I think so. Even TangOs was hard to get customers to try it. I had to give away a lot of fruit to get any interest. There is a fair amount of interest now in those, but we still have trouble selling all of them from about a dozen trees. We have no trouble at all selling any yellow peaches (except the hard ones like Gloria). White peaches and nectarines we also have had some difficulty selling when we raised a lot of them.
Yes and no. Sometimes I’ve had 20 customers in line this summer, working as fast as possible to try to minimize wait times. It doesn’t give a lot of explanation per customer. Even when times are slower, it’s difficult to change customer expectations. People expect a peach to soften to a mid or early season type peach.
Towards the end of the season I found myself sounding like a broken record. “The end of the season peaches are much firmer than mid or early season peaches. The flesh is denser and won’t soften like mid or early season peaches, etc, etc”
Even after all of that, I’d find people would come back a week later and still waiting for the peaches to “ripen” on the counter, to my dismay. Some of their peaches went bad and I gave money back. I’m sure I’d have more issues with the new harder/firmer peaches from Rutgers. I faced the same with Gloria.
As I mentioned, my situation is somewhat unique. I think these peaches will be a tremendous boon to wholesale peach growers. And to backyard growers, if they know what to expect.
I plan on keeping a few Tiana at least for a while. But so far these harder peaches don’t fit my customer base.
I’ve grown Victoria for quite a few years. My first Victoria were planted in 2012.
I reported on it in a recent 2022 peach evaluation thread I started.