I’ve grown Madison for a lot of years. I like it. It’s a smaller peach, and doesn’t color well at all. For me, that makes it look a bit unappealing for customers, compared to other varieties.
But it tastes good and is one of the better peaches for reliability for my area. Like a lot of the older varieties, it’s a little prone to drop fruit.
It’s not the only peach we have for that harvest window, but it’s one of them we have kept. It ripens a few days after 24c and a few days before Carolina Gold
I just looked at my orchard map. I have 12 Madison trees, out of 98 trees for that harvest window (from 24c to Carolina Gold, with other varieties in between) so about 12% for that window.
It’s probably a little under-represented in my orchard. I budded some more Madison this fall, so will be replacing some other trees in that window with Madison.
I wanted to follow up on this because I really think weed competition or grass competition is a key to young peach tree vigor.
I snapped a couple pictures today of some peach trees in our nursery row. We do a little better job weeding the nursery row, so the young peach trees grow a little better there. I also put a bit of hay mulch beside the young peach trees earlier this season, so that helps with weed control and moisture retention.
Here is a pic of some peach trees grown from pits, which have two seasons growth on them (sprouted 2023 + 2024). I fall budded them about a month ago. They were actually a little bigger than I like to fall bud. Black 5 gal bucket is for reference.
Young peach trees, which didn’t get weeded, in the production rows, grew about 1/2 as much (or less) as the nursery rows. We did have a very dry summer.
I have the 35-007 Flaming Fury peach in my orchard. Great peach this year. It ripened earlier this year because of the excessive heat and lack of rain. They tasted great and made very nice preserves. Nice yellow color. The Redhaven and Contender peaches were very tasty as well. Those two peaches had more red around the peach pit so the preserves were redder because of that. Not as much red around the peach pit area so the preserves were more yellow. All the peach preserves taste great. Just the color difference is all.
I have noticed the older varieties of peaches are usually not that red. I think it is a newer trait that they add to newer varieties of peaches to give the impression of the peaches being more ripe.
Maybe you explained further up in the thread, but why did you replace Autumn Star? It certainly is a good tasting peach that gets size. It does have some strange problems and on my site gets blistery bark and my orchard tree of it has not been especially productive in the 2 seasons it has been a good sized tree, but both seasons have been somewhat challenging.
I planted it based on your positive rec years back and because the star series has included some good varieties.
I’m getting overwhelmed with weed control @ the orchard. My methods aren’t sustainable. I’m interested in getting away from the string trimmer and better controlling the planting rows with herbicide. Glyphosate hasn’t been effective for me, the weeds come back too quickly. I’m applying with a spot sprayer and a small hood to control drift, which makes application painfully slow. I’m @ 678 trees in the orchard now (mostly apple & pear), so it’s not just control of a few backyard trees. What herbicides and application methods are you utilizing? Maybe hijacking this thread wouldn’t be polite, feel free to post on my Making Maggie’s Orchard thread if you have any recommendations.
that’s alot of trees to cover. there’s a smaller orchard about 30 mi. from here that has about the same size trees as yours. he initially mulched them the 1st 3-4 years. now i noticed he’s just mowing within 3-5in from the trunk, then going in-between them with a lawn tractor. they seem to be doing well despite his quack grass. his older trees just started producing 2 years ago. i got a peck of zestars from him last week.
@steveb4 All of my trees are mulched, in fact I’m just beginning to reapply mulch to the original rows. Over time things have grown through the mulch, especially the quack grass, horsenettle and one weed I need to identify. I’ve tried to control the growth in the planted rows with a field and brush mower, but it didn’t cut low enough. I’ve found if I scalp the weeds to the ground with the string trimmer they take longer to come back, and when they do I try to hit them with the herbicide. That way I use less product. We’ve been picking rocks this year, which helps with what I can mow in those planted rows with.
Zestar!'s in Oct? @bombers I’m glad you mentioned pre-emergents! I meant to and forgot. I am not presently using them, but it’s something I intend to study up on and ad to my regimen. Thanks for mentioning it.
I don’t like letting weeds get tall around the trunk, and today I discovered one tree partially eaten by a vole because of the weed cover around the base of the tree. Glad I got the last row knocked down today, but I have 4 prior rows that need to cut again.
Actually there are quite a few older varieties which have red around the pit. At one point it was deemed somewhat .undesirable. If memory serves, I think the red around the pit is more prone to brown during canning or freezing.
Maybe now it’s not considered such a bad thing because the red contains more antioxidants.
Actually I haven’t replaced all my Autumnstar trees, but I am looking for a replacement for Autumnstar. I had thought PF Legendary might be the one.
Autumnstar is all that you said. It sizes well, and tastes good.
The main reason I’m looking for a replacement is reliability. It’s not as reliable as many other peaches. It’s one of the early blooming peaches. Reliability has gotten more important in the last few years where the weather seems to be more challenging.
A combo which really works well is glyfosinate (Liberty) and Chateau (they sell a cheaper generic, but I can’t think of it right now). I also use a generous portion of AMS.
I use it in place of glyphosate most of the time. It will kill any weeds it contacts and act as a pre-emergent.
It will kill young trees if you coat the foliage. But if you get it on a little of the foliage, it will only kill the foliage it touches. I use a spray boom with “curtain” on the end to keep it off young trees.
If the bark it brown it won’t kill the young trees like glyphosate will. It will kill green shoots. Weed control is much better and much safer than glyphosate alone.
You have to watch pre-harvest intervals. For closer to harvest you can use Alion as a pre-emergent.
Red around the outside is awesome, creating a sweet and tangy flavor, with high brix. These June Pride were 25 brix and the yellow ones, Saturn were 23brix. Both excellent peaches, but the June Prides were considerably better
Saturn, as I’ve seen is is a saucer peach and none I’ve ever grown would look like yours quartered. Was it a fat saucer to begin with? Maybe it’s about climate.
There is a Saturn peach which is not a saucer, but a globose peach.
Confusing I know.
That’s Starks for you (Starks named the Saturn saucer peach).
They don’t give a poop about muddying other cultivar names.
Their latest example I’m familiar with is a peach they renamed Flamin Fury Jumbo peach.
Someone called me the other day and asked me about this peach, assuming it was something special.
I did a bit of research and found out it’s simply PF 24-007, Starks renamed. The peach is nothing new. Far from it, the cultivar is over 25 years old. It’s also very unproductive here.
Thought I would follow up a bit more about pre-emergents.
Here is a pic I just took. The herbicide combo I mentioned above was used over a month ago. The rows looked really weedy before the application.
You can see some bindweed re-sprouted. Bindweed is super hard to control, but everything else in the rows has stayed dead.
I’d also add that adding the AMS is pretty important.
I’ve used other water conditioner to neutralize ions, but AMS works much better. The fertilizer component makes the plant absorb more of the chemical, so you get a better burn down in the weeds.
My orchard isn’t nearly as picturesque as yours, but then again I’m not a super neat person.
Thank you! And don’t be fooled, I only photograph the parts I’ve been able to get cleaned up. This is a great pic of your orchard, gives some sense of scale to your property.
Now that you mentioned the red around the pit that makes sense about being" undesirable" because it makes the product ( jam, jelly, preserves, and freezing) look brown. Making it look odd or unappealing like the product is spoiled or bad.
I had a photo of the two peach preserve jars next to each other- Contender/ or Redhaven vs Flaming Fury. I will find it and post it.
There is a definite color difference yet taste wise they both taste great. All the people I have given them to, mostly the darker version since I have three trees of the darker one vs one tree of the Flaming Fury, have said it was delicious. Nothing about it “looks funny”. One person I gave a jar of the darker preserves said his three children ate all the preserves before he had more than a spoonful of them.
