To All,
Below is a photo that gives all the reasons in the world to grow the Manon Peach (This one harvested 7/19/20 in zone 5b NY 35 miles south of Albany) .
BTW, It helps if you have little grandkids to drive the point home. 
Mike
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Look, I can’t argue with her, but Manon just doesn’t tend to get up adequate brix for me here. It’s a beautiful peach and large for one so early, but I’m hoping Spring Snow will give me higher brix based on Olpea’s rating of it. Silver Gem nect does and for a nectarine is fairly easy to grow. ACN used to carry Manon- there may be a reason they stopped.
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I am not crazy about the no or low acid peaches & nects either. But this one has a pretry strong peachy aroma and although not super sweet is more than passable to my palette.
But, a large contingent of the family likes those white fleshed varieties. So far, the clear favorite is the Saturn flat peach. I find it bland but I would be excommunicated if I stopped delivering😊.
But the look on her face makes and the noises she made eating it makes it worth it.
Mike
2 Likes
But it gets up the brix. I don’t mind low acid if the brix gets above 15. As a matter of fact, because all my stonefruit was wiped out by late frost I asked my wife to purchase some nects from Cosco. When I called she’d already left the store and had bought some for me anyway, but I was crushed when she told me she bought a flat of white ones. She asked me if I wanted her to schlep back to get some yellows and I asked her not to.
Turns out she went back anyway, and both the yellow and white were Zaiger (I assume) low acid types. However, the first yellow one I sampled had brix approaching 30 (no test needed) The best ones had that dull, no sheen look about them with white spots. Although I prefer some acid these were the best purchased nectarines I’ve ever tasted, or at least since I moved from CA. in about '77. The white ones were pretty good too.
The box touted the nects as being extremely sweet so maybe some commercial growers are deciding to stop filling their nectarines with water. It’s nuts because CA has as good a climate as anywhere in the world for growing world class stone fruit and they opt to grow water balloons. Meanwhile wine grapes are now growing in some of the best land for that stonefruit because Americans go for the status of fine wine (therefore focus on its taste) and deny themselves the simple pleasure of perfect fruit.
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I need three things, tartness, sweetness and flavor of the particular fruit. But, I wound up growing a bunch of stuff that I DON’T particularly like.
Remember the motto “why just do it when you can overdo it?”
Well, I started my orchard by planting 80+ trees of 80+ different fruits and varieties and all at the same time. I chose varieties by reading the descritions in the catalogs … yeah, I know…
A bunch of these are not my favorites but, now I keep growing them because other members of the family and neighbors like them.
Although I have eliminated trees that just did not work here, I replaced them so that now I am up to 106 trees and, with grafting, I now grow 132 cultivars on those 106 trees.
A friend claims that I am an obsessive compulsive… nah…
I just think that self control, in regards fruit growing, is muchly over rated
Ashmeads Kernel, Karmijn De Sonnenville, Goldrush, Calville Blanc de Hiver, Indian Free Peach, Toka Plum, are examples of the types I like.
But, I get as much of a charge from the reactions of others to my fruit as I do from my own reaction.
No room for more trees so I am obssesing on where to add grafts
Mike
2 Likes