Anyone growing Indian Free peach in zone 8b it’s requirements say 700 chill hours. I have 300 to 400 being generous. I’m wondering if it would set any fruit here? I have a delicious white flesh peach that does great. Not sure of the name off hand but came from a TN nursery maybe it’s tropical beauty peach? So looking for information on how well or not Indian Free peach would do?
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I’m growing it in 10a, and it does fine. It doesn’t bear heavily here, which may be related to insufficient chill. My recommendation would be to plant the very similar Black Boy peach instead. In my zone, it’s virtually identical to Indian Free, but it bears much more heavily. It’s also self-fertile.
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I grew both BB and IF and in my climate both set well. So, it sounds like the lower chill causes the lower set on IF (only). I found the peaches nearly identical, with BB slightly more prone to mealiness but no different otherwise.
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I have indian free in 8b Portland Oregon. I get plenty of chill hours though. It sets very well. But it is on a grafted tree that has indian free, frost and muir. It does good against peach leaf curl also with no sprays and just a bit of manual infected leaf removal.
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Looking into it the one I’m growing now is tropic snow it was bought labeled as tropic beauty. Beauty has yellow flesh Snow has white flesh. Sno for me is a heavy bearer and very sweet and juicy maybe too sweet for some people. I might try to graft Indian Free to it and see what happens. I will look into Black boy peach maybe it has lower chill hours. I would also like a good tasty yellow flesh aromatic peach to add. Any suggestions for best tasting low chill yellow peach?
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Thanks I will look into that one
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Cuckoo, I had Indian Free, and it seemed the most disease prone of my curl resistant peaches.
I’d love to try one some time if that could be worked out. I’m in Camas. I grafted mine over to Early Laxton plum, which seems much happier on the same roots.
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I will have to keep an eye on my indian free over the years and see if changes happen in it’s disease resistance.
We can arrange some fruit swapping for sure. Remind me in October. It ripens really late. It has a raspberry lemonade or raspberry cranberry flavor to me more than a “peach” flavor.
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Any updates? How’s it holding up?
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The muir branch is holding out still. By far the weakest of the three types on this tree. Quite a few fruits set. No sigh of peach leaf curl. Leafing out now. It’s just later and less vigorous than frost and especially indian free. That is the best one by far.
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Well that’s good, I wondering about all three. Especially IF. I don’t know why it quoted muir in my reply. Perhaps because I googled it as I never heard of it before.
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My Indian Free Peach has very few fruits. And most remained very tiny. I pulled them off or they fell off. It is full of all sorts of damage, even though I sprayed it along with the other stone fruit.
On the other hand . . . My Red Haven looks like the Peach Poster Child . . . and Harko and Mericrest nectarines, too. If I don’t have better results in a year or two - Indian Free is coming out.
I’ll have lots of Indian Free scions for anyone who wants to try it, next winter. !
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Indian Free was slower to come into production for me than my other peach trees. I just thought it was because of where I planted it. Maybe not if you are experiencing the same thing. You might consider upping the fertilizer a little on that tree to achieve some vigorous growth this year, then see if you can get better fruit set next year.
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Anyone in zone 5b-ish grow this peach? If so, when do you harvest it? I’ve got just a few peaches on my tree and didn’t really want to use them all up with trial-and-error testing. But if it ripens much later than now, I might have to pull it since we often have our first frost here by mid-Oct.
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Indian Free typically ripens the first or second week of October here in Spokane. This year, everything is later by two to three weeks due to a really long cold spring. I am just now beginning to harvest O’Henry and Indian Free is 11 days later.
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Dang, that’ll be tight here. Can you tell by feel or smell or something, or do you just know based on schedule? I think I’d read that they stay pretty hard, so feel isn’t reliable?
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They are like most peaches, look for a little softening right by the stem on top.
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I agree with Scott, also they start to smell pretty good as well.
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That’s interesting.I’m near Seattle and the Indian Free fruit,off my small tree,ripened about a week ago.
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Crazy long cold Spring in Spokane this year. Really all of Eastern Washington, I know the potato harvest was delayed by two to three weeks as well.
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