I grow an orange saucer peach called TangO’s that was bred for a humid climate but it is nevertheless difficult to grow where you get a lot of summer rain- the variety has a strong susceptibility to brown rot and skin discolorations I have no word for.
I still leave space for one tree in my orchard because it is about my favorite peach when it manages to ripen properly on the tree- at other sites I manage it, it isn’t quite so difficult, but hard enough.
I’ve never seen Belmondo sold in the U.S… Is it also a relatively high brix peach like Saturn and TangO’s? It looks like the flesh is less firm than TangO’s which would give it a texture more typical of peaches. Some say TangO’s is rubbery, but I think they haven’t eaten a fully ripened one.
To my taste, flat peaches are sweeter than regular peaches. Yes, the Brix is high, the flesh is tender and sweet without sourness, multi-fruit with a banana-mango taste.
The variety is a little picky, the fruits crack and rot, but the taste is worth growing
I usually don’t buy peaches since I have trees at home but I was at an orchard in south central Virginia Friday buying apples and they had some very nice looking peaches. They were Victoria and not affected size wise by the summer drought. Good peach flavor and summer temps into September made for a high brix treat. Now I need to get a tree for myself. They also had Big Red. It was ok but not as sweet as Victoria.
I did a decent search on here…not much about Harvester peach. Also did a fairly decent internet search on the old forums and not much talk about it. However social medias are loaded with pics and talk about them. They all look nearly perfect… reviews seem to be very positive.
Same story mostly for Intrepid… found this pic from one of my fruit growing groups. Grower said they sprayed nothing in Michigan.
The last of our Roter Weinbergpfirsich. Fingers crossed for a frost-freem blooming period next spring. I also hope to grow more red flesh seedlings. I seem to give those out by accodent while the white fleshed ones stay with us.
Pretty late to this thread. Just too busy this summer to be able to get on the forum much.
You’re correct. They are a good source of cheap but small trees. I prefer purchasing small peach trees vs. large ones, so their business model is perfect for me.
I purchased something like 75 trees from them earlier this spring. They charged me $7.50 per tree, plus royalties for patented varieties. Shipping wasn’t terrible either. Less than 100 bucks for all the trees, so that’s close to a dollar per tree for shipping.
I ordered a couple Sweet Joe just to try them. I’ve ordered from them before and always just called them. I’ve never tried to order online.
I always talk with Bea (pronounced BEE). I get the impression she is sort of the queen bee at the place (no pun intended).
I always treat her with a lot of respect (use the southern respect, yes Ma’am, etc.) and she has always treated me really good. I’ve called her several times and added to my order, both this year, and in the past. She always takes care of my add-ons with no mistakes. This year she had to send some of the help out to count to make sure they had enough trees to fill some of my add-on orders.
I don’t know how they would react with a very small order, but I think some folks on the fruit forum ordered nothing too big (like 5 or 10 trees) and Cumberland filled their order.
I always get lots of vigor if I can keep the weeds and sod killed around the newly planted peach trees.
This seems to be a bigger and bigger challenge lately. So stretched on time, it’s hard to get it done. I’m always worried about spraying herbicide close to them, we’ve killed a lot of young peach trees by herbicide in the past, so most of the time the young peach trees are competing with weeds which slows them down until they get big enough I can start spraying herbicide around them. Then they take off.
Re:19-007
One of the big plusses of 19-007 is supposed to be late bloom and hardiness.
Paul Friday used to have a really helpful description page of all his varieties. Since he died, the page appears to be taken down.
I grow 19-007. It ripens close to Contender, but better quality so far. I don’t think Contender is a super great quality peach, but it’s very regular. Part of the issue with Contender is that it’s so easy to over crop, which can contribute to poor fruit quality. I haven’t grown 19-007 enough years to determine that it’s a really reliable peach in my climate, but so far it looks like it may be promising.
That’s interesting. Here occasionally Veteran will skip a year, where Contender never takes a year off (except this year when every peach orchard in the KC area had zero peaches, including ours).
There are so many dependable peaches close to the Contender harvest window (19-007?, Veteran, Baby Crawford, Contender).
2023 catalog in this thread below. Last year the catalog was mailed out in early October. Vaughn Nursery in the same area has an online catalog and are about the same price and inventory. Both are highly recommended. Cumberland Valley Nursery - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit
Hope this copies over. It is a pdf of Paul Friday varieties (with my notes). I bought 007 and 24C from Grandpa’s orchards last fall and planted this spring. Both have done well this season. Peach Varieties.pdf (1.0 MB)
I did not know Paul Friday passed away. What a sad loss. He has helped out the peach community with some wonderful peach varieties.
I had the first peaches off my PF peach tree this year. They were amazingly good. My Contender’s were my favorite peach until I had the Flaming Fury peach this year. It may be better than my Contender’s. Since it is the first year to produce fruit I will hold off making the FF peach my favorite. I like the contest of seeing which one is best- a win-win for me.
Thanks a lot for posting that chart. I hadn’t seen that particular one yet.
I did learn some possibly valuable info from it. It listed 35-007 and Legendary as basically the same ripening date (+40 & +41 respectively). I had read that Legendary ripens +42ish on the Web and had thought it might be a possible replacement for Autumnstar (which isn’t a consistent cropper here).
Autumnstar ripens about +43 here, but 35-007 ripens around +35 (a week earlier). Now I see that in MI both 35-007 and Legendary ripen the same time, which is a bummer for me.
I put in a whole row of Legendary thinking they would ripen in the Autumnstar window. But they apparently ripen in the 35-007 window. I don’t need a replacement for 35-007, so that kind of sucks for me. But better to find out earlier rather than later I suppose.
I’d like to try that Fashionably Late peach. There just doesn’t seem to be anything very good for that really late window (late by lower Midwest standards).
Big Red is listed as an option, but it’s also listed as a shy bearer (something I definitely don’t need) and it’s not very resistant to bac. spot.
@Olpea I have 5 Big Red here in south central Kansas. They are about 5 years old and this is the first year they have produced anything. We had a good peach year with most of our varieties, but Big Red only had a handful. Great tasting peach, but I’m planning to replace them.
