Peaches for Z5b

I grew Rich May and found it to be a poor producer here. I’ve worked really hard the last 3 years to try to get rid of varieties which produce poorly. I want to sell good flavored peaches, and will get rid of varieties which produce poor flavor, but I also can’t tolerate poor production.

As an example, I’m going to start getting rid of Spring Snow. I have about a dozen of these trees. It’s an outstanding tasting white peach (my favorite) but it’s production is too unreliable to make it commercially viable for me. It ripens in the Harrow Diamond/Earlystar window, so I will be replacing it with Harrow Diamond.

I would encourage you to limit experimenting of questionable varieties to a couple trees per variety. I can’t tell you how many trees I’ve pulled out because they didn’t work for me. My research into finding out what tastes good and produces decently here has been very costly.

That’s one thing there is minimal university research. Namely, peaches which are commercially viable in questionable peach growing areas. Virtually all the peach research is done in states where there are lots of commercial peach orchards. Of course those areas have the most conducive climates for peach crops. In my area, late spring frosts, and an occasional hard winter, make commercial peach production more iffy, so the recommendations from peach specialists don’t necessarily work for me. Unfortunately, I’ve had to do my own research.

Recommendations from my state university extension are pretty much worthless, since they are just repeating info from other universities, where the research was done in prime peach growing states.

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I think our weather has been anything but consistent the past few growing seasons and I attribute some of that to impacting when my stuff is ready to harvest.

That along with Racoon, 'Possum, Squirrel, Owl (and any number of unnamed other birds). At some point I just decide that while I may ideally be able to leave them in the tree a few more days, I can begin bringing them in in stages to at least beat the wildlife out of some…

But when I look back at my records I see that I harvested Redhaven & Intrepid as follows:

2017 RH 8/2 - 8/8 Intrepid all on 8/24
2018 RH None Intrepid all on 8/21
2019 RH 8/13 - 8/24 Intrepid 8/21 - 8/28
2020 RH 8/9 - 8/16 Intrepid 8/16 - 8/22

Here’s what I sprayed this year:

3/7 Kocide 3000
3/30 Kocide 3000
4/20 Daconil
5/3 Indar & Triacizide
5/15 Indar & TZ
5/29 TZ
6/3 Trunk drench Permethrin
6/12 TZ
6/20 TZ
6/27 TZ & Indar
7/10 TZ & Indar (Trunk Drench with P)
7/17 TZ & Indar (Trunk Drench with P)

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I should mention that in my initial post I may have done you a disservice, as I noted that most of my plantings were based on your recommendations.

I planted Indian Blood (Free) and I know you were less than impressed with that variety, I want to say it got spot or something similar like a magnet for you.

I also don’t want you to take the hit for any Paul Friday varieties. I went with PF17 as a substitute for a 24C I had on order. I don’t think you’ve been super impressed with PF offerings in the past noting that he may be better at marketing that breeding?

So to be clear, Mark influenced my plantings with respect to RH, Madison & Intrepid in particular and possibly Contender & Reliance, but the PF17 & PF24C are all on me!!

I cannot say enough about Madison and I can’t tell you how many people I’ve told that if I had only one peach tree I think it’d probably be Madison. (Although I’m growing weary of thinning it!!!) But the last couple years it has been superior even to RH in the taste test in my opinion anyway.

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That’s interesting Jerry. Intrepid and RH must ripen differently in IA vs. here. Thanks for the info.

That is good info. I had them down as two weeks apart but in colder climates with shorter seasons it looks like that is pushed closer to one week apart.

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The NMSU experimental station in Alcalde Northern New Mexico z6a did a trial. I’d say that the overall results were heavily influenced by late frosts typical to the area, so maybe not all that useful despite the nominal zone similarity. It’s something at least. It googles right up.

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Thanks Koko.

I agree it is something to go on. They recommend, ‘PF-1’, ‘Surecrop’, ‘Blazingstar’, ‘Intrepid’, ‘Contender’, ‘Blushingstar’, ‘China Pearl’, and ‘Encore’ for north NM.

