Hello everyone, my name is Tatum Stewart and im located in Ashland City TN, 7a. I have only had a short browse of the site but ithe exchanges remind me of my early days in the nafex listserve. Thank you everyone who is responsible for the site.
I have had a smallish orchard sicnce about 2001. Bought a home with around 300 sd negelected apple trees. Killed about 1/4 of them learning to prune. Trees started off about 20’ tall.
I fell in love with it and planted 120 peach trees and about 1/3 acre of blackberries. All while having a full time professional job and and 3 young children. Sold at the farmers market aabout 5 years and would always sell out. Decided I wanted to do this full time and conceived a plan. Leased 20 acres close to Nashville. Planted 1,000 apple trees on tall spindle, 1/2 acre of blackberries, 750 peach trees, and 120 pear trees. ALWAYS BUILD THE DEER FENCE FIRST. Also, i was trying to do this alone because Im pig headed, but i did have help from friends and customers. Also still had the orchard at my home. I would leave home to go straight to the new orchard. Weekends were at the orchard at home or at the market. Never saw my wife but a few minutes a day and church. 6 years of this and the new orchard had los 2 of 3 crops to frost and my marriage was failing. My mother developed Alzheimers and now lives with us. I gave up the new orchard. Now its just a hobby again and im much happier.
I have removed my first peach planting at the home orchard. They were planted in the y system 6’ apart and had a good run. Probably replant next spring in a different area of the orchard, but likely as a traditional bowl shape 12’ centers.
I am lucky to have a good relationship with Cumberland Valley Nursery and thats were i will be buying my trees.
Finally the question:
Does anyone have any experience with the following?
Galactica donut peach
Souvenirs
Winblo
Loring
Victoria
There are several people here who will tell you they love Winblo. Loring is another one people here grow. I don’t hear much about the rest.
There are two fruit farm owners who are not too far from you. @blueberrythrill and @Olpea. Hopefully, they and others who grow those peaches will chime in.
Winblo peach was released by NC State in 1972. In 1975 I was a freshmen at NCSU majoring in Horticulture. So the first commercial plantings of Winblo and other non browning and bacterial spot resistant peaches that were released together were coming into production as went through my college years.
After graduation I worked at NCSU as a research technician for the tree fruit extension specialist. Winblo was and still is a very popular peach. Large, well colored and full of flavor that the “old folks” remembered growing up with a peach tree in their backyards. Winblo season at pick your own or roadside orchards is welcomed by people canning or freezing fruit or just as a super juicy tree ripe treat.
I went back home to Virginia to farm peanuts and planted my own orchard for direct to consumer sales. Always sold out of Winblo and people asked for them by name to be put on a list for the next year.
Culturally they naturally are taller and more open than say a Redhaven tree. If you don’t properly train them, they will quickly get to be too tall and you are getting out the step ladder at a young age. But with serious pruning you can keep a mature bearing tree within reason. Now if you get frosted out, it will grow like a weed and some summer pruning may be needed to get the new growth in bounds.
I did my orchard with a 15 x 22 spacing on standard Lovell rootstock from Cumberland Valley Nursery. When I did a new planting I went with a 20x22 spacing. That gave me an extra year before the row filled in entirely and began to shade out each other in the row.
I am thinking about adding Souvenirs peach to my small orchard. Currently all I am growing now is Winblo followed by Blushing Star. Souvenirs would be a good lead in for me although all I know about it is the info from Arkansas.
Although at one time I had 13 varieties from late June until late August, I got tired of dealing with customers and trying to manage row crop farming all summer as well. A friend in NC did the same thing and now just grows Redhaven and Winblo in large quantities and calls it a season to concentrate on tobacco and sweet potatoes the rest of the summer.
Loring is a good peach. I had one tree I grew in my backyard that I raised from my plant propagation class. Large but not as much of a red blush that a lot of customers expect from a ripe peach.
My wife made a peach pie today from frozen Winblo. It was delicious!
Jerry, thank you for the information about wimblo. The vigor is ok, i have always summer pruned. I also once had 17 varieties through the season. I now just want really good or unique fruit. Wimblo will probably go in the ground.
I had tried many of the Arkansas white peaches based on their university description. I had had good success with the U of A blackberries so thought the peaches would be good. Man, those things ranged from inedible to just ok. Very disappointed.
That’s quite a story Tatum. As you know, orcharding can be a tough game.
Regarding the peaches you mention, here’s my opinion of how they’ve worked here on the KS/MO border Z6. That is, the ones I’ve grown.
Winblo - It’s a great peach here. Very uniform, nice sized. Tree form is good. Flavor is very good. The biggest problem is that it hasn’t produced super consistently for me. Although this year those trees produced well, when most varieties were frosted out. I think I’ve harvested this variety for 5 years.
Loring is another great peach in terms of size and flavor. However, it is a very very finicky producer up here. I won’t be planting any more of these.
Victoria is a wonderful very late season peach. Generally produces well, but was one of the casualties which got clobbered from the frost this year. Be aware, like many very late season peaches, Victoria is a pretty firm peach by nature.
We grow Winblo on Guardian. Its our most poplar peach.
Redhaven, Fire Prince, Winblo and Contender produce excellent fruit in my area.
Contender produces peaches in years where other varieties get frosted out.
Edit: Forgot to mention that in my area these 4 varieties are similar in many ways. I believe each variety had Redhaven as a breeding partner which may explain that… After evaluating hundreds of peach varieties, Desmond Layne called Winblo the “perfect peach” in is video series when we was at Clemson. Lots of my customers agree
I like contender a lot. Produces well for me. I consider it the “standard” by which i compare peaches. Right now i plan on contender, elberta, carolina gold, wimblo, and maybe a white peach and nectarine ( undicded on both). I would also like to have some more opinions on souvenirs and Victoria.
The latest peach i have tried was, if i remember the name correctly, intrepid. They were moderate producesers of very large fruit. The problem was that they would never ripen for me. They stayed on the tree well but just never got to the point i would say they were ripe. I picked all my peaches ripe on the tree, meaning picking each day and touching every peach. The few that did ripen were just ok flavor wise and a bit too melting for my taste.
Encore, like most late peaches, don’t soften like early or mid season peaches. Encore ripens in plenty of time for me, and I am much farther north. Encore was developed by Rutgers, and ripens farther north than me in NY. It will easily ripen in TN.
Victoria ripens about 2 weeks later, but still ripens in plenty of time before the summer runs out in my area. I’m sure it will easily ripen in TN.
In terms of production, Contender is a great peach, which produces consistently in challenging areas. In terms of fruit quality, I would rate it as average, at best. Probably slightly below average in all honesty. It carries a lot of fuzz, and isn’t as sweet as most superior peaches. However, because of it’s superior hardiness and frost tolerance, it’s well worth planting, imo. This is based on over 100 different peach varieties I’ve grown.
Re: Belle of Georgia
This peach was one of the first whites I grew, and was enthralled with it because I didn’t know any better. However, I can fairly evaluate this peach as one of the worst varieties one could possibly grow. It is so soft, it bruises if you sneeze on it. It drops so horribly bad, it’s unimaginable. The color is very very poor. And the flavor is fairly mediocre. The only saving grace is that it is a reliable producer.
It was a peach which was a great innovation in the 1880s, when it was developed (put Georgia on the map) but that’s not saying much, considering developments since then. Think of what kind of car would be considered innovative even 30 years after that (1910). Few folks would be happy to drive model A technology back and forth to work today?
I agree. It was my first peach tree and have yet to get much out of it. Every year it drops everything right before it ripens. Taste good, but for me sentiment is the only reason it’s still around. It’s also a mid level rotter.
Seems Belle of Geogia ihas the same issue that i have with White Nectar. No matter how careful, it had fingertip bruises where it was picked. Nice flavor and sugar though. Still looking for a good white peach that is not super delicate but not rocks or tastless as the Arkansas varieties.
As to encoe, it was not a matter of having a long enough season. I would have a decent crop that would either drop early or would half ripen, with one side of the fruit still crunchy.
Late season peaches do drop more. Because of that we pick them firm ripe, and tell customers to keep them on the counter for 1 to 3 days (generally a day or two is plenty).
If you want a late season peach which hangs better, PF35-007 hangs much better. It’s productive like Encore (even more so this year). It also tastes better. Here, 35-007 ripens just a few days after Encore.
I worked for the specialist based at the University. I also worked for the small fruit specialist. Mainly with strawberries with him as the fall planted system was just getting developed then.
About 10 days between end of Redhaven and start of Winblo. I had Norman in between those. But I didn’t like Norman as it took a late of water to size up.
I also had Ellerbe which was the same season as Winblo. 50 trees of each. Ellerbe out yielded Winblo as it set more fruit. Slighty smaller and not as sweet.
I also had Contender as a pre release numbered selection as a benefit of having at NCSU and access to new ones.
It requires a lot of thinning. I didn’t like it as too much sun on the fruit turns the skin almost a black red. Just wasn’t as pretty as others.
