Full bloom since April 1st, 6a, east of Pittsburgh.
Ornamental?
Both according to this:
It has a great purple foliage (it turns green later in summer) and great peaches. Unfortunately sometimes crop is destroyed by late frost, so it’s hit or miss. But regardless, it looks great as an ornamental tree. I’ll try to post pictures through the growing season.
Back in 2021 heavy crop broke some branches, so I’m trying to get tree size under control during this and next year.
Here’s some peaches from the tree.
2023 harvest is aprox. three 5 gal buckets. Unfortunately a lot of peaches goes to waste because of brown rot and worms since my tree is not sprayed.
Lovely peaches! Roughly what percent do you estimate are fairly clean?
I’d say 50% are clean.
All early drops have worms, period.
10 gal I hand picked 7/11 (note, peaches were not fully ripe yet) would be 40 wormy / 60 clean.
Peaches on the photo above harvested 7/13 (fully ripe) are 90% clean.
Unfortunately with 50/50 ratio peaches are not sharable with friends and neighbors. Each peach has to be cut to make sure it’s worm free.
That’s pretty decent. At least you could share the canned or cooked version if you wanted. Do they do well in pies, if you’ve tried?
Mrs. B says they are very good for cooking because they keep texture when cooked and have very thin skin. She baked two pies and cobbler already. I can comment on taste of both - they are delicious! Family is siding with a cobbler as a winner.
Unfortunately they dont do as well here but i love the tree and peaches when i get them. I planted it the year gurneys released it. This is a huge 25-30 foot tree
Those all look great. In this house I’m both the gardener and the baker…my husband just says he’s the muscle. Mrs. B’s pie crust looks excellent. I’m not too far from you in Ohio, might be a tree to give a whirl. I try to spray very little, and only organic options as much as possible.
Thanks for sharing! Growth habits of both trees seems to be similar - long scaffold branches. When I bought it from Gurneys their website said “Semi-Dwarf, Height: 14 - 15 ft.”, seems like it’s somewhat incorrect
Flat Wonderful is exceptionally good peach for canning! Just opened a jar of Flat Wonderful peaches for Thanksgiving and had a chance to compare it with canned Contender peaches I have (both canned in 2023). Flat Wonderful has much better texture, less acidity, hands down a winner peach for canning in my books.
Flat wonderful started to bloom March 15th this year, two weeks sooner than in 2023. We are expecting temps drop to 22F this week, unfortunately.
I did some heavy summer pruning in 2023, my tree has a much more manageable size right now.
Despite some frost damage two weeks ago, my tree is still in a full bloom showing nice light pink colors and large pretty flowers.
It was really a bad year for my Flat Wonderful crop. Small fruit set, massive fruit rot of underripe peaches, and worms. Hope next year is going to be better.
Bad years happen. We didn’t get any peaches this year unfortunately. Your trees look great though