I’d agree just about all those will tolerate late frosts (though I haven’t grown China Pearl) except Blazingstar, which won’t tolerate late frosts at all. Perhaps the difference they saw was due to the fact they used sprinklers for frost protection. I don’t have sprinklers.

As mentioned, I no longer grow PF1 because of poor flavor. Surecrop is fine, but I’ve found Risingstar (which ripens at the same time) is a much better peach and produces just as consistently as Surecrop here.

Encore is pretty consistent most years (although this year my Encores had few fruit) but the problem here with Encore is that it has trouble developing sugar most years. I’ve been looking for a replacement for Encore for a long time. I ordered some Tiana trees for next spring to trial as an Encore replacement. PF 35-007 (Fat Lady) ripens a couple days after Encore, so I should probably be satisfied with that as an Encore replacement, but I wouldn’t mind a peach a tad earlier to actually replace Encore. Either way I won’t be planting anymore Encores, as Fat Lady is every bit as productive in marginal years and tastes much better.

They list Saturn as an early bloomer, and so should be avoided. However, with the exception of this year (which was horrible) Saturn has been very productive for me and worth growing. It’s a favorite among customers and one of the few peaches I allow Upick.

NCSU has lately (last 20+ years) focused their breeding program on producing peaches which require more chill hours, and therefore tend to bloom later.

Challenger, Intrepid, Contender, Carolina Gold, and China Pearl were all produced with this in mind. I’ve found them all to be good producers most of the time, except this year Challenger and Intrepid and Caorlina Gold didn’t produce much. But again this has been among the worst years for peaches, because our freeze occurred after everything had bloomed. The only blooms left when the freeze occurred this year were a few blooms on TangOs 1. So this year really wasn’t a test for which trees bloomed the latest, but a test of which fruitlets where the hardiest, after fruit set, which is pretty unusual for my area.

I haven’t tried NCSU China Pearl release, but would like to.

Btw, in case anyone wants to see NMSU evaluations Koko mentioned, here is the link:

https://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/research/horticulture/RR782/welcome.html

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Hi Kokopelli,
I am aware of this study. It needed more time to run out the cultivars longer for more robust findings but it is still very useful. The issues of late frosts would be similar, but here we also have the issue of absolute cold kills and of the condensing of the season because of longer summer days. I wish I was planning an orchard for New Mexico. We dream of retiring there someday.

I am going to try out Intrepid, Contender and China Pearl. I haven’t heard independent reports on Carolina Gold’s hardiness.

As long as we are all sharing reports, here is one focused on the Northeast. Apart from the concern with organic production it contains some relevant info on cultivars, diseases and pests and production methods. https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne11-730/

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That study did not take long enough time for more diseases and insects to show up. The most serious disease of peaches inmy opinion is brown rot. It takes up to 5 years for brown rot to get a hold of your orchard and won’t let go.

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Not an inordinate amount of disease or bug pressure in such a dry climate. Best to look for Southern or Atlantic Seaboard trials where they get the acid test.

For a guy in Vermont I’d go for the Canadian varieties, (maybe cross-checking with lower latitude trials to get an idea about bug and disease resistance) upper Midwest varieties (Iowa, Michigan) try and seek out late-blooming varieties among those and keep my fingers crossed.

You can probably avoid winter kill issues and get good tasting varieties at least. Late frosts and bud hardiness issues will always be with you.

Yes, for sure. Not only do I have the cold temps and late frosts but also high humidity and a lot of bugs. Some of the Canadian varieties are good. They are also hard to get. The Midwest ones are good (Star series and PF’s). There are also some out of NY state.

Short of high tunnels, there will always be late frosts and temp swings that will cause failures. I have a USDA report on climate change models that argues peach production in particular will benefit in the Northeast, while apples face many more challenges going forward. I am betting this model holds, although I maybe shouldn’t.

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Hey. I am in upstate NY here , zone 5b, in the Lake George area in a town called Lake Luzerne. Its about 75 miles from where you are. I have a Hale Haven that is 4 yrs old and have never had a tree grow this fast . It had about 50 peaches last year that were excellent, this year about 75 but are smaller as we had a drought. I did just recently read that this peach doesnt like drought, so this would explain the smaller size. Either way, Im very impressed. I post on here because I do see it available locally.

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