This is a really good year for peaches for me in SE WI. Considering I had NO peaches last year due to cold damage. Just picked the last 1/2 bushel of Reliance last night (3 bushels total crop) and found the Redhaven are just coming in (picked 1/2 bushel and left the rest for the weekend). My 2 Contender trees are just loaded too and starting to turn color. Glad they will not be ripe for a few more weeks as I am peached out with such a nice crop. Peach pie, peach jam, peach shortcake all done. Peach wine to be started next. With 5 peach trees I am glad to have a lot of friends to share with.
Abundance is a great “problem” to have.
Those are great looking peaches!
I’m having a good peach year too. I still have one tree to harvest. Indian Free. usually ripe in September.
if they were more easy to ship id try to convince you to send me some. nice job! love fresh peaches!
Looks great. Do you have to spray those much?
I spray peaches once for peach leaf curl in March. Then I do spray petal fall thru mid June for plum curculio control. After June 15th I usually spray 2 more times (if needed) with an insecticide in July for japanese beetles. Some years the Jap beetles can really hit the new growth hard on my peach trees.
As far north as I am, I find peaches easier to grow than apples as far as insect/disease issues are concerned. The nursery I work at produces peach and apple trees in #10 containers which we do not spray… This year I picked peaches off those container grown trees too. The fruit on the container apple trees near them are worthless as so insect damaged but the unsprayed peaches come out fairly well despite no spraying.
Every other day picking 10-30 these pictures are after giving away to neighbors and co workers.
Todays peaches
Sundays peaches
I had a major loss of early peaches but finally the squirrels and crows and groundhog moved on to something else and I am up to my ears in peaches. Athena is ripening now, it is a full grown tree producing a bushel or more, and I have Sanquine Tardeva which is also a massive tree starting to ripen. I need to freeze or cook or dry this weekend.
Scott,
How do you like the taste of these two varieties?
They are both very good and very unique. Athena is a cross of peach with honeydew melon. Sanguine Tardeva is a cross of peach and cranberry. I could use a few more “regular” peaches now instead of piles of those kinds. Fortunately I am getting a few Baby Crawfords now as well to satisfy my “normal” peach craving.
I also got a few Zephyr, they are splitting and rotting in all the rain but the taste is very good. I am going to give it a few more years, splitting in one year doesn’t mean a whole lot. It is when they split nearly every year that it is time to go.
Thanks. The description of Athena peaks my interest.
Glad you mentioned picking Baby Crawford now. It gives me an idea when mine should be picked.
We had some very nice Red Haven…some I picked a bit early but many of the ones I left on started splitting and then the bees came…holy cow they love the sugar content of those things!
Our 3 Red Havens were largely bit by freeze damage but still got 200 peaches. After 2 weeks of eating, canning and giving away 1/2 of them, we are peached out as well!
I wish I planted some later varieties.
I’m glad yours came out ok. I’m a short drive west of you and my blooms were frozen. I had one peach and one apricot survive. As in two total fruits on 7 trees.
I made some of my Reliance peaches into peach jam and peach pie. My sister-in-law stopped by (lives 2 hours away) for a visit so we served the pie. When she left we sent her home with some of the jam.
A week later I got this excited call from her. She had company over and served my peach jam to them with bagels. Her visitors exclaimed the jam was the " best they ever tasted" and wanted to know where they could buy it.
After the sister in law explained that I made it from my home grown peaches, they called for the peach jam recipe which I gladly shared. However I told them the recipe would do them little good as they had no home grown peaches! They went to some store and bought a case of peaches. Hope their results are good as store bought peaches usually are pretty bad (dry, mealy, no flavor ect). Maybe they will be inspired to plant their own peach tree after all this.
Sparten,
We froze bags of sliced peaches and a tad of sugar ready for a pie.
Most folks get excited especially when they learn peach trees produce so quickly. Our 1/2 inch dia peach tree made two peaches the first year. By the 3rd year they were 7 ft tall.
Yeah sorry that happened. Been there done that! I ate my last Lucky 13 peach today. Plums are coming in like crazy. In this dish is Ebony Rose, Crimson Royale, Lavina, Satsuma, Inca, and Honey Punch
Scott, do you know if Sanguine Tardeva is pollen sterile like Indian Free is? I’m wondering if this is a red-fleshed peach thing. Thanks
No idea. I did hear that Indian Cling was not pollen sterile which looks like one counterexample to all reds being sterile.
Finally some one other than me can attest to the Zephyr nectarines … I too have a couple of cracked ones on my tree, first time to see it in four years, so I don’t think it is a major problem. BR on the other hand is a problem with Zephyr if you don’t spray, but with my spray schedule, it has been under very good control. I know of five orchards in MD, PA, NJ & DE who grow them commercially, and at least couple of these growers that I spoke to in person consider Zephyr to be one of their best varieties. Glad you liked them.