Fairtime peach is sometimes listed as 400 chill hours. This tree is on citation, and is quite a runt. A test graft on a prior tree showed it was highly productive here. However, late or high chill cultivars often produce small suboptimal fruit. So I do not know yet whether this cultivar will work out in my yard. Oriental fruit moth makes late season cultivars a bit too much work for me here.
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Hmm. I would expect it to bloom in June.
Saturn test graft on August Pride. Both at peak bloom. August Pride was good but Saturn was incredible. Quite a surprise (and yes, I was one of the many who were confused and did not realize Saturn (as opposed to Stark Saturn) is not a donut peach… why did they name it after a famously saucer shaped planet?!). One of the most underrated southern California peaches. Walter Andersen nursery in San Diego carries it.
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A test graft of Liz Late nectarine. In bloom time it acts low chill here, not early bloom but late March, always compact and profuse, and it sets well. However, it sets very small fruit. High chill cultivars grafted to low chill trees get robbed of nutrients and bear small, inferior fruit.
I don’t have room to test how it does on its own tree. Nor am I confident I can beat oriental fruit moth in late harvest cultivars.
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Candy Heart pluerry, with half a dozen test grafts to get pollination.
Laroda would have overlapped well but a gopher badly damaged the tree. Surprisingly, Sugar Twist pluerry is blooming now. That is reputed to be higher chill and later flowering.
Flavor Grenade is starting to bloom now.
Grafts or trees of Flavor King, Dapple Dandy, Santa Rosa, and Flavor Finale might be soon to follow.
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My father grew it almost a century ago. Stark Saturn came much later. I have also grown Saturn and it is an amazing peach in our climate. Mid-Pride is very similar.
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Saturn was bred in 1940s by Herbert C. Swim of Armstrong Nurseries in Ontario, CA, and introduced in 1955. Its parentage is listed as (Early Imperial x Coolidge Double Red) x (Rio Oso Gem x Luken’s Honey).
Stark Saturn was introduced about 30 years later.
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Sugar Twist pluerry, exceeding expectations with a compact, midseason (for my area) bloom:
The many grafts on it were my plan B backup because I did not expect it to be low chill enough here.
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Hemskirke from Arboreumco, defying chill expectations with its compact mid-season bloom. Others have noted that the fruit is a more pale yellow than classic descriptions and that is has a more “melon-like” flavor than expected for a “Moorpark-related” cultivar. Is the current Hemskirke authentic? If so, then it seems pretty low chill. If not then maybe it does not matter, it is nice to get fruit 2 weeks after Blenheim, whatever it actually is. With DNA sequencing, this wont be a hard question to answer in future years.
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