Speaking of reliance, my tree also blooms around the middle of the peach blooming group. When I put it in, I was expecting it to be more of a late bloomer to avoid more frosts. I believe it is advertised for that. Yet my belle of Georgia blooms later than reliance.
I’ve been trying to document bloom times as you have done, but can’t decide when to say a tree is blooming. First bloom? Full bloom? Midway?
i have less experience with peach, but i think it would be useful to know dates for
-10% flowering
-full (80%) flowering
-90% petal fall
Like they recorded here for apples.
http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?varid=68&&acc=1976137&&fruit=apple
With blackberry ripening the detailed studies show it like this. 5% ripe 50% ripe 95% ripe… they note the dates for that.
If you are getting very detailed on the data collection something like that should work.
All 3 of my peach trees had first bloom in the same order this year.
But they were about a week later than last year.
We had a cold spell 23 24 degrees just prior to peach bloom… when some early buds were showing a bit of color… but none were open yet.
Looks like that caused them to delay first bloom by about a week this year.
Also noticed they took longer to get from 5% to 50% this year too.
Thanks @TNHunter for all the info. I won’t be recording three dates, so I’m leaning to a date when the majority of blooms are fully open. First bloom can have some early blooms well in advance of the main color, and stragglers at the end seem almost like outliers.