I donāt even like peaches and you are making me hungry!
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Sorry for delayed reply. Contender tastes great this season. We picked our first ones today and sold about 170 pounds! People are crazy about peaches around here. Reliance were heavy producers and done for the year. Had a few Red Haven but most trees are still small.
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I used allspice in mine this year. Very tasty.
Nice looking peaches. My Red Haven and Contender peaches had a lot of the specks on them like your Carolina Gold has in the picture at the bottom. Whatever that is I seemed to have it on a lot of my peaches this year.
They look great from a distance but once I picked them I had only a few I could feel good about giving away. The majority of them I used for preserves. They turned out great like that. Of course I ate a lot of them regardless of those specks on them. That did not bother me but if I were to give the whole peach away I would want to give the ones without the brown specks. I had about 30 lbs of actual peaches that I used to made preserves. That was what I had off three trees and this was their second fruiting.
My 4th batch of peach jam was the best yet.
48 oz of very soft Carolina Gold peachs (bad spots cut out and skins removed)
32 oz sugar
2 teaspoons of pectin
This time I added a bit more sugar and didnāt smush it up quite as much, leaving bigger chunks. I think both adjustments worked well and Iāve gotten some positive feedback on this one. And more importantly, I like it better too 
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Oh yumā:peach:
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Thanks for the recipe. Iāve tried a few different recipes so far and will try yours.
No lemon juice added?
When someone tried this recipe and got different results, I realized that my description is missing quite a few details.
All measurements (unless noted) are by weight, not volume. I find it easier to measure weight- it can be done digitally with a single scale, while with volume requires various implements and there is always the question of air gaps, etc.
1.) Cooking it down-
- No water added
- Start on low heat to keep from burning it
- Gently mushing early on releases enough juices to better distribute the heat
- Keep cooking until all of it is soft enough to mush
- Iām not sure how long this took, but I think it was something like 20-25 minutes.
- Stopping myself from mushing too much (though it would be easy to do, once it is all cooked) helped keep good sized chunks.
- I cooked with the top off, which allows some of the water to boil away
2.) Adding the pectin-
- From the instructions on one of the pectins (not the one I used this time), it mentioned mixing 1/3 of the sugar with the pectin before adding it. I did that from habit, without realizing that this pectin doesnāt mention that in its instructions.
- I used 2 teaspoons (by volume, as I didnāt have a good weight for this and it is pretty small) from a 4.7 oz container of Ball āRealFruit Low or No-Sugar Needed Pectinā.
- After mixing the pectin in, I brought it to a boil.
- Then mix in the rest of the sugar (which I was measuring while bringing the rest to a boil)
- After mixing in the rest of the sugar, I bring it to a full boil for at least a minute
3.) Afterwards-
- Ladle into jars, using a potholder on the hand holding the jar, as Iād rather be sloppy than burned.
- Wipe the jar, then close it up and turn it upside down on the counter.
- After all are done and Iāve taken a few minutes to clean up, I flip the jars back upright and label them.
- Once they are cool enough to move, I clean the outsides better, then put them in the fridge, where I keep them for long-term storage.
It also occurs to me that I should mention that Iām no jam-making expert. Just someone who has been experimenting a bit and had a good result. Iām sure there are lots of ways to do this, many of them ābetterā (hard term to quantify).
Nope, I havenāt tried adding that variable.
Edit (2+ years later): when making jam with my father, he wanted to try lemon juice, so we made one batch with lemon juice and one without. I donāt think I noticed any difference with the jelling (which I think is usually the point in adding it), but the one with lemon juice had more kick to it, as the peaches werenāt extremely flavorful (from his tree ) . The without-LJ was decent, but the LJ version was pretty good.
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Bob,
Iām not sure how to do it,but can this go in the Using fruit category.I donāt want it to get lost,when trying to find the procedure.Thanks,Brady
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Thatās a good idea Brandy. I didnāt set out to make such a post, but now that it came up, I like the idea of having it in the āUsing Fruitā area. I merged it and cross-posted it, along with an additional pic.
No processing?
Do you mean boiling the jars afterwards in a water bath? No, I go with a quicker approach. I store it in the fridge and freezer, which seems to work pretty well.
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How long does it take you to finish it up? Wondering how long itāll keep in the fridge.
Iām not sure how long it will keep- I havenāt seen one go bad yet, but itās only been a few years.
Thanks for posting this. I saw an old Garden Web thread that identified Contender as an early peach! I was starting to wonder if Iād ordered the wrong cultivar. Itās interesting how much differently the tree performs down south.
BTW which cultivar is the one in the top picture? Was it Loring? Itās beautiful.
Yes, the top one in the post you replied to was Loring. They were great two years ago (2017). But, last yearās were only OK. A combination of too much rain (rot and not as much brix) and insufficient thinning (small and not as much brix) really cut into the quality this past year.
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I like this thread. So many good pictures of peaches.
Iām inside today temps dropping and wind gusts as high as 46 mph right now according to the NWS. So Iām not going outside.
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=38.7396&lon=-94.6303
Bob,
Are you still growing PF1? As you know itās not a very sweet peach, but I saw it on your list of peaches on your forum page.
On a cold winter day, here are a few pics of peaches last summer.
Hereās a couple photos when some peaches peaches were moving slower than Iād like, so I posted on social media to try to get rid of them.
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Wow, Mark, those look fantastic.
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Nope- I need to update the profile page. Itās several years out of date.
My PF1 gradually died and I finally removed it last summer. It was only 4ā from the next peach in the row, so I decided to not even put another peach there. At the moment, I have a 6" tall jujube seedling in the spot. Given how slowly they grow for me, it wonāt shade the neighboring tree for a while.
PF1 is early (first few days in July), but not all that good IMO. Iām not sure if there are any other peaches which are better in that season, but Iāve had apricots ripen at the same time (or earlier) which are far better. Now, Iād be happy if I could keep the apricot trees from dying and animals from eating the apricots that do ripen.
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Thanks Bob. Totally see it the same here. Iām still shamed. I thought this peach to be such a jewel a decade ago. Novitateā never ceases to be so embarrassing.