Many peach varieties were tested for central NC in 2008. Varieties preferred by big peach producer are marked with *.
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Thanks @blueberrythrill — I noticed the Rich May at the top (listed by harvest date). And the comments…
I looked up several images via google on bacterial spot (on peach leaves and fruit)… I have not seen that on my other varieties here (Early Elberta, Reliance ? Rising Star)… and have never seen peach leaf curl either… I did see lots of brown rot this past (extra rainy spring, summer)… especially on my later peaches (that ripen in July).
Organic treatments (for BR and bacterial spot ???) seem to include Bonide copper fungicide type products ? I may have to eventually try that.
PS… at my new location I am going to plant MOSTLY (no spray and normally get good fruit) type stuff.
I may only plant 1 or 2 peach trees… the Rich May and possibly one other… I definitely will not be going overboard on stuff that may need even organic sprays to produce good fruit. I really like my Early Elberta peach… they taste great and ripen June 15-25 or so here… I expect Rich May would ripen first and then E Elberta… I hope to be able to graft my E Elberta to some rootstock to get it moved to my new location.
TNHunter
I had John Boy peaches this year. Before I liked peaches, but I loved these. I think this is an older variety - most new commercial trees are other varieties.
Loring and its sports including Johnboy are outstanding performers in my part of the NE and OHenry has not tended to suffer much from Bac Spot, it used to be widely grown in the south, I believe. It may be relatively tender to what we call extreme cold here. Loring is supposed to be more susceptible than other varieties to spring frost injury than some other peaches but that’s rarely an issue that condemns the Loring crop but saves Redhaven IME.
The Clemson breeding program is what I believe you are referring to. For some reason their chart of varietal recommendations for commercial growers is being blocked and I could only find this. Peaches & Nectarines | Home & Garden Information Center
Here is one from UGA that seems to indicate O’Henry is still grown commercially there. It also lists nurseries where the varieties they recommend can be purchased. Cultivars | Peaches
Here is a more comprehensive guide for home growers from UGA-Home Garden Peaches | UGA Cooperative Extension
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I have a neighbor down the road that grows O’Henry. He has 6 trees. All are in very poor soil next to his house and in poorer soil in his back yard, he does nothing to them at all. No pruning, no care. No watering. Maybe he did when they were younger though. Trees are overloaded each year, all small to mid sized and alot of bees eat them as they rot on the tree. All fruits underneath are left to rot. He said they are about 10-15 years old he doesnt remember. Probably the best tasting peach i have tasted in late august but again kind of small due to over production.
Zone 6B West Virginia.
I am adding 2 O’Henrys in the spring due to his being so dang tough. I hope by giving mine care and pruning that they will resemble his trees taste and vigor.
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Some of the peaches with asterisks on the North Carolina list failed for me.
But I’m sure my climate is a tougher peach climate than North Carolina, or many areas in the Northeast.
Rich May wasn’t very productive here and it had trouble getting decent sugar because it always ripened during the rainy time.
Sentry was a complete flop. The peaches were good, but trees never produced a full crop.
Topaz is a relative of Loring and wasn’t very productive for me.
Bounty was a complete dud, as mentioned earlier.
O’henry was a bac. spot magnet for me. It also didn’t produce very well, both in my backyard and at the orchard. But the peaches were of high flavor quality.
Snow Giant bloomed too early, bad bac. spot. Unproductive here.
Autumnprince I still have planted but it seems to ripen too late here. It also gets bac. spot.
Others which had asterisks either have done well, or I’ve not tried.
I noticed Clayton is on the list (but no asterisk). I’m liking this peach more and more. I originally got the wood from Scott. It does produce a smallish peach, which isn’t very pretty, but as the description indicates, the taste is excellent. It also drops fruit easily, which is a pretty big disadvantage commercially speaking, but it is a very reliable producer. It was one of the very few peaches which produced after -17F winter weather and a late spring frost. Off the top of my head, the only other peaches which produced anything worthy of mentioning this year were Redhaven, Contender (full crop) Winblo, Carolina Gold, Risingstar.
Like I mentioned, mine is a tough peach growing climate. So what doesn’t work here, may well work in less harsh areas.
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Here is a pretty good Peach Cultivar Performance from Univ of Kentucky for those interested in more details on disease resistance etc.
Same here… it was hard to get rid of it given how tasty it was, but it finally got the axe. It is also highly prone to peach scab.
Glad to hear Clayton is doing well for you Mark. My tree had bad borers and was about to die, but after getting rid of them it got a second life and is starting to produce well again.
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I like it enough that I budded quite a few new trees this fall. I currently have 4 mature trees of it, but have 22 new spaces slated for Clayton. Thanks for suggesting it and the sending wood.
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Here is some history on Clayton and other older varieties such as Winblo from the Univ of NC.
Clayton seems like a very nice choice.
Norman looks to be a very good candiate as well.
Review at Cummins Nursery
I may add Norman to my plot.
Correction! Make that NC State (NCSU) not Univ of NC (UNC). I’m not sure why but with the exception of Winblo, most of these old NCSU varieties are no longer popular in NC. Winblo was called the “Perfect Peach” by Desmond Layne in his video series on peaches when he was at Clemson. Winblo really is a great peach in my area.
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Where I am it is just another good peach- which can be perfect when the stars align. However, mine seems to have frozen to death. NYS Z6.
You grow them commercially- what else ripens in its season that is better? That is the question for many home growers that can afford years of low crops to have delicious peaches 2 weeks earlier than the next to ripen in their orchard. Your situation there is fairly common high rainfall in early summer, while in the NE every month of the year averages 3-4 inches.
