There was a lot of dormant bud loss from that Dec. freeze. Normally -10F wouldn’t do a tremendous amount of damage. However, it was either too warm before that cold snap, or the trees didn’t have time to get into full endodormancy.
As far as I can tell, we got to -9F here and lost a lot of dormant peach buds. So did other people around here. But, a lot of trees still had enough buds to make a full crop. We had a spring freeze last week when just about everything was in full bloom. That killed some flowers. I don’t know yet how it will sort out.
Even in KY, peach growers down there lost a lot of dormant fruit buds from that December freeze, according to a chemical rep I talked to from there. Apparently the spring freeze we got about a month ago when they were in full bloom, killed any remaining flowers for growers that far south.
Some varieties off the top of my head which sailed through the -10F in Dec. and had a good bloom here were, Ernies Choice, Harken (which was a surprise because many years we have production problems with these trees), Contender (of course), PF 19-007 (this was a surprise because I think it had some production problems from a cold winter snap a couple years ago), PF eight ball (again surprise because of lack of production from a previous cold winter), Saturn donut, Challenger, Intrepid, Madison, Biscoe, Encore.
There were lots which lost lots of fruit buds, but still had quite a bit of flowers. Glohaven would fall in that category this year. So would Earlystar, Redhaven, Allstar, Veteran, Scarlet Prince, Laurol, Harrow Diamond, Harrow Beauty, PF 24c, Autumnstar, Johnboy, PF14.
Some varieties which got hit the hardest from the Dec. freeze would be Spring Snow (almost nothing on 4 trees), Glenglo, PF9a-007, TangOs 1 (practically nothing), PF 15a (very little), Loring (very little), Victoria, Winblo, Blazingstar (had almost nothing).
Risingstar, which is normally the gold standard for production (and excellent flavor) got hit pretty hard from that Dec. freeze, which was a surprise.
We have other varieties, but they didn’t stand out in my mind as either really poor, or really great bloom, so they would probably fit somewhere in the middle.
Again, this is just visible bloom and doesn’t take into account the spring freeze we had last week, or any potential future freezes we have left this season.