Actually one of the main reasons I haven’t grown Elberta myself is that it is pretty susc. to bac. spot. Bac. spot is a pretty big deal to me. With all the wind and dust blowing at the farm, I need peaches fairly tolerant of it.
Elberta is a widely respected peach. My wife’s Grandfather had a high enough opinion of the peach, he once drove to Arkansas to get some trees. My neighbor’s Elberta produces some pretty small peaches, but like many home growers, they don’t manage sod or fruit thinning much.
I am not that experienced but this year Elberta and Contender were tied for the late bloomers, Reliance was by far first followed by Belle of Georgia, Hale Haven, Desiree, Coralstar, Red Haven.
It was looking OK for us, but now the models are putting 6" of snow on the ground here for Monday. Now we have 6F in the forecast for Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. So long plum blossoms.
That was extremely helpful! It also pretty much agrees with my own experience this year. I have everything you named except “Desiree” and mine bloomed in the same order as yours. EXACTLY. Well, my contender bloomed just a little ahead of Elberta. But thanks for that…it makes me think my Elberta is an Elberta, which is good. My blooms are the “showy” ones. yours too? I still hope we eventually get a little bloom/leaf identification page/thread like @mamuang suggested.
BTW, SD, my reliance also bloomed early but that sort of surprised me because I thought it had a reputation of being one of the more hardy peaches. If it blooms early, hard to see how it can be very hardy? Thanks
Hopefully it doesn’t get that cold for you @Chris_in_GA. Fruitnut’s greenhouse looks better and better every crazy spring, although our conditions here would make it almost impossible to grow in year round. I’ve thought about a temporary structure but for now, container trees do well for me and can just be moved to the garage. As my number of trees grows though, I’ll have to come up with a different solution or just take some losses on the earlier blooming varieties.
Hi Cityman. I agree, I was surprised by Reliance. It supposed to be cold hardy and require 1000 chill hours. It blooms a good week to 10 days before the others. Can’t recommend this peach. Cold Hardy in the peach industry has different meanings - the most common one is the ability of the plant to survive extreme cold temperatures. Blooming late and the blooms surviving cold temperatures is not the same. I specifically picked Reliance and Contender because I thought they would be late bloomers - got Reliance wrong. I am going to plant PF24C this year although looking through old posts Olpea (spelling?) did not seem to think highly of it, hopefully I will have a better experience. Thinking about trying Fingerlakes Super Hardy or Intrepid next year. The Elberta is by far the most robust tree I have in 2 to 3 years they are 2 to 3 times bigger than my other trees. I wish I knew the rootstock but they were grown on but they were Walmart $5 clearance specials. Here is a link to a related discussion - Further Evaluation of Winter Damage of Peach Buds .
It’s all about location with reliance because in Kansas it still has not bloomed and my neighbors peaches are toast already. Their trees bloomed and were nailed. In around 20-25 years growing reliance ( so long I can’t remember) I lost 2 crops down to 10% remaing and never a total loss. I cut down 3 17 year old trees down due to bacterial canker from all the wild cherries we have here. In Kansas reliance is King for me because we have a July crop before high pest pressure begins. Contender gets very heavy pest pressure.
Yeah…if we get a snowcover…temps if the skies clear/winds go calm…will plummet. The positive is that snow will not last this time of year…even a foot will be gone quickly compared to Dec/Jan…
Do you know what rootstock your Reliance trees are on? I think that is a factor also. Unfortunately my trees came from Lowes and Krogers respectively so I have no idea the rootstock.
Both of my Reliance trees bloom at the same time so I assume they are really Reliance trees but you never know for sure when you buy from the big box stores. I have only gotten peaches off one of them so I can’t be sure the peaches look the same.
I’m not sure why I grow apricots but it’s never been about getting fruit because we never do. Since we never count on it one of these days I’m going to be shocked when I actually get fruit from them. It happened to me once and 5 gallon bucketfuls of apricots were laying around on the ground because the animals and I were so confused we hardly ate any of them.
It got down to 18F at my orchard. I’m sure things are pretty toasted. We had one tree in full bloom and about 30% of the trees in first bloom. A lot of trees had most of their blooms in well advanced pink. I’m sure those are dead. No copper sprays would help this situation.
Strangely, temperatures north of Kansas City were considerably warmer than those south. North KC only got down to about 28F. I don’t understand how that happens.
@clarkinks, I’m sure you’ve seen the forecasts, but we have another 20F night coming Wed. morning.
I quit growing apricots quite a few years ago because they bloom so early, except for a later blooming one Scott recommended. It isn’t old enough to start blooming yet. I also quit growing J. plums for the same reason. The only J. plum I have now was one shipped mislabeled.
Mickster, I plan to spray KDL I bought last year, alot of folks say it offers a few degrees of protection. I sprayed it before a late freeze last spring and it seemed to help. This freeze event is going to be colder so I’m hoping the KDL will at least allow me to salvage a small crop of peaches.
I’m also thinking about finding some metal barrels to set near the trees and burning wood. I tried running sprinklers all night during a late freeze a few years ago and that did not work.
