I am trying to create my own Peach Tree Maturity Chart for the varieties I own or have on order. . When you look at the different catalogs it is hard to tell the date using Red Haven as the base (Red Haven = 0). So I consolidated the information from the different catalogs and this is what I came up with -
-35 Rich May
-28 Desiree
-14 *Glen Glo
-12 Gold Prince (-47 from Elberta)
-10 *PF8
-4 Tangos
+0 Red Haven
+3 Reliance
+5 PF13
+14 Intrepid (estimated)
+15 Crimson Rocket (estimated)
+16 Elegant Lady
+21 Hale Haven (estimated)
+22 Coral Star
+24 PF24C
+25 Gloria
+27 Contender
+27 Blushing Star
+31 Belle of Georgia (+25 Cummins)
+34 Elberta (+28 Cummins)
+35 Encore (estimated)
+47 Victoria
+57 *September Snow (estimated)
Unknown Black Boy
The ones with asterisks are on order.
Some I estimated from the wording in catalogs. There seem to be a big discrepancy for Elberta and Encore - some sites have Elberta 28 days after Redhaven other 35 days. Some have Encore 1 day after Elberta others as much as two weeks.
Does this list look correct as far as the order of maturity and dates go? Most of my trees are not bearing yet so I do not have any real data to go on.
It is funny that we have about the same number of varieties as you, but only 1 in common (Belle of Georgia). And we don’t have Red Haven so we have no zero point for our own date range. I do understand why most peach ripening charts are based around Red Haven though, and I am working to have a customized list like that for our varieties. This is only our second season collecting ripening dates though, and as stated above, the relative ripening is very site specific and also can vary from one year to the next. Meanwhile we sure have an abundance of peaches! (We picked 70 lbs. today)
I look at the peaches offered by the West Coast Nurseries and a lot of the varieties are low chill varieties. I think that will account for the difference in varieties. In Virginia we have late frosts so late blooming, high chill hour varieties are favored. Do you have any varieties you favor? 70 LBS of peaches is nice - I lost almost of my peaches to insect damage - next year I will nuke 'em with spray (or a little Surround WP ).
And yet, even among different low chill locations the ripening times vary by local climate. Also, there are a few peaches (and apples, etc) that traditionally are considered high chill but work just fine in some zone 9-10 locations.
I only grow 5 of the varieties on your list, and the relative dates look pretty close on those. ACN, Vaughn and Cumberland Valley have pretty good ripening charts, but I noticed some deviation between each chart.
We noticed that this year the normal sequence is out of wack where a portion of each variety is way ahead of the others in the same row so I have portions of the Red Haven, Fire Prince, Winblo and Contenter rows all ripe at the same time. The trees with the most fruit are way ahead of the same variety of trees in the same row with less fruit set - perhaps by 2 weeks. Its been tough to keep all the ripe peaches picked and sold.
Very nice chart!. Also enjoyed your website. Looks like you are about a month behind my area. I’m picking Contender now and Rich May starts about June 1. My Red Haven hit about July 1 this year. I’m also about 3-4 weeks ahead of most of the peach ripening dates on the ACN site which is zone 5.
Here is an online version of what I am working on. Doesn’t work yet in mobile devices so you’ll need a desktop to see it. I won’t get around to fixing it up till this winter when I have more time to do so.
Some varieties may not be exact, as Olpea has pointed out because I don’t know where I got every little bit of information. There is no one source for all this info and in fact I think my list is probably the most extensive one I have seen.