Contender is a great peach for what it is, a peach for northern marginal growing areas. In my 7b area i might, rarely get a late frost but thats not my biggest concern with peach blossom timing. In NW Washington early spring is cold and very wet. The earlier a variety blooms, the wetter it is.
This sets the blossom buds up for all kinds of fungal and bacterial problems. Symptoms ranging from complete shoot dieback to split pit at maturity.
Contender seems to just edge into a better weather window at bloom time for us here resulting in continuous heavy crops every year.
Also, many varieties advertised as freestone by the seller may indeed fall into more of a gray area of semi freestone. For instance of the 9 varieties i grow 4 were advertised as freestone (like Redhaven).
In 30 years of growing peaches i can say that at my site the only freestone peach is Contender.
Blazingstar is close…
I “heard” Contender on Lovell is supposed to be good. I’m not sure of the growth habits, disease resistance, etc. though…
I have an “Arctic Gem” white peach that is a champ in 5b/6a. It consistently has amazing tasting fruit when my other peaches and nectarines don’t, including 50 peaches one year when we hit 24 F on May 20.
We planted a Carolina Gold a couple of years ago, so we have yet to find out about productivity and taste, but the tree has toughed out the cold so far. it it It came highly recommended for all three.
Thank you, sir.
Hey all, I’m new to growing trees and was just wondering if there were any things that I’d need to know about the contender peach tree before it arrives from Gurneys, such as how to spot disease/pests, what to do about what problem, etc.
Thanks!
Congrats on getting a great, hardy peach tree! The most important thing is to monitor for peach borers in late spring and late summer. Borers can destroy a young peach tree!
I would find a good sunny spot for it, decide on a tree structure (usually an open center for peaches), prune after planting, check periodically for borers (it’s a must - watch some videos to learn how), and enjoy the ride!
You don’t have to worry much about diseases or pests during the first two years, until the peach tree starts setting fruit. You may want to cut off a few young terminal twigs if they are affected by oriental fruit moth.
Be ready to fight squirrels once the tree starts producing fruit!
Heres the peach tree now, I planted it around two weeks ago and pulled off all the flowers to encourage root growth as I was told to do so.
I planted it in a mix of miracle gro garden soil, black kow manure, and mostly native soil, ensuring a mound to prevent root rot, also pruned off two or three 3-4 inch dead twig spots that were rubbing
Thumb intruded in this photo
This is one of the best peach pruning series from NC State.
Read up on peach diseases and problems in this forum will help you be prepared for it. Growing peaches is not that easy.
Great video. Thanks for posting this.
Here’s the tree now, it doesn’t seem to have changed much on the outside and ants are all over it constantly, I’m not sure whether that’s bad or not considering its not fruiting this year but I’m hoping the lack of leaf/branch growth means its working hard underground.
Also got a Trugold peach tree, I ordered the 6 foot one but was sent the 2-4 foot one, planted it anyway hoping for a refund or something of that nature, still no response on the Gmail.
Its branching is kind of odd, one of them looks almost like it was grafted on, overall not a great tree considering it wasn’t the one I was supposed to get, maybe it’ll turn out good though.
You contender looks great! I may suggest some pruning to remove vertical dominance and bending the other branch to be more horizontal. There is also a possibility of using lower branches as future scaffolds.
Around what time of year should I do that at?
I prune young peach trees as they grow throughout the summer, whenever the weather is dry. You may want to keep lower branches for a shorter tree, so don’t take them out just yet.
Make sure the ants aren’t setting up an aphid farm
Here it is now, deer unfortunately beat me to the branch I was gonna tie more horizontal. Figured I’d leave one branch on it up top, it’s starting to form new ones already, especially the lower ones. I only ended up doing it a few days ago as it had been very very rainy before then.
Also, here’s my Trugold peach tree that was shipped as a 2-4 foot instead of 5-6 from gurneys, they refunded it though. I wedged a bit of wood in between two of the branches, as it wants both of them right up next to each-other which decreases light in the middle and is just ugly.
Almost everything I planted has gotten nibbled off of by deer, which may help push along root growth so I don’t suppose I’m too mad about it