Here, Flavor May was great this last season, actually about as flavorful at some sites as a peach can be. The varieties that ripen about 10 days later like Desiree and your beloved (for a white) Spring Snow were worthless, because of about 2 weeks of rain during last stage of ripening- beautiful peaches with brix below 10.
Many people fail to take into account the weather leading up to ripening when evaluating peaches in the humid region (no you, of course). You get a spell of drought as a peach ripens and it makes a lot more difference than variety in the quality of the fruit.
Where I am, the best guarantee of some really good peaches is to have a range of varieties that bear throughout the season- the dry, blue-sky warm spells will produce your best peaches.
I think it depends on the situation. You are right commercially speaking in this area, FlavorRich/Rich May is a non-starter. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to most home orchardists either.
The reason being most home orchardists are limited in space, or only want a very limited number of trees to care for. I wouldn’t recommend Rich May for a home grower who only wants to, or has space for, 3 peach trees. They could plant 3 different cultivars and still have lots of dependable ripe peaches throughout the season.
The exception would be someone wanting a super early peach to try as a no spray cultivar. Or if someone was in an ideal peach growing climate (like CA where the peach was bred) it would probably set more consistent heavy crops.
In your situation, you have 2 or 3 acres for your nursery, as I recall. And you place a high value on eating the best quality fresh fruits all summer. So it’s no sweat to grow some things which are on or off some years. Not the typical backyard grower.
Terroir is a popular topic with wine grapes and wine, but I don’t see it discussed often with tree fruit. It probably should be. We have noticed that just a slight change in climate, elevation, aspect or soil can make a huge difference in which varieties or types of fruit do well. Fortunately, peaches do well in my area so I just planted varieties known to do well here. It was not necessary to try dozens of varieties. Unfortunately, apples do not do well and although we chose varieties and rootstocks that did well 100 miles to the north or 100 miles to the west but they did not prosper in our terroir. We could do better if we sprayed the apples more, but after a while we came to understand that they were not happy or productive here. Information on how well various peach varieties do in other climates is interesting but I believe it’s necessary to test them on your site unless you can identify varieties that are proven to well in your area. Lots of folks just want to grow fruit and not conduct a science experiment but from what I have seen some experimentation is necessary.
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Here it’s hard to pick cultivars for weather concerns. The weather here is reliably unpredictable.
We have wet springs and dry spring and just right springs, same with fall. We have floods about every 20 years. Although no real time table. It has happened 3 times in the last 65 years. One being 3 years ago, so I’m good for a decade or two. So my solution is having fruit ripen throughout the season. Although I don’t want early stone fruit. I’m way too busy with perennial fruit bushes in early spring. Only so much of me to go around. Anyway it has worked well as I usually get something to work even if I have fails. This year was a great year I had only a couple fails. Every year is so different though. This year the weather in spring was normal, also normal in summer, and wet in the fall (very unusual).
Next year fall can be drought like, one just does not know here.
So I found out overall 90% of Michigan had normal weather this year. So this is a typical year, and all my fails had nothing to do with the weather. Like strawberries failed to produce well due to patches being too crowded. My biggest fail. Now redone for next year. Strawberries in well spaced areas produced fantastic. In my county (Macomb) the average precipitation for 12 months is 31 inches.
We got 37 inches this year. Slightly wetter than average. We got five inches in October, 2 inches above normal, as I said a wet fall. I find this info very useful to planning future growing seasons. Since this was an average year here, it tells me what will work most seasons. Luckily just about everything worked and I noted what did not. A lot of plums didn’t work well here this year, and a lot did, nice to know what works. Peaches did well, but I have so few. I need scion to replace losses some of you will be hearing from me for requests. I lost trees 3 years ago in our every other decade flood. I got 20 years not to worry about it now. I still need to replace what I lost. Life keeps getting in the way of gardening and maintaining the orchard!
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Here it requires 5-6 cultivars to have ripe peaches on trees throughout the season- that is what a lot of people want when they know they can have it. They’d much rather pick them form the trees than take them out of their refrigerator. What’s more, once a single vigorous peach tree reaches about 5 years of age, it produces too many peaches at once for most families to use. My solution is to sell two or three variety peach trees, and you can be sure one of the trees will at least have a Flavor May graft on it.
My problem is more peaches over bearing than not bearing enough. Flavor May is more susceptible to frost damage than a lot of other varieties, but when not damaged by that, it produces well enough for me- similar to Gold Dust. You can speak for KS, but I’m not sure you can for all of the country outside CA.
A lot of people on this forum have enough land to plant trees based more on what they want than on limitations of space. Almost all of my customers do.
I think that’s true for a somewhat seasoned backyard grower, but most non-seasoned growers struggle the other way. By the time insects, fungus, wildlife, and poor weather take their toll, generally abundant harvests are unfulfilled. And that’s assuming the grower is successful in keeping the trees alive.
I see this continually with my customers (many of which buy peaches from me because they’ve been unable to successfully raise their own) and repeatedly on the fruit forum, with pleas for help.
However, I agree once a backyard orchardist has learned some ropes, peach harvests can be very abundant. I also agree multiple variety peach trees can be a good solution to add variety in many cases.
If they have plenty of space, want to tend lots of peach trees, and want peaches from the earliest to the latest season, I’d say go for Rich May.
But for smaller backyard growers in all but the best climates, who have limited space, I would pick peach varieties with a better bang for the buck.
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Also, keep in mind that in our climate here you want to have fruit ripening over as long a period as possible. If I didn’t have Flavor May starting in the last week of June last season I wouldn’t have had any edible peaches or nects until after mid-July because of the rain and clouds that showed up just as it was ripe.
As far as home growers not succeeding with peaches, it would seem to be a whole lot harder to succeed in KS than here. I give you great credit for succeeding in your location enough as a commercial grower to be worth your effort.
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