What fruits did you eat today?

[Bradybb]

Flavor King to me,has a deep fruit punch flavor.These are lighter,at least this one was. Brady

[Bradybb]

@subdood_ky_z6b

the skin looks really dark compared to other GP I’ve seen.

There was a bloom,that I didn’t clean off,but yes,fairly dark,with a little red,near the stem. Brady

[Olpea]

@mamuang

You may want to find out when O’ Henry ripen from someone in zone 6 like @Olpea (I can’t think of an O’ Henry grower in zone 5) and how it performs from someone with a similar growing condition to yours.

O’henry is a fine tasting peach, but is a very inconsistent cropper here. It ripens about +33 here. It’s pretty bac. spot susceptible, but that may not be an issue in many places.

I have 10-15 trees of O’henry and this year. I doubt all of them will produce a bushel in total. Whereas decent producers like Redhaven produced at least a couple bushel per tree.

I plan on removing the O’henry trees at some point.

@Phill_Boise_7a

Baby Crawford Peach!!! 17 brix and amazing! Best peach I grow and probably the best flavor I have ever tasted in a peach.

It is a great tasting peach Phill. Mine look exactly like yours. No red in the flesh makes it look a bit exotic too!

@MikeC

The only issue was the RH this year. Very little fruit. Most of the fruit was on the inner part of the tree. So I am not sure if the RH is more temperature sensitive or perhaps we got another blast during one other night. Perhaps they are biennial for me in this area. I have not heard anything about RH being biennial.

The RH and Contender are both very nice peaches. My daughter likes the RH better for taste. They both are very juicy. I think perhaps the RH had that little tart taste like peaches have more than the Contender does. If that makes sense.

Peaches can’t be biannual, like apples. They fruit on new wood, so if they grow any new wood, they will have fruit buds.

It’s likely the spring or winter was just too cold for Redhaven. Contender is slightly more winter hardy than Redhaven, and I’m thinking Contender blooms a bit later than Redhaven (at least the last flowers to open are a bit later).

It’s probable the spring cold temps got most of the Redhaven flowers because it sounds like perhaps the flowers at the base of the shoots are the ones which survived? The flowers at the base of the shoots are generally the last to open.

In a normal year, Redhaven is a better quality peach than Contender. It’s a bit sweeter, and doesn’t have near the fuzz of Contender. I suspect the reason the Redhaven’s weren’t as sweet is because the only ones available were in the shaded part of the tree. Peaches heavily shaded aren’t very sweet. Also, if there was a lot of rain/cloudy weather prior to the ripening of Redhaven, that can also make them tart.

[fruitgrower]

Mike, have a look at the Dave Wilson Nursery website, check out variety recommendations. There is write up on the recommended varieties for zones 5 to 9. Both O Henry and June Pride are highly recommended along with Suncrest, Indian Free, Sno Beauty and White Lady. You don’t need bushels if you are not selling them, just to have some fresh, high quality peaches some years may be all a homegrower wants. I would be happy to send you scion if you would like to try grafting, peaches are a bit stubborn but I think you would do fine. Let me know in December so I can harvest the scion before the buds swell in January.

[fruitgrower]

Thanks Bob, you are correct, the dd on left and flavor king back right. Both are very good but I find FK to be superior in flavor, definitely in my top 5 fruits, actually number 3 this year behind June pride and Flavortop. Kids get one in their lunch every day and love them. We usually have fresh fruit for dessert and the kids will eat them right after eating ice cream, so they are plenty sweet.

[scottfsmith]

@fruitgrower

Mike, have a look at the Dave Wilson Nursery website, check out variety recommendations. There is write up on the recommended varieties for zones 5 to 9. Both O Henry and June Pride are highly recommended

@MikeC, I would not trust Dave Wilson recommendations outside of the west coast, those guys are clueless about the disease pressures we face. I expect these recommendations are for the corresponding west-coast zones.

I have grown O’Henry for 15 years in Maryland. The taste is excellent but it gets very bad spot and is prone to splitting. My tree finally died this year and I am not going to replace it.

I’d be interested in a good east-coast peach to replace it with, the only good things I have ripening in a similar season are white- and red-fleshed peaches. Well its pretty close to Late Crawford, thats an excellent yellow peach. It was not producing well at all for me but I grafted it to a new spot and its looking a lot better this year.

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Lucky kids. Are your other top two fruits nectarines?

So, how long did it take your trees to start producing? How do you train your pluots, open center?

[Phill_Boise_7a]

What other peaches would you say rate as high (or dare I say higher) than baby crawford?

[fruitgrower]

My top two fruits here in Ca are a peach that eats like a nectarine (June Pride) and a superb nectarine (Flavortop). Of course I haven’t tried everything but I have tried a lot. We are blessed to live in a super climate to grow fruits, so these may not do good everywhere, but what hurts to try, you never know. Most fruit trees here produce after a few seasons, but give them 4 to 5 to see the best fruit. I prune almost all my fruit trees open center, with the exception of some cherries.

[Richard]

In my opinion for zones 7-10 in CA:

Peaches: Mid-Pride and the old Saturn (not the donut) propagated by DWN.

White Nectarine: Snow Queen, with very high brix and good acid balance.

My only experience with yellow free-stone nectarines is in ultra-low chill, so I hesitate to mention them here.

[ztom]

Swenson White grapes 19 brix, Edelweiss grapes 17 brix. These are very similar. Edelweiss is bigger, Swenson White is sweeter and slightly better.

I’m still getting Alvaro melons, they average about 13 brix for me.

Had a Yongi Asian pear drop for no obvious reason. The others aren’t ripe yet and neither are my Shinseikis. This one tasted good at 15 brix, but something about the texture was a bit off. I wouldn’t say it was rubbery, but it wasn’t as crisp as normal.

I picked a Gracious plum today. It is an American hybrid. Bigger than I thought it would be (almost 2"), 17 brix, sour skin and regular plum tasting sweet flesh. Nothing special but not bad. I probably wouldn’t plant it again but the tree seems vigorous and healthy, so I’ll graft more Superior and Toka to it. I also had a 17 brix damson plum. If I could get these consistently at 17-18 brix, they’d be one of my favorites for fresh eating. Unfortunately, I’ve had several galls of black knot show up on it this year. For some reason, I mistakenly thought Damsons didn’t get it and haven’t really sprayed this tree in the past.

[Bradybb]

I had a couple things today.A Flavor King Pluot and Fantasia Nectarine.
The Pluot was good,but maybe a little soft and over ripe.
The other was just about right and was the first fruit tree I planted.After the first year and the bugs came,my expectations were low,that the fruit was going to be of any quality,until finding out about bagging.Now quite a few are pristine. Brady

Flavor King Pluot

Fantasia Nectarine

[Olpea]

@Phill_Boise_7a

What other peaches would you say rate as high (or dare I say higher) than baby crawford?

Phill,

I think you and I are in pretty different climates. We get lots of rain here during the summer (in a normal year), whereas Boise hardly gets any rain in the summer. (We average 4"-6" of rain during the summer months here, in a normal year). So many of those west coast varieties may work quite well for you.

I have less experience with the west coast varieties. I’ve tried a few, and most don’t work here, so I haven’t tried that many.

I suppose Baby Crawford is considered a west coast peach and it works well here. Another west coast peach I like is Spring Snow (Zaiger genetics). Beyond that most of the west coast peaches don’t work too well here (O’henry being one of the better ones, but still not good enough to keep for me.)

For the more wet tolerant peaches (which I’m more familiar with) probably Blazingstar is pretty top notch. I also really like Ernies Choice for flavor. Both aren’t what I would call consistent heavy producers, but both are very very good.

I would actually rate those two higher than Baby Crawford, even though Baby Crawford is an excellent peach. But of course tastes are very subjective.

Another peach which I don’t have a lot of experience with, but looks very very promising is Challenger. This is the second year I’ve harvested some. The peaches are a beautiful deep red and packed with flavor. Also seems to be a very productive peach, based upon the little experience I’ve had with it. It ripens with Blazingstar, and is every bit as good, but perhaps more productive.

@Joe

Based on the limited research I’ve done over the past week or so I think something along the lines of planting one Coralstar and one Messina might be the way to go for me, and to graft a variety or two onto those trees to extend the season.

Joe,

I had very poor luck getting Coralstar to produce much at all for me. There are some east coast growers here on the forum for which Coralstar has done well, so it might do well for you.

Messina also sets very poorly for me and I will be removing that variety this year. There have been at least one report of it setting lightly on the east coast, so you may want to take another look at that one before planting it. I’ve fruited this variety for 4 years and every year it produces hardly anything (like a dozen peaches per full sized tree).

[Joe]

I’ve seen Alan report that it does well for him in SE NY. Also, I figure since professional orchard in my area grows it then I’m sure it’s a good choice in my area (which is very similar to Alan’s). On the topic of Coralstars, I let one fully ripen and it lost all its bite. It was just a regular sweet peach… not nearly as exciting!

I’ve still got time to figure out what’ll work best here. After some thinking, I’m leaning towards making sure that we get a continuous peach/nect harvest in August to hold us over between the end of blueberry season and when the apples, pears, and pawpaws ripen here.

[scottfsmith]

I decided to test the brix on some peaches I am eating now. Sanguine Tardeva was 13 brix, Early Crawford was 16 and Athena was 20. These are a few points below the usual due to all the rains but are all very tasty, in fact they were about equally enjoyable in spite of the big brix difference.

[scottfsmith]

Check our these peaches I harvested tonight (the ones in front), I call them Ernies Second Choice

Since we were talking about Ernies Choice above I thought folks might be interested in this odd thing my Ernies Choice tree routinely does. It looks like its aborting about half of its crop, but they in fact just grow a lot slower and only develop partial seeds and are smaller and oddly-shaped. Usually I just ignore them but I tasted one tonight, three weeks (!) after the main harvest on the tree, and they taste just like the big ones did! Very odd! Anyways its a pleasant surprise to get another crop for free on the same tree. The seed is almost non-existent in size so there is a fair amount of “meat” on those small fruits.

[fruitnut]

@scottfsmith

only develop partial seeds and are smaller and oddly-shaped.

I had a lot of that this yr. I think it’s unpollinated fruit that doesn’t abort. Mine have very small seeds. They can taste pretty good.

My Ginger Gold apple does the same thing. Small late unpollinated fruits that are high brix and very tasty. They hang in good condition for weeks whereas the early pollinated fruit goes mealy overnight. The unpollinated fruits mature about 4-6 weeks later than pollinated.

[scottfsmith]

That sounds right; I just cracked open a seed and it was empty inside.

I only get these on Ernies Choice, and I get them pretty much every year on that variety. It also helps make the main crop peaches better as I routinely thin too little and this self-semi-thinning helps the size of them.

[mrsg47]

Scott can you please slice open the Saguine Tardiva? Would love to see the color inside. Thanks, Mrs. G

[mamuang]

Scott,
Your (mostly) organic sprayed peaches looked impressive. I wish mine will look as clean as yours.