I’m surprised that some big company hasn’t developed a genetically engineered stone fruit that doesn’t bloom until all frost danger is passed. Seems to me it would be a huge game changer for commercial orchards in the mid west
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I had a young Contender die last spring (1 year in the ground). Not sure what happened, but spring was very late and a lot of other trees were killed off too. This year i expect nothing (from outside stonefruit). I had -31F and im not sure if any of the plums even will make it. I t hink a lot of trees will just be dead…no leaves or anything.
I’ve got a Redhaven and a Reliance, then some seedlings. Some of the seedlings are from grocery store peaches, and some are bred up from Father Davids Peach crossed to tame peaches. The ones with the Father Davids background are frost hardy. We had lovely large peaches off the one that made peaches for the first time last year. I thought I’d remember how many generations there have been, but, ooops, I don’t. My sister in law gave me the Father Davids seeds and I’ve been playing with them for 20 or 30 years, just for fun. Tough peaches, but inedible. Definately need to be crossed and back crossed to something nice, then nature culls the least hardy…we are in the Gulf of St Lawrence, so any peach is a good peach, grin.
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I just planted a Contender peach this spring, and am glad I did after reading all this. Great information! 
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Here in sw Nebraska we are in the same boat as lever101 from Iowa. It’s the brutal cold and the huge swings in temp that kill our stone fruits. I’ve seen 75 in late Jan, and a week later - 15. That’ll kill everything questionable. Last year my contenders made zero fruit, while my red haven and reliance made huge crops. I was pretty disappointed with the contenders, but maybe this year they will shine. I’m still not sure why those produced but the contenders failed.
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I agree with those who have mentioned reliance because it is definately a very good peach in less than perfect peach growing locations! Reliance always makes a crop and seems to have more disease resistance than contender at my location. If i find the right spray contender might have less problems.
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Clarkinks - I have a feeling that location has a lot to do if Reliance or Contender does better for you. I lost my more mature Contender tree last year to borers. Up until that point Contender had always produced fruit, where Reliance had not. I do not have to worry about trees dying from extreme cold or the buds being damaged prior to the onset of bud swell/bloom, the temperatures in my area do not get that low. For me the issue is frost and it is a bad issue where I live. Contender has always bloomed later than Reliance and been more frost hardy. Of course my experience could be a one off.
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I only have one reliance peach and it doesn’t bloom any later than most of my other peaches. It also seems to get peach leaf curl as much as most others if I don’t spray correctly. These characteristics seem to contrast with observations of people I trust like @clarkinks. So this causes my mind to go where it so often does when one of my trees doesn’t seem to be behaving like someone else : Is it a mislabel? My Reliance certainly could be. I can’t help but wonder the same thing about some of your contender’s- like @Jagchaser who says his/her red haven’s and reliance made fruit when his/her contenders did not. That is just so very different from my experience (the exact opposite in fact) that I’m wondering if you have a mislabel? Again, it’s happened to me many times so its not any kind of put down- just curious if you just have one contender or several and if several, do they all act the same?
Most likely, though, its what we all keep seeing here over and over…the same tree grown in different climates and micro climates (temps, soils, rainfall, etc) can behave very differently!
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You are really close to me, did your contenders produce last year?
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Sorry, that was meant for Clark. Haven’t figured out how to reply with a quote…
Mislableing could very well be what is going on, thanks for mentioning it.
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@Jagchaser
Yes they produced a few peaches but the drought was horrible last year. Reliance were small but absolutely delicious last year.
I think Cityman brings up a good point. There are so many mislabels sold. Not only with big box stores (which are the worst) but reputable nurseries too. I’ve bought several lots of trees where even within the lot there was a mislabel (i.e. a tree in the lot bloomed and/or ripened differently than the others in the same lot). Sometimes I could tell the “descrete” substitution of variety was intentional (i.e. the peach ripened in the same window as the one I ordered, but still wasn’t what I ordered). It’s true there are sometimes bud sport mutations which can be passed through grafting, but I don’t think these were bud sports.
I suspect it’s even worse for small orders where the nurseries know that most consumers probably don’t even know what varieties they want, or will do best (our knowledgeable fruit forum members excepted). I’m selling a few peach trees locally right now and don’t even list the varieties. All I state is the varieties are proven in my orchard. So far only one person has even asked about what varieties they are.
Sometimes if you grow several varieties, one can do a bit of detective work to try to determine if the variety in question is true to name. Bloom time, type of bloom, harvest window, and leaf glands can be pieces of evidence to determine trueness.
We, as fruit tree enthusiasts, we shouldn’t have to work this hard to get the cultivar we want, but unfortunately, many times, that’s the state of it.
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So true, Mark.
Waited 3 years to find out that my Winblo just blew. It is a yellow rootstock peach.
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I doubt any peach will survive -32F.
I lost a Reliance down to the bud union (which had a foot of snow on it) in ‘94 when Akron, OH got to -25, although the area the tree was in probably got closer to -30.
Bryan,
There have actually been a few people on the forum who’ve indicated they had some peach trees survive temps close to that. It surprises me too, but the sources seemed credible to me.
I have a book which was a gift from a friend called “The Kansas Peach” written around 1900. In it there were several accounts of peach trees surviving that kind of record cold in KS a few years previous.
But I agree, these are far more the exceptions than the norm. I think for a peach tree to be able to survive that kind of temp, it has to be a cold hardy variety and have perfect weather patterns to provide maximum acclimation to the cold.
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I think you are really hitting the nail on the head about the possibility of mislabeling. Sometimes when I see half the forum like a variety and the other half state it has problems for them it makes me think that 40 years ago a nursery started a mother tree with mislabeled scion and now you have two “contenders” floating around out there. A friend of mine raises cattle and now the registered bulls are often DNA tested, it’s pretty amazing the number of different breeds hidden in their DNA that you would have never known were there. Maybe someday it will be relatively inexpensive to have trees tested to see exactly what a person is growing. I bet there would be some surprises.
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I agree Derby. I read once, even with the industry standard Redhaven, there are several “strains” of that variety floating around, but nobody identifies which strain they are selling.
Quite a few years ago even a patented apple rootstock from the Geneva program was being propagated and sold on a large scale through tissue culture. A very clever apple grower was able to identify the mislabel so they were able to correct the problem.
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A long time ago when this forum first started or possibly on the old garden web, I posted that I was not happy with my “red haven” as it rarely produced any fruit. It was you who pointed out that redhaven was the a standard in the world of peaches and I probably had a tree that was mislabeled. Up until then I had always just assumed what the label said was accurate. Back to topic, I have several contenders I moved from the nursery bed to permanent locations in the yard this spring, I’m hoping they do well here and I don’t have the issues that Clark speaks of. I should have fruit next year I hope.
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I’ve been wondering how other people perceive the flavor of Contender when compared to Redhaven. So far, mine have been OK, but not as intensely flavored as Redhaven. I this typical, or is something else going on?