Rather than waiting til all the peaches are in I thought I would incrementally add to my log here. I’ll keep adding to the below as more come in. Please add your own peach experiences.
This year the weather was very wet in July so many of the earlier peaches did not do as well as they usually do. August is drying out so things are better but there is still a lot of rot lingering from the wet spell.
Gold Dust - A very nice early peach. It tastes like a quality later peach. As usual the squirrels got many of them.
Sha Zi Zao Sheng - This is a very early peach, a white cling, very large and soft. It is more sour than most peaches. Seemed nice for its season. Highly susceptible to stinkbugs.
John RIvers nectarine - Squirrels got all, sigh.
Nectar - Squirrels got all of these yet again. This and John Rivers are by their escape route and are also very tasty. This peach has been better than Carman as an early white peach.
Clayton - I didn’t thin well enough, got small and not as sweet peaches. This is an excellent peach but is an extreme oversetter that needs many thinning passes. It also ripened in the peak of the rains this year.
Ernie’s Choice - Another great year for these guys. I also didn’t thin nearly enough but they are still excellent if a bit smaller than usual. This peach is about to bump ahead of Clayton, it took several years to produce good fruits but is really cranking now.
Summer Beaut nectarine - A very nice tasting nectarine from one fruit it made.
Sunglo nectarine - Very good fruit, not as much flavor as Mericrest but same sweet/sour and a very good flavor balance making it an excellent nectarine overall. Relatively little rot for a nectarine. Some shriveling as they ripen, not a good market looker. This one is a keeper for me.
Carman - Again inconsistent on the flavor. If there is no green in the skin they are excellent, but many are ripe but still have green and those are bitter in the skin. Nectar, which the squirrels got all of this year, seems like a better white peach of this season, as well as Zin Dai. They also go to mush fairly quickly, the eating window is small after picking. I am heading to topwork part of this tree, in an easier peach climate it could be great but not for me.
Zin Dai Jiu Bao cling - Only got one as it is being moved this year. It is more mild than Carman but much more balanced in the flavor with that subtle “creamy” flavor of the best peaches - an extraordinary peach. Glad I now have a whole vigorous tree devoted to it!
Shui Men honey - This peach is very sweet and flavorful, it is much better than last year when it dropped and produced a few mediocre fruits. I am still losing a lot to drop and rot, and I did not get many fruits from the tree. So far its looking like a very good peach taste wise; they look ugly like Foster. The flavor is more rich compared to Pallas/Athena which have a more clean and honeyed flavor - Shui Men tastes more like a standard white peach, less like honey wrapped in a peach robe. It is ripening exactly in honey peach window though. Overall its looking like a keeper but is going to be more work due to rot susceptibility.
Foster - An excellent rich sweet perfectly balanced yellow peach. The best tasting but ugliest looking peach. Not too bad on rot but very bug susceptible. Highly prone to bird/bug damage due to early sugaring up. My sweetest peach by a couple brix I would say, only nectarines are sweeter.
Early Crawford - Tiny but tasty. On the sour side. I probably should topwork this given the very small fruits. This is likely a seedling of the original Early Crawford since its much smaller than the old drawings/descriptions. Kit Donnell below is a good substitute peach, it is larger and has similar flavor with less mealiness.
Fantasia nectarine - only had a couple fruits but they all rotted. Might be a bad rotter but will keep for a couple more years. Its also still above average rot now, I should really do an MFF to try to limit the rot.
Red Baron - This tree had bad borers and is only now starting to recover. It is a top-quality peach with excellent balanced taste and plenty of sweet/sours. Fruits are a bit on the small side but look very nice, no spot etc. Relatively good on rot as well. It is becoming one of my favorites now that the root is recovering.
Kit Donnell - It was the first year on this with a small harvest. Sweet/sour like Crawford peaches, it was bred from Baby Crawford supposedly. Sizing up much better. Not quite as good as Foster so far, but more experience is needed. Seems to be OK on rot and looks very nice and clean. This could be a really good one.
Athena honey - These are just coming in. They are mild and honeyed, not as sweet as the earlier Shui Men honey peach but more purely like eating honey. A very nice peach but very prone to rot as are all the honey peaches.
Pallas honey - very similar to Athena, somewhat later and smaller.
O’Henry - Excellent flavor, one of the best. Had much more rot than usual on it.
Sanguine Tardeva - Yes this is an excellent red-fleshed peach. Not rotting as horribly now that root is healthy. More red than Sanguine Pilat and correspondingly more cranberry flavor.
Sanguine Pilat - Excellent as usual; larger than Tardive and not as cranberried.
Sanguine de Chateauneauf - Later than the above two; similar to Sanguine Tardeva but larger. This is the first year fruiting so will need a few more years to evaluate but it seems to fall very much into the good red-fleshed peach category. Rot is similar to the two above (i.e., pretty bad).
Carolina Gold - wow these guys are really good this year! Very creamy flavored. Not super high sugar but very well-balanced. OK on rot front.
Lady Nancy - This variety has a significant problem of rot, largely related to the spot it is in I think. Too close to large plums which grow tall in summer and shade it out. Most rotted. Non rotting ones excellent and very similar to Oldmixon.
Indian Cling - The usual super heavy load of cooking peaches, with little damage of any kind.
Late Crawford - Very nice peach, better flesh than EC.
Oldmixon Free - Not quite in yet, early ones great as usual.
Indian Free -
White Heath Cling -
