There is higher interest all the time about Reliance peaches! They are a great peach for my location in Kansas! They did well again in 2021 like they do most years.
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For nostalgia here is your review from 11 or so years ago.
Reliance is my favorite peach! I grow 7 of them here in Kansas.I had fruit the second year. I have not lost one in the 10+ years I have grown them. I am going to try contender this year. It is hard to deal with wind,cold winters, hot summers like we have here in KS. Reliance is not the sweetest peach (I think they are a little sour when canned)in my opinion. It is the only peach I have been able to successfully grow and I have tried lots of other varities. I think they are great fresh. My trees are not over 15 feet which I attribute to clay soil and lots of wind. My trees came from Gurneys. If I could tell anyone in a harsh environment to grow 1 type of peach it would be reliance."
from
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That was 11 years ago and I had grew them for 10 years back then? That’s a long time ago!
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Are they still the best peaches ever?
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They are pretty good on a drought year but they are very small. As I said they are somewhat sour on a normal year. They are the best peach ever for my location in Kansas. A Georgia or Colorado peach are about the best peach ever grown so no they don’t compete with a great peach. Homegrown peaches definately beat store bought peaches. @Olpea is our peach grower and my guess is he has many that are much better. Sometimes finding what works for you is as good as you can do! They have a consistent crop even on years when everyone loses theirs to spring freezes. The secret is they bloom heavy.
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I have one. It’s kind of new and I’m waiting to see how it does with rot. Resistance to rot is what makes a good peach here.
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I saw this video awhile back (colorado)… and its about the simplest explanation of a peach tree that i have seen to date… do you agree with their practices?
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Yes they have a unique climate in Colorado free of many pests and diseases because of their dry climate. It’s not easy to grow fruit there. Soil influences crop taste which should be factored in. The methods they use are similar to mine except I rotate types of trees using peach for 20+ years then rotating it out with pear, Apple, or more disease resistant fruit. Hot days and cold nights is a recipe for fantastic fruit Palisade Peaches: A Delicious Piece of Colorado History . Georgia peaches are delicious because of the ideal soil and I believe hot summer days https://www.halegroves.com/blog/are-georgia-peaches-the-best/
Nearly every orchardist buy land with a plan to produce fruit but there is much they don’t know at first about soil. Like a grape grower I add magnesium and a blend of other supplements to my soil with good results.
Every wine tastes like the place it was grown and every year is unique. Like my Reliance peaches on a drought year was exceptional. https://timatkin.com/cork-talk/a-wine-lovers-guide-to-vineyard-soils/
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It’s been a long time since I’ve grown Reliance. It is reliable. In the last year 2021, Contender was the only peach which set a full crop in my orchard. We did get quite a few peaches off Redhaven, Clayton, and a few other varieties. It was a very tough year in KS/MO.
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Everyone else around here had 100% losses but my Reliance had plenty of nice big peaches.
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Yep. The vast majority of our 50+ remaining varieties were a complete loss. Contender set full crops. Many of our Redhavens produced about like your Reliance (as far as I can tell from your pics). Clayton was about the same.
I followed those arctic temps really closely last Feb. We actually got lower temps here than where you are. It was minus 19 a mile and a half from the orchard. It was minus 17 for our neighbor to the north, but they are on top of the hill.
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There is no doubt about that it was cold and a terrible year for fruit overall. @39thparallel lost his pear crops in between you and I . Contender did very well here as well which is nice as it’s later ripening. The point I’m trying to convey for everyone reading this is if your growing Reliance and contender peaches that’s counting on worse case scenario. Flat wonderful had a full crop loss it’s a novelty pear. Sometimes 1 degree or 5 degrees makes all the difference. Your area like 39th parallel is known to get up to 10"+ additional yearly rainfall. My location gets at least 10" more than they do further west of me. Very interesting fact here in my area there are several areas with 5 miles of me with different weather. Water attracts water so a large river or lake will have fog or rain from the water there. My large pond offers a different weather within 5- 10 feet of the bank. Last year was an anomaly we hope and not a change in the weather. This is why I prefer callery pear rootstocks as well they do influence the pear that grows on them. In my area people just feet away lost their crops due to rootstocks used. Those wild callery have good pear genetics resisting droughts very well. Reliance peach is what I recommend people get in this area. Once they get reliance they call me and tell me they are getting peaches most years. The cherries they grow on the prairies aka carmibe jewell and romance series cherries or pears from the Harrow experiment station do well here as we have similar weather in many ways.
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I would like to see a thread on this. I grow a few things that arent the best, but are ‘bomb proof’. I think alot of us keep a few ‘ol faithfuls’ around.
I have read alot of debates on Reliance Vs Contender… but there are two other players that sometimes get recognition. Veteran and Intrepid.
These 4 seem to be the ‘tough guys’. lol and all 4 sound like names of Battleships instead of peaches.
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The last two years have been very bad peach years. We only sold about 10% of a full crop, and much less in 2021.
Veteran did well in 2020, when late frosts hammered most varieties. In 2021 when we had extreme low winter temps, Veteran didn’t produce anything. Baby Crawford produced something both years. Baby Crawford ripens with Veteran.
Can you imagine a battleship named Baby Crawford? 
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In this case I now think of Baby Crawford to peaches as a seven feet tall man called “tiny”. Need to get me a Baby Crawford
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Eboone,
Do you have any more experience harvesting July Rose? I’m considering trying the variety.
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I think it is a pretty nice white peach. I was looking to replace my Raritan rose variety that I grew many years ago in a different location. It is supposedly from the same breeding program.
I don’t have a lot of experience. Three years ago, the first year it fruited, I only had a few peaches from it. Two years ago I had a pretty nice crop, but this year, like all my peaches, I had crop failure due to a series of late frost while flowers were in bloom. Like the other white peaches I have grown, it seems a little more susceptible to brown rot and insect damage then yellow peaches. In size, I don’t think it was quite comparable to my blushing star white peach, which ripens over three weeks or so later. Or the Carolina Belle I had in the past. Superb sweet flavor though, very juicy.
My experience with a single tree,
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Watched a boxers first televised match once and his name was Pinklon Thomas Pinklon Thomas - Wikipedia. Everyone there at the house made fun of his name. When they asked me what i thought about the guy with the funny name i said i bet he can fight like you would not believe. He was everything i suspected he was. Baby Crawford would make a great boxer name!
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I have a full crop of Reliance peaches ripening in Kansas right now on some 3 year old trees. The peaches are large and look really nice. Taste is sweet, but they are grainy. Past years I didn’t notice this on an older tree I have. Anyone know what causes this? Age? Environment? Trait of the variety?
I was considering growing some more because they have been a dependable producer in tough years in Kansas but now I’m not so sure.
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