers here that rely mostly on the vigor they see in their trees, though.
A lot of commercial growers here, do the same thing. When a tree
reaches a certain size they cut back on the fertilizer. We normally feed
our trees in March with 10-10-10, depending upon the age and size of the tree.
We also add some 15.5-0-0, when the fruit reaches golf ball size. It helps the
fruit to size up. My trees grew so big this year, I will definitely cut back on
feeding next year, and may not feed them at all. I’d love to prune my trees
now, but our heat index has been over 100 every day for the past two months,
and I wouldn’t last 10 minutes. So I may have to resort to fall pruning, and do
touch up before bud break.
Alan’s comments often cause me to reflect on my own ideas, and this is no exception. After considering the comment above, I’m inclined to agree. I’ve been concerned about wounds too large to heal on peach trees, but I’ve really never seen any problems by unhealed wounds. From a commercial perspective, even if problems developed, the tree would have ended it’s productive life anyway.
Perhaps part of my thinking on being concerned with peach wounds healing, was a recent tree I grafted on too large a stump. I think in this case, the wound is too large to heal for a brand new tree. Here is a pic.
I really shouldn’t have grafted a peach stump so large. It’s not shown in the picture, but there were mushrooms growing out where the grafted tree is trying to heal. I’m pretty sure the little tree will be hollowed out before it can callus over. The wood in the center is very soft and can be dug out with a fingernail. If it hollows out, I suspect it will blow over in high wind.
Of course this is different than the discussion at hand about cutting off large scaffolds ,or topping a peach tree. In that case, I’ll retract my comment about too large a wound. As Alan points out in his experience, there probably isn’t any negative in a large peach wound, unless one’s orchard has some serious issues with canker, or lesser peach tree borer.
What do these two taste like and are they free stone. Any comparisons to
any of prince series or winblo.
Ray
Ray,
Glenglo is semi-free. The peach will generally separate from the stone, but it takes some manipulation. Glohaven is completely freestone.
I’ve only harvested Julyprince, so don’t have a lot of experience with Prince peaches. I have a lot of them planted, but only Julyprince has fruited so far.
I’m really finding there isn’t a lot of difference between a lot of peaches once we get past the early season. The biggest factor I’ve seen is the amount of rain we get. Lots of rain here means that only the very uppermost peaches are going to be really good. Three weeks or more of dry hot weather means lot’s more high quality peaches, so there is a lot of variability year to year, even with a single variety. Of course there are tons of exceptions to this rule, but that’s more or less what I see with commercial varieties.
Most of the time it’s dry here in the last part of July through Aug. and peaches tend to be very good during that window.
I think Winblo is very good, but this year I liked Ernies Choice (ripens the same time) a lot better in terms of flavor. Both have sugar, but Ernies Choice has more zing. Winblo gets more bac. spot on the leaves. Ernies Choice gets more bac. spot on the fruit. Ernies choice produces more uneven fruit size, whereas Winblo produces very uniform fruit.
Glohaven ripens a little before Julyprince. Both are very good. This is the first year Julyprince has fruited, so it’s hard to estimate what the fruit size will eventually be like. It produced large fruit for a first harvest, so my guess is that when the tree matures, it will produce some very large fruit indeed. Still, it would be hard for me to imagine a tree producing much bigger fruit than Glohaven. The tree produced fruits routinely above 1/2 pound. Most of them were around 3/4 pound. Not just a few fruit either, but lots and lots of fruit very large.
Glenglo produces the biggest cleanest fruit of any early peach I’ve grown. The fruit also runs a bit more consistent (flavorwise) throughout the tree. What I love about this variety is that you go through and pick the big ripe ones, then a few days later lots of other fruits have sized up just as big. You pick those and and the tree does the same thing with the remaining fruit. The last picking is almost as big as the first.
I’ve only harvested this peach for two years, so I could be in for some surprises, but so far, from a commercial perspective, this variety is so far ahead of other varieties, I’m not sure why commercial nurseries aren’t shouting the praises of this peach off the rooftops. I have about 9 of these trees (half are on Guardian, the others on Lovell) and would like to add more. As Warren Buffet-quoting Mae West- once said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”
I looked up some reviews of glohaven and this what I found,
My Experience with this Peach (Rating Scale 1-10)
Acidity: 6
Peach Flavor: 4
Sweetness: 5
Juiciness: 5
So I was wondering, what your experiences were. I like big peaches,
but if the flavor isn’t there, that’s another story. I realize that first year
fruit can be very misleading. All of my Prince series fruited this year for
the first time and July Prince and Fire Prince were the most flavorful, but
nothing came close to Winblo. Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I’m REALLY impressed with winblo. There is nothing I don’t like about this variety, and it was a first year fruiter too. I have it on both Halford and Guadian and I’m anxious to see, if that has any effect on it. The halford was the one that fruited this year, and the guardian should really fruit next year, as I removed all of the fruit from it, in order to get the tree to grow bigger.
Not everyone one likes acid with that sugar as much as you and I. When I first steered you to Coralstar it was because it was a huge peach that also had relatively high acid- sorry that one didn’t work out for you, although it’s a fine peach here.
What I like about Glenglo is that it has just a bit higher brix than other early peaches in its season.
Here, Earnie’s choice is a great tasting, acid kicking peach, but for a home peach the harvest is done too quickly- like in a week.
If it wasn’t such a terrible year for peaches here I’d have lots more to say about these and many other varieties. What I really miss are my nectarines. Most varieties have higher sugar AND higher acid than most peaches. I ate one at a clients place today, forget the variety, which in the past I wasn’t ga-ga for but this year it was fruit of the gods to my palate. I’m not very jaded this season.
Ray,
I’m surprised Glohaven rated so low on the flavor and sweetness scale. Here it was very good in terms of flavor.
Very accurate term for this peach imo. Acid Kicking, or maybe “Kick Acid Peach” 
Ernies Choice reminds me some of a nectarine. Concentrated flavor.
I got to try your Summer Beaut nects this year. Very very good. The only one better this year was Nectafest. It was maybe a tad more “concentrated” than Summer Beaut.
Yeah, I just searched for evaluations and you are apparently Glohaven’s biggest fan. Typical review is that it’s sweet without a lot of peach flavor. Best attribute seems to be resistance to spring frosts.
I can’t seem to find many reviews on Glohaven.
Rayrose, the review you mention is a blogger who doesn’t grow peaches, but just buys them from Farmer’s markets. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in that one. As you know one could pick low peaches off just about any variety and come up with a pretty mediocre peach.
I did find a review from Clemson. They list 14.3 brix (I know that sounds low for Fruitnut’s brix numbers, but that’s actually a good brix for Clemson evaluations). They also say, “good flavor, really nice acidic taste”
That’s exactly how I would rate the peach. Sweet and acidic peach. Clemson does rate the peach as only 2.5" which is much much smaller than mine this year. They were way in excess of 3" here. I sold one which weighed a pound and many were 3/4 pound.
I also wouldn’t put much trust into such reviews. Peaches I see at local farmer markets are hard as a rock. They need at least another week or two on the tree to reach desirable quality. Also, so many vendors have no idea what varieties they sell.
Also, if you aren’t comparing a variety to others ripening at the same time, the quality will vary based on soil wetness (at specific stages of ripening process), clearness of days and temps, which vary through the ripening season. Some years favor early ripeners, some mid and some late ripeners.
Evaluations even made by universities are only so useful. I think they are probably more reliable when made in the west coast where weather is much more consistent than in the rest of the country. Of course, they wouldn’t necessarily hold up in different conditions.
One thing I have noticed, universities tend to rate varieties more highly if they own the patent (mothers pride, I figure- although the appraisers would benefit indirectly from any windfall of a successful patent). Glohaven will get no boost from that.
I have learned that many years of experience growing fruit especially in multiple locations like you do trumps a PHD in fruit science! The soil tests, leaf tests and the advice I get from my state university are valuable. However, it can be tough to get a useful answer when I have a big problem. Seems the experts don’t like to venture outside their specialty, which can put a non expert like myself in a tough spot. Are the defects on my apples caused by a nutrition problem, an insect problem or a disease? Only the experienced grower knows. So far the disease folks don’t want to talk about problems that may be caused by insects and the insect folks don’t talk about non insect problems.
That’s what trial and error is all about. Personal experimentation at your
own sight is the only thing on which you can rely. Published studies
done at universities are mostly not worth the paper on which they’re written.
I can attest to this after having spent over 30 years in that arena.
Geeze Ray I published a lot of papers in production ag I’m proud of and would stand behind any day.
Trial and error works great on a small scale, but when thousands of dollars are at risk its an expensive method. I’m doing some trial and error testing on my apple spray program this year because I have a small crop. In order to continue to grow apples on a small commercial scale, my spray program will require major improvements. I can not afford to do years of trial and error testing so I have to count on the PHD’s from the state college or find some type of paid consultant that can help.
Unfortunately, most customers are more focused on the appearance of the fruit than the taste of the fruit. We work hard to educate our customers that more chemicals are required to produce “pretty fruit” but its an impossible task.
I have pretty good success educating my customers, but it is a little different. I educate them to accept a low synthetic spray schedule instead of trying to do it organically most of the time and I also usually educate them to put up with summer fungus on apples and other blemishes on other fruit to keep the number of sprays low. But I am selling them tree ripened fruit on their own trees on their property, charging for each spray. so there are various incentives for them to follow my advice.
Steve,
I said MOST studies. I’m sure your’s were the exception.
I was planing on doing some summer pruning then I read this research article. The conclusion is that summer pruning of apples and peaches has very little benefit with a few exceptions.
http://extension.psu.edu/plants/tree-fruit/news/2014/summer-pruning-apple-and-peaches
I’ve noticed this with my peach and Apple trees too. They are next to each other but peach tree is growing nicely while the Apple looks like it’d rather be some place else. Does this simply mean Apple trees need to be fertilized much more than peach?
