That looks exactly like the wild peach I had in China - from your description, probably tastes the same. It’s quite good when it’s fully ripe, a little bitter but strong peach aroma. We call it “mao Tao”, mao means fuzzy and Tao is peach, so fuzzy peach. It flowers profusely in spring.
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After I pick them I bring them indoors and put them , single layer deep, on some of those foldable long tables so they can ripen a little more. Then either make preserves out of them or freeze them after being pitted.
When I pick my peaches that are soft enough on the top or bottom of the fruit to bruise but still firm enough to be good for freezing. This year they start to rot almost immediately after they are soft enough to eat fresh if left at room temp.
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Nice looking Contender peaches.
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The heat has been brutal for my fruit here this year. I have fruit ( apples and pears) that are baking on the trees. When you pick them or pick them up off the ground the fruit actually feels like it has come out of an oven. I had to get the peaches off before they started doing that.
I agree, once the peaches have a little give at the top of bottom you have to pick them and use them up pretty fast. Freeze, preserves, eat, or bake with them. If not they turn to mush pretty quickly. When they are ripe they are ripe. Delicious as they are I wish they would last a little longer before getting too soft to use. Now I want to get some peaches out of my fridge to eat.
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That is interesting about the apples because compared to the apple growing capital of the U.S. in interior Washington State I’m guessing our summer has been relatively mild, and to me, a bit down south and east of you, it felt like what a normal summer used to be. Our winter temps have risen a great deal but summers have not (hot temps in our country’s interior may be bringing in more cooling marine air). The humidity kills self heating species that rely on evaporation to keep cool, but most plants would change the last word of this sentence, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” to, “it’s not the heat, it’s the dryness” because humidity helps protect them from heat. Tropical rain forests tend to be as hot as deserts.
If your apples are suffering from sunburn, maybe you should have pruned them less and allowed more leaves to shield the fruit from the sun. Of course, diagnosis from afar is completely unreliable. What do you think?
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In July in Wenatchee WA there were 3 consecutive days in July where temps rose above 100F. East Wenatchee, WA Weather History | Weather Underground
The crop forecast this year is for a normal crop. Three seasons ago, cool, wet, weather diminished the crop. I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as cool and wet as our winter last year when we got a bumper crop. Their standards are higher and they outproduce NY growers per acre by far.
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I did a search and not very much if any discussion about Snow Beauty peach on this forum. Social medias have very little if any growers that i can see.
Nursery Descriptions are as follows-
In fruit taste tests at Dave Wilson Nursery, the Snow Beauty white-fleshed peach has received the highest score of all peaches tested.
This is one of those peaches that is so tasty it never even makes it into the kitchen. The richly aromatic fruits have a velvety orange-red skin and gorgeous white flesh. The winner of many blind taste tests, Snow Beauty White Peach’s flesh is low on the acid and very high on the sugars.
Seems to be very obscure other than the great descriptions.
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It makes you wonder about the obscurity. Sellers don’t accentuate weak points of varieties they sell and poorly setting ones often have superior fruit because they excessively thin themselves.
Gold Dust is a superior quality yellow peach, but my huge tree never provides me with an adequate crop, partially because it tends to set light crops. Perhaps Snow Beauty is its soul-mate.
Of course, how a variety does in CA may have little to do with performance in the northeast. There is a lot of variation site to site even in the same region.
It’s easy to see how Teton de Venus got its name:
Probably the best tasting peach I grow. The skin is a little thick though.
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I’m a big fan of that variety too. Mine are probably a month out from ripening at my location. But definitely one to look forward to.
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So it is a late ripening peach in your area? I am in 6a growing zone. It does get a lot colder than that at times during the winter.
DanQ - Very pretty. Looks like you are a pro at thinning!
Hey, Tana . . . those are so unusual.
But, can you say that fast - 5X in a row?
What a name! But such a pretty plum!
A great seedling peach that I think was sent to me by @JustPeachy a few years back. Super good.
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Wow those look nice! Maybe I should try that variety again, I think the deer munched my first tree to death.
I am getting Peche de Vigne ripening now, very yummy! The Oldmixon Free finished a week ago. My new graft is finally producing and the peaches are huge!
I’m about done for this year on peaches. I didn’t get many overall as it has been a lot of work to get the trees above deer height. On my more recent plantings I am getting them to go much higher, removing all the lower limbs and also tying the scaffolds to each other so they all keep each other heading further up. The peaches are by far the hardest trees to get above the deer. The wood is too soft and they keep bending over.
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I tried 
and I can. (and it sounded like a tumble down the stairs).
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It amazes me how different the habits of same species wildlife can be. Here, at most sites, most years, the deer don’t really focus on eating the fruit and instead graze the growing shoots, and leaves in general, for their nutrition.
Not that they don’t eat any fruit, but they don’t tend to reach high for it and seem to only take fruit that is on the parts of sagging branches where they’ve also eaten all the leaves.
At most sites the browse line is mostly below 4’ but not all. In my own small county I have a long term customer whose deer regularly go as high as 6’. However, even there it isn’t hard for me to get peaches high enough to be above most of the damage. Are your trees being dwarfed by close planting?
My struggle is to keep peach trees low enough once I have their scaffold structure realized- I could easily create peach trees with scaffolds that start at 10’. I wonder what Olpea would make of your problem. Pictures of his peach trees indicate a lot of vigor. I do manage some sites where it is hard to get good vigor from trees and occasionally the problem is a mystery but it’s usually because of poor drainage. These are issues you are well aware of, though.
Even in low vigor sites I could train the trees high, though. As long as I did it before the tree was seriously runted out.
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Curious if anyone bought Sweet Joe from CVN?
In TN the breeder says it gets no bac spot, no brown rot, and survived freezes that other peaches didnt. He’s been evaluating the Contender cross for over 20 yrs.
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