I am looking for the latest late season peach variety I can find. Taste is not important as this will be for a deer/wildlife food plot. Please share your general location, latest peach variety and when it is ready to be harvested. I ordered “Octoberfest” but now realize there may be later varieties. Thanks in advance!
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I would plant pears. Deer like them better, lower maintenance, and they last until bow season or later.
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If its for deer i would probably go with Indian Blood and just plant seeds or buy seedlings if you want a jumpstart.
More than you ever wanted to know from the legends here:
If you want alot of wildlife to crave something late… get you some persimmons like Deer Magnet and Deer Candy etc…they are available online easily.
These persimmon sound good also
Some other fruiting trees to consider for wildlife and possibly yourself.
https://chestnuthilloutdoors.com/product-category/fruit-berries/
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I know a lot of people up north growing apples for the deers. They also grow sugar beets for wild animals
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Yes sugar beets are a great attraction for deer. I planted them near my barn at our woods. The deer never bothered them until we had a good frost. Then they were in them day and night. The next spring the field looked like it had been roto-tilled. Not a speck of sugar beets left. Our woods is located in zone 5B.
I live in zone 6B where there are commercial peach and apple orchards plus lots of deer. Most of the apple orchards are protected by 8’ fences. I can’t think of any peach orchards that are fenced. That should give you a clue what to plant.
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I also have a Victoria peach that is my last ripening peach in zone 6B. It is a great peach for me. It’s my Halloween peach. 
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Look at the “Flaming Fury” peach website. I think they have one that ripens 45 or 50 days past Redhaven peaches, the standard they use for ripening.
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Thanks for all of the replies. I have somewhere between 40 to 50 peach trees on my father’s farm. Last year we had excessive rain which made a significant number of the peaches taste like mush, so we did not harvest them and let them fall. We had more deer on the trailcams many with beautiful racks. After the peaches were gone the bucks disappeared. We also have somewhere around twenty to thirty apple trees, with maybe 10 them producing significantly any given year. The deer prefer the peaches by a wide margin from what we see on the trailcams. We have a couple of mature pears and the deer do like the pears but again not as much as the peaches. I have another dozen or so pear trees of various sizes, but we are lucky to get two three pears a year off of them. Based off my observations I want to go with peaches. I am already spraying around 50 peach trees what is a few more? Unfortunately, I did not plant any of the really late peach varieties that produce at the end of September into October in my original mini-orchard.
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Does Victoria come in at the end of October for you?
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Thank you for the variety recommendation. I have half a dozen of the Flