this is a newish variety that’s maybe more leaf curl resistant than others, at least according to this guy’s testing:
if you look through comments on his blog post there are a lot of people upset at how few trees were being propagated. Well, today (Nov 15 2020) OGW put up 100 for pre-order:
and here’s another nursery near seattle listing them:
I have Nanaimo planted 5 years ago here on the chilly, fog bound coast of far Northern California. I am most certainly in the curl belt. I planted it following Tom’s experience up on Vashon Island with a halfway similar maritime climate. So far, Nanaimo has been my most curl-prone variety despite a couple shots of copper during the dormant season, but my sample size is limited. It did produce it’s first fruit this past summer and they were decent, through coming off a nasty bout of curl. It did pull through by midsummer and is a thriving vigorous tree. My standout, curl-resistant tree so far has been “Oregon Curl Free” with great fruit and minimal curl. Q1-8 has shown potential on the curl front for me, but has a bout of canker going on the trunk, so time will tell, it did manage several quality peaches this summer (white flesh).
I agree that Nanaimo shows little curl resistance in my wet NW Washington maritime climate. Plenty of curl even with 5 Bordeaux sprays spaced from November to March.I thought the peaches tasted ok though not great. Decided to keep tree. I’ve tried every curl-resistant tree Raintree has to offer: 15-year-old Q 1-8 with plenty of curl got progressively sicker from bacterial canker; 12-year-old Frost plenty of curl and was oozing from every joint; 10-year-old MaryJane too much curl, 8-year-old Indian Free plenty of curl. Because bacterial canker is also my undoing, I even tried Charlotte but then got bacterial canker and curl.
My best tasting, though not curl resistant even though advertised as such, is my 6-year-old Betty. Great taste. Black Boy seems only partly affected by curl although have yet to get much of a crop from my 6-year-old tree. Even though Black Boy listed as self fertile, planted an Oregon Curl Free nearby for one more go!! Any peaches I get will definitely be worth $25 each!
thanks, those reports are helpful. I guess we’re all looking for the same thing, a silver bullet variety that doesn’t need sprays. I’ve never seen any kind of controlled testing comparing peach varieties so everyone’s experience is going to be a little random
my study of the ag extension guides was interesting. here are two tests of copper vs. ziram:
you can see that copper is better than nothing but ziram is on a whole other level. the other common recommendations are lime sulfur and chlorothalonil. here are the guides I found:
rates lime sulfur and ziram “excellent” and copper “fair to good”
Thanks for these links. Two tidbits I picked up: First spray when trees have 50% leaf drop (I was waiting for total leaf drop) and concentration ratio: Bordeaux ratio is 12lbs-12lbs-100g (I was using 10-10-100), and Lime Sulfur ratio is 6g to10g/100g (I was using 5/100). I will up my concentration and alternate these. Now to find a 24hr. window in the PNW.
I can’t imagine your bordeaux ratio mix was off by enough to matter at 10 vs. 12. but lime sulfur 6->10 is a big step up, hopefully that helps. The basic theory of spraying I’ve picked up is that you want coverage during bud break as your #1 priority, so you want copper or ziram/chlorothalonil/etc. + a sticker applied just before bud break, and if it gets rained off then you spray again to maintain coverage around that time. The dormant sprays are more of a knock down to get the previous year’s stuff under control so I don’t think timing on those matters as much
my peaches in eugene have currently lost 100% of leaves, 50%, and 0% depending on the tree, so I’m still waiting to do the first spray