It’s not that the Honeyblaze didn’t taste sweet (they were sweet) it’s just that mine didn’t have enough acid for me. Perhaps you are suggesting water deficit concentrates acid and sugar. Still I’m just not that hip on sub-acid peaches/nects. I just got through picking Flavrburst (another sub-acid) and although sweet, weren’t that exciting for me.
I think this is the reason I generally don’t prefer white peaches, although there are a few out there with lots of flavor, but most of them just have lots of perfume and lack flavor IMO.
I think Fruitnut has a point in that low acid nectarines just aren’t that good/interesting tasting if they are in the 10-15 brix range. I wasn’t at all impressed with the first couple Honey Blaze I got from Stop and Shop (if you look closely, there is often a cultivar printed on the side of the shipping box). But I did find a few in the batch with higher brix (maybe 18-19) which were actually pretty good. It’s hard to imagine it not being even better in the low 20’s. Maybe it is the concentration of flavor, as you describe.
Mrs G, I expect you are a couple weeks behind me and mine are ripening now (maybe 1/4th ripe at this point). Mine didn’t grow much at the end, and I even thinned them well.
@Olpea, I had assume Early Crawford would get bigger over the years but it hasn’t changed size. We are of a like mind about moving on to other varieties. For something similar you might try Kit Donnell, the CRFG bred it to be a better Crawford type and the size is promised to be huge (my tree is too young for size to mean much). The season is similar. I don’t think it is patented although I am not sure about that. I had thought it was a seedling of Early Crawford but I read up and its a likely seedling of Baby Crawford.
Like I’ve said several times there are peach and nectarine flavors other than acidic. You won’t find them in the low acid fruits at low brix. But at high brix the Honey series can have the richest flavor of anything I grow. It’s enhanced by water deficit and that’s the only reliable way I’ve gotten high brix.
If someone really wants to know where they’re at get a brix reading. Then we can compare notes.
I don’t understand the small fruit size with nectarines. I haven’t had issues sizing the fruit on Citation in the greenhouse. And I leave a pretty heavy crop IMO. K1 has much smaller fruit than Citation. I don’t have a feel for fruit size on Lovell yet but I think it will be smaller than Citation.
The small fruit size is probably related to their relative lack of vegetative vigor which I imagine to be related to their higher brix levels than peaches. My nectarines have a range of vigor but none of them compare to my peach trees in that dept.
In that case Honey series still aren’t for me, as I doubt I could ever get the brix numbers you are talking about unless I tried to grow them inside. That’s why I also think there is no pressing reason for me to invest in a brix meter in the context of these high brix numbers discussions. For my part, it’s not that I don’t have the courage to report brix numbers, as you’ve mentioned in posts before. I already concede outside grown fruit here won’t approach anything you grow in your greenhouse. It’s that the gap in brix numbers here vs. what you get in your greenhouse is so large there is little point in trying to do comparisons with you, as illustrated by my disappointment with Honeyblaze.
I suspect for folks growing fruit in CA, comparing brix numbers with you might be more relevant to those types of discussions.
I agree that outside growers in non-arid areas (myself included) probably won’t be able to come close to Fruitnut’s brix numbers. But, I think a refractometer is still very useful in comparing sub-20 brix fruit. While 10-18 may all fall into “ugh” for Fruitnut, there is a huge difference. A 18 will likely be among the best fruit of the year, while a 10 will be barely worth eating. Stuff in the middle, like 12-14 really depends on other aspects of the flavor profile, as well as the texture, juiciness, etc. The main comparison isn’t against FN, but against the other fruit you grow/buy. It can also be a good way to compare one year to another- it is sometimes hard to compare fruit one week to another, let alone one season to another, without a quantifiable metric.
I’ve just been so busy (and worn out) this season I haven’t even been able to reliably write down subjective comparisons of different cultivars, to my disappointment, much less taking individual brix readings of different fruit and writing that down. I had a two or three white peaches I liked this year and didn’t write them down. Now I can only remember one which I know I liked (and it’s a mislabeled tree).
One thing I’ll add is that, as you know, there is generally more variability within many peach trees (and year to year variability) than between cultivars, so brix numbers can be misleading. Also as Fruitnut mentioned there is more than just sugar (or acid) in the flavor profile, so brix numbers definitely have limitations. I’ve seen published brix numbers pretty much meaningless because they are picking the fruit too early. I say all this not to challenge any members of the brix club. I’m sure taking and comparing brix numbers can be fun and can offer some useful comparisons, but for me I can’t see it would provide enough useful information to be worth my time at this point.
A similar thing is happening to my summer apples which I am not paying enough attention to. I have dozens of varieties and they fall off and roll down the hill and I don’t know whats what. One of them is really unique, it tastes a lot like a grape, but I don’t know what tree it came from.
My Mericrest has been far too vigorous, after it fruited I took off the whole top off the tree to try to slow it down. But still the fruits are midgets.
That’s my problem too Scott. Too many varieties. When I set up the bigger orchard, I wanted to try all kinds of varieties, but haven’t had the time to really evaluate a lot of them fairly. A few of the standouts I remember and several of the duds I’d like to replace, but most of them in the middle we just tasted, picked and sold.
Varieties I thought standouts were Glenglo (for an early), Redhaven, Loring and all the sports (John Boy (1 and 2), Early Loring), Ernies Choice, Bounty. For flat peaches I liked Saturn for ease of growing (customers liked the peach a lot), TangOs II was a winner with customers, and to a lesser degree TangOs one. Sweet Cap is a lot like Saturn, but later and not as spot free. As I mentioned, the CA cling peaches (Babygold, Vinegold) were somewhat interesting.
Silver Gem is the best nect I’ve tried so far this season.
Some duds this season were Early Red Fre (white peach), PF1 (I’m finally going to remove this variety-eleven trees. It’s nice to have such an early peach, but the inconsistency in quality isn’t worth keeping it anymore). Other peaches which failed this year were Sugar May (Yucky), Snow Brite (dropped all it’s fruit because of bac. spot defoliation) Sweet Scarlet (dropped it’s fruit because of bac. spot) BuenOs (sub-acid lacks flavor), White Lady (tastes OK but very small size).
Scott, I have grown several varieties of nectarines on peach seedling roots for many years and nects are generally less vigorous than peaches in my experience. That there is a small fruited exception is interesting, especially if you are talking about a mature tree (I am talking about mature trees only), but it doesn’t change the general tendency that I believe exists.
Your trees seem to be very short lived and planted very close so you are in a very unusual set up, at least very different than mine where I have most of the peach trees (and one nect) that I planted over 20 years ago with enough space to show their real growth potential. I define a mature peach or nect as at least 6 years old. My trees tend to consistently set moderate to heavy crops that remain on the trees until harvest.
Redgold is my most vigorous nect and it has the largest fruit- still it requires half as much summer pruning as my more vigorous peaches. My least vigorous nect has the smallest fruit (no summer pruning needed at all) and so forth. But we are both working from our own anecdotal experience- I just think mine may reveal their natural growth tendencies more accurately.
When peaches age they often become less vigorous and the size of their fruit decreases.
They are Sanguine Tardive, Sanguine Pilat, and Sanguine de Chateauneuf.
The Tardive is the most acidic and red-fleshed, the Pilat is the least, and Chateauneauf is in the middle. All three are very tasty except the Chateauneuf has bitterness in the skin. In its favor it is going to primarily ripen several weeks from now and I am just getting premature ones now, which are usually inferior.
Its clear they are all different varieties, but they are also similar in many ways. The Tardive is a bit smaller than the other two; the Chateauneuf may be a bit bigger than Pilat as the early one here was smaller than most I saw on the tree.
Scott, thanks so much for the pics. You know I’m a nut over red-fleshed fruit. What about sweetness of these three varieties. I would like to try the middle peach. They all look very small. Thanks so much!
My impression is they are similar sweetness, Chateauneuf is not quite as sweet but it is not at prime picking yet. For fresh eating I am liking Pilat a touch more than Tardive, it has the best flavor balance to me. But they are just coming in now. Size-wise the Tardive is more or less average size in my orchard. Carolina Gold for example is about to ripen and its the same size as Pilat.
I said a bit about that above, the Tardive is definitely more acidic - a little too much perhaps. The Pilat is about average and the Chateauneuf I think is similar to Pilat.
Hey here is a size comparison with an Early Crawford (only with the Chateauneuf, I ate the other two). It is what I would call small, not much bigger than a golf ball.
Scott, did your Athena take a few years to begin producing good-quality fruit? I’ve got Pallas (which I understand is similar) and I would not put the taste of mine at “elegant” yet.
