Should not have planted Reliance.
Should have planted more Red Haven.
Should have never planted Apricots and just go with peaches.
Should have bought the Babcock when I first saw it - by the time I went back it was gone.
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I only have red haven Peaches.
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Why? more low maintenance? better yield?
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Hey @Zone6! Whatâs so special about Babcock peach? Seems like low chill hours peach, not sure if itâs ideal for western PA.
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Iâve always thought Redhaven was a fairly boring, average peach. If you are looking for large production for a orchard it could make sense, but Iâm not sure why a person/family would need more than one of them.
Apricots can be frustrating because they get frozen out and sporadically die for no reason. But, the upside is that the fruit is much better than any peach in the early season. Early Blush in mid-June is a couple weeks before Rich May and the brix difference can be pretty high. 16-18 for apricots and 10-12 for early peaches.
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My Redhaven peach was very bland tasting this year, for some reason. Or I should say not as tasty as they usually have been. My Contender peaches have a lot more flavor than the Redhaven this year. I just got done picking them both.
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I live in marginal, Z6a, southern Rockies.
My Redhaven was pretty good. It always seemed to set at least a few fruit. Probably not the best adapted for my area.
I liken it to giving the football to your all-American fullback 3 yards from the goal line.
It found a way to struggle over the goal line.
I thought that quality was superb, but maybe that had something to do with growing conditions, as marginal as they were; cool nights making for sweeter fruit?
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Normally the Redhaven peaches have been a lot tastier, from what my memory serves. If they had been that bland over the last number of years I would have taken that peach tree out. The Contender peach is the clear winner this year.
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Better to you. I love cots also, but Flavor May comes before any cots I grow, having twice lost Early Blush to cambium freeze. Flavor May is one of my best peaches in big flavor and high brix.
Carene is a very high brix, low acid nectarine that is extremely high quality and ripens with later cots.
Anyway, until you get a piece of land with full sun for your orchard, you probably shouldnât overemphasize the scope of your varietal evaluations.
I think Red Haven can be a really good peach⌠itâs just that the northeast gets too much damn rain most seasons (including the last 5) which often knocks points off the brix scale.
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Last year mine were bland. We had rain and clouds when they where ripening. This year they were very good. We had sunny weather for a few weeks as they ripened.
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100% sun is pretty tough, but I am close at a lot of properties, including parts of mine. Some may lose 30-60 minutes of light in the morning or at night. I do have some less ideal spots as well, but have done my best to clear any shade. Of course, a lot of the best spots are reserved for jujubes, the stars of my orchard(s).
Iâm sure Iâve lost more than 2 of them- Iâve just kept planting. Right now, I have 3 in ground and 2 produced very little this year. But, the 3rd had a decent crop and was very good in the first half of June, about 2 weeks before Rich May (AKA Flavorich, which is what I assume you mean by âFlavor Mayâ).
My Rich May is just a single branch grafted on a larger tree. The weight of the fruit has pulled it down, so it does get partially shaded by the rest of the tree for part of the day, with full sun from the SW on. So, it doesnât have an ideal location.
I wouldnât say it is bad, but it is a pretty average peach. Brix can be a bit low sometimes, 11-12 sometimes, other years in the 13-14, if I get lucky and pick it before an animal gets it (higher pressure early in the season).
I havenât tried it in years. I used to pick it at a PYO before I started growing my own fruit. It was OK (even with their full sun orchard 
) , but nothing special. After a few years , I started picking mostly donut peachs. I donât know what kind that Silvermanâs orchard was growing, but they were better than the Rdehavens.
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We had mostly the opposite weather. Lots of heat, humidity, and about zero rain. Before they ripened I was afraid they would be nothing but fuzzy peach pits. We did finally get a little rain a week or so before they were ripe. When we cut them open to use they were really watery and very bland. They had a slight peach taste but nothing like they had tasted in the past. Iâll give it a bad year for taste but we had so many smaller peaches off the Redhaven tree it made up for the taste. We used all of them to make peach preserves so the sugar will help with the taste.
