Anyone grown any of the stellar series peaches in the northwest? How do they perform? WSU had good results with Risingstar at mount Vernon, so I’m hoping others do well too. I’m looking mostly at Earlystar, Risingstar and Autumnstar to extend our season at either end. Or any similar season Flamin Furies. Currently we have a variety developed by a local nursery for our late season, but they didn’t grow any the last few years and we’ll be planting this fall, so that’s a no go for this planting. Encore does really well for us here too, but it drops too much and the flavor is pretty meh. We also have Candor for the early season, but I despise it more than any fruit we grow. It fills a hole between cherries and Redhaven and it tastes great, but 50% split pits is a good year.
Eastern WA is quite different than western WA, and I’m not sure exactly where you are, but I have Earlystar and PF-24C. For an early peach, Earlystar does quite well.
PF-24C is my best peach. Usually about 3 brix higher than Redhaven and three weeks later.
Have you tried PF 8-Ball? I’m grafting it, but not much really known about it.
I have not tried PF 8-Ball. Early Readhaven and Risingstar ripen close to that window, and I have them, so I just haven’t given 8-Ball a try.
South Willamette Valley, so we do a bit better than Western Wa, but most springs are pretty wet. Seems like it rains just as much in the spring where all these were bred. Redhaven is our only Michigan peach and it performs best for us out of anything, but yield isn’t great. I’m interested in 24c, Suncrest does really well for us around that slot, you have any comparison with that?
Unfortunately, no Suncrest.
I’m surprised that yield is low on Redhaven. It requires lots of thinning here. The only one that is worse for me is PF-24C. It really over-sets. I have O’Henry at +36. It sets a reasonable amount of fruit and makes my thinning job a lot easier.
I did a survey of willamette valley u-picks last year looking mainly at peaches and cherries, my lists are here: fruitfacts/plant_database/references/Oregon/Willamette Valley U-picks at main · larsonmpdx/fruitfacts · GitHub
here are all the FA and PF varieties I found, there are some others in the lists maybe you’ll want to look at the files themselves -
- brosi’s in winston (roseburg) grows risingstar, coralstar, glowingstar, autumnstar and pf5 (I assume pf5d, I don’t think 5b is grown much)
- bell’s in beaverton grows risingstar, starfire, allstar
- sauvie island farms grows risingstar
- grossen in helvetia grows starfire
- perryhill in dallas grows coralstar, autumnstar and “pf 5 through pf 31”
- tk orchards in aurora grows starfire and an unidentified pf variety
note that there’s both a zaiger starfire USPP9778 and fruit acres starfire FA11 USPP10548. These could be either but my guess was FA11
based on the lists my own goal was to get pf5d (-24), risingstar (-9), and autumnstar (+38). FA102 earlystar (-18) I guess would fit in too but I thought it was weird that nobody was growing it. I’m not in a hurry though, all I have so far are some tiny risingstar grafts. autumnstar went off patent last year and pf5 goes off patent late next year (earlystar not patented) so I’ll be looking for cuttings eventually
Fantastic! Thanks, I’ll be ordering the Early or PF5D, Rising and Autumn soon then. 24c is tempting too. Might do a trial row with a bunch of others too.