In case anyone’s interested, thought I’d do a quick report of peach varieties which had the best and worst bloom after a pretty tough winter.
We had two nights this winter where it got pretty cold at the orchard. One in January, where it got down to about -9F at the orchard. Not good, but there was a worse night in Feb 2025 where it got down to about -11/-12ish. Underground weather personal weather stations were reporting anything from about -13F to a low to -10F in locations close to the orchard.
The orchard itself is on a hill. So the upper part is warmer than the lower part.
I won’t mention all the varieties we have in the ground, just the ones more notable for this list. These are the ones which had the most bloom, starting with the best (in rough order).
Encore - Pretty much a full bloom
Contender - About like Encore. Maybe a few less flowers than Encore.
Ernies Choice - Pretty decent bloom.
Redhaven - Less bloom than Ernies choice, but still enough for a full crop at this point in the spring.
Harrow Diamond - About like Redhaven in bloom survival.
JulyPrince - This one surprised me. Many times JulyPrince has gotten all it’s blooms knocked out in a bad winter. But this year trees have some blooms. Not enough for a full crops, but much better than many others.
Madison - Maybe a tad less flowers than JulyPrince.
Earlystar - The ones higher up on the hill had a lot of blooms. The ones lower down did just OK.
Intrepid - Noticeable bloom.
Baby Crawford - Not anything close to a lot of blooms, but some blooms.
Victoria - Normally Victoria is pretty winter tender, but this year it had some blooms while many other trees had nothing.
Carolina Gold - Like most trees this far down on the list, Carolina Gold had a thin bloom but some blooms.
Following are some of the worst blooming varieties:
Blazingstar -Trees have nothing. Not surprising. Blazingstar is a spectacular tasting peach, but it gets wiped out easily in cold winters. This year was not exception.
Allstar - Like Blazingstar, Allstar doesn’t like cold winters. However Allstar isn’t the greatest tasting peach. It needs to be replaced in my orchard.
Loring - Known for being winter tender, it’s blank this year. Needs removed.
Glenglo - Like it’s cousin Loring, it’s also winter tender. Trees are pretty much blank. It’s a very large good tasting early peach, but just not productive enough to keep.
PF 14 - Have just one tree of this variety. It’s never productive. This year it’s blank. It’s a loser here.
Redskin - Pretty much blank this year.
Laurol - Some blooms, just not very many. This can be a very productive variety. I have nothing better or this harvest window.
Winblo - Pretty disappointing because many times it will produce fruit after a hard winter. This year very very sparse blooms.
PF19-007 - Few blooms. Contender ripens in the same window and is vastly more productive, even if the quality of Contender isn’t quite as good.
Veteran - Few blooms. It’s had some problems in other bad winters too.
PF35-007 - Another surprise how poor and non-existent the bloom is on these trees. In the past they had done really well and very productive in all but the roughest winters. They did very poorly this winter.
Challenger - I had hoped this would be the variety for me in the week that follows Redhaven harvest. But this year a whole row of Challengers had few blooms.
There are several varieties which didn’t make the best or worst list. Overall very disappointing bloom this year. If we get any rough spring weather, it will knock out any potential fruit which survived the winter, which I would expect, given how early it is in the Spring.