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They consistently have higher brix, is the thing. They are also a PIA to grow at many sites being sponges for brown rot, ,squirrels, birds and wasps. I got a good harvest of Tang)'s this year with 2 or 3 summer fungicide apps but still lost half the crop to brown rot. My site is too sheltered from breezes and I assume that the four walls of forest trees that surround my orchard-nursery not only âprotectâ the trees from breezes but greatly contribute to humidity via transpiration.
What you may underappreciate about Red Haven is that it will bear when your more wonderful varieties donât. As you get further and further from ocean influence this becomes increasingly important.
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I had a tough time with TangO as well. I bet the birds help the brown rot spread by opening wounds. I donât think I had as many wasps on them. They were more interested in my pluots. 
That PYO orchard must have really been spraying a lot, as I donât remember much brown rot there. It sounds like TangOs (and pluots) would be a good trees for a greenhouse.
This spring I planted a TangO II (the white one) at one of the rentals in a near-full sun location. There are 2 relatively low houses about 30 feet away to the ENE (just a few minutes in the very early morning) and the WSW (may not block any for most of the summer as the sun is still higher at that time of day). Since it is a new site (the last house we bought a few years ago, before prices shot skyward), there hopefully wonât be any heavy source of brown rot. I also planted a couple Euro plums and a multi-graft pluot there, in similarly good sun locations.
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I live in a marginal peach growing area as well, officially listed as a zone 5a, I live at 5000 feet of elevation. I have found the best combination of flavor and hardiness is PF 24C Cold Hardy Peach. This peach is very juicy with a complex sweet/tart flavor, better than anything you can buy in a store. It is a late peach, are ripe in my area in mid September, our first frost is usually about Sept 20-30 here.
We have a lot of freeze/thaw in the winter, which I think is the biggest problem for growing peaches in my area. Had the lowest temps in my area in about 30 years last winter, 3 consecutive nights to -25. My PF 24C had a lot of winter kill at the top of the tree, but bloomed at the bottom and has a few peaches on it. I have found that to get a peach to survive I need to keep peach trees small, about 6 feet high. With my 2 apricot trees I tried loosely mulching them about 3 feet high last winter, and had minimal winter kill on those. I think that helped minimize freeze/thaw. I got some garden fencing, made 3 foot diameter tube around the trunk and filled loosely with garden refuse, leaves, etc. I am going to start doing that with my peaches, and just be satisfied with a smaller tree. It appears to me that keeping the trunk insulated from thaw is the critical part, but I invite your input.
Incidentally, the peach breeder Paul Friday has 2 different PF 24 peaches, make sure you are buying the one that says PF 24C Cold Hardy. It is getting harder to find this peach, Cummins is sold out for next year already, grandpas didnât carry it last year. Montana fruit tree company had it in stock for shipment last year, hopefully will offer it again this year.
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I grew PF24 C for 10 years before I removed it after it was declining from southwest injury. It was a good, cold hardy peach.
We had some very cold years or some serious spring freeze. Most of the time 24C suffered less damage than all other peach varieties I grew. But there were at least two years of warm winters follow by below freezing temp drop in spring that wiped out all peaches, 24 C included
All my peaches grown in my backyard taste better than any store bought peaches. In my yard, best peaches depends on many factors esp. how much rain we get around the time peaches are ripening.
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Babcock? I
had some when I was wondering in Northern CA in the 1970âs. A guy that owned a car dealership would bring in shopping bags of Babcock peaches to give out. Never had any since. But they have always been on my mind.
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I have a great little Redhaven (from Lowes, of all places). I ordered a second as a âback-upâ, incase something happens to #1. Iâm with you on that one!
My son bought me a Reliance tree for a birthday a couple of years ago. First real fruit, this year. It was quite good. What didnât you like about Reliance? Just curious.
I grafted 4 different apricots to a little peach rootstock . . . and although fun to see them . . . none tasted like I expected an apricot to taste.
I know nothing about Babcock! 
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Do you spray your Redhaven?
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I would say that just about all peach trees need to be sprayed to get decent peaches. I know I have to spray mine if I want to get nice looking peaches without any sort of rots or diseases.
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