I ordered a dozen Colorado peaches. They’re supposed to be the best peaches in the US.
They look pretty good. Nice size, 2.75 inches.
But brix is 12.5 to 15 and they are soft and mealy.
Not surprised but disappointed.
Has anyone else tried them?
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Nothing ruins a peach quicker than a mealy texture.
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No but I always thought Georgia has the best peaches! I would not expect much from CO, but I suppose in the eastern plains they might be very sweet. Even here with our short season, my neighbors Frost is very nice. I have bought a few that were beautiful in Walmart but they mold pretty quickly once you buy them. Letting them soften at all leads to a rapid mold on them, but I buy them to plant the seeds for new rootstocks for my other stone fruits
Dennis
Kent wa
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Western Colorado claims that they do. And I suppose they do grow some nice ones. Hot days and cool nights. The brix numbers I’ve seen from Clemson says Georgia has mostly 12-15 brix. They took tens of thousands of brix measurements over many years on peach and nectarine and never exceeded 23.
CO peaches sell for $6 per pound in Denver. I paid $5 per peach with shipping. And seeds are about all I’ve got to show for it.
Colorado is stuck on peach varieties that are 40-50 years old and no nectarines to speak of. Nectarines are better than peaches.
It doesn’t help that I’m used to 24-28 brix nectarines.
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You would have been better off buying a box of fruit from Andy’s orchard.
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Too late for fresh from Andy. I have a lot of dried. More dried figs than I can eat.
Next year I’ll have my own again. Then I won’t have anyone to blame but myself.
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Cooking peach maybe.
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Have had some incredible colorado and georgia peaches in my life. Road side stands and dumb luck are the best in my experience.
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People get too hung up over brix in all fruits. Its flavor that counts.
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They look like the Sweet Dreams Peach I bought couple of weeks ago and got suckered, huge peaches but I have 20 sitting/rotting.
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You have a point, but at 12-15 Brix, there is barely any flavor either.
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Sorry to hear about your mealy peaches. As a Colorado resident I make it a point each year to gorge on as many different peaches from as many different growers as i can. I’ve come to find that they can be pretty variable. When they are bad they are inedible, but when they’re good I find myself very satisfied. I’ve never tried a Georgia peach so I couldn’t compare, but judging from the wide spectrum of peaches we get I wouldn’t be shocked if Georgias peaches are better.
I will also second your complaint that there is a lack of nectarine presence, but I’ve heard they are susceptible to many bugs in Colorado. I am generally displeased with the variety of peaches as well and find that there are plenty of peach trees all over the state and they don’t seem to be the best producers here. I think better cultivar selections may be in order.
Maybe next year if you’re interested I’ll mail you a box of some verifiably delicious Colorado peaches. I won’t blame you if you’re over it, though. I have a love/hate relationship with our peach trees here.
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This is true if all you have is high Brix without accompanying complexity. There aren’t many super sweet fruits I enjoy more than a bite or two of if that sweetness is about all there is to the eating experience. On the other hand, if you’ve had high Brix + high flavor, it’s no contest. I want that fruit! So does Fruitnut. He is fortunate enough to know what he’s talking about re sweetness, since his stone fruit routinely meets and even exceeds the 24-28 range he tossed out there. I’m also fortunate that my growing conditions produce a lot of fruit in that range.
I’m guessing most who aren’t able to achieve that kind of Brix with accompanying high flavor, and then claim they prefer less sweetness in their fruit, simply haven’t had the pleasure of eating fruit like that regularly. Admittedly, I don’t always want and explosively flavored fruit in my mouth, but most of the time I’ll choose that over fruit of lower Brix even if it’s highly flavored.
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There are no good 12.5 brix peaches. They could be decent at that brix but not when mealy.
Most people agree that sweeter fruit usually has better flavor but it does need flavor other than just sweet.
HighandDry said it way better than me.
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Is the problem with grocery store peaches that they are picked so early? I won’t even buy one anymore because they aren’t worth eating. The best peaches I ever ate were grown in Ruston, La. There used to be a lot of growers in that area but I’ve heard there is only one peach farm still in business.
I’ve watched and traveled to the Grand Junction area of Colorado where these peaches came from since the mid 70s. My interest was always their fruit production. This is what I’ve learned. They have some kind of virus issue that they claim limits the varieties they can grow. So they are stuck on varieties like the Haven series that have been outdated for 30-40 years. And I seem to remember restrictions on nectarines so much so that I questioned moving there to put in a greenhouse. I ended up in California in 2000 near Reedley the real center of USA stone fruit production. See my recent thread about Family Tree Farms with 10,000 acres of fruit trees and a test orchard with 1,000 stone fruit varieties headquartered in Reedley.
So CO is stuck in the last century in regards to stone fruit. I do have some doubt about their issues with disease. It seems fishy to me. No one else seems to have variety restrictions, why just western CO?
They also recently suffered severe winter kill of peach trees. October 2020. The same cold spell about killed my pecan tree.
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Picked too early and watered too much would be the main issues that come to mind. Maybe over cropped.
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They do grow some great peaches SW of Grand Junction.
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I have had great peaches and not so great peaches from CO over the years.
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I grew up in Colorado where my dad spent every August in Grand Junction orchestrating peach shipments via Rock Island RR. I remember him bringing home fabulous peaches and for some reason Satsuma Plums stick in my memory. There’s a special environment around Grand Junction.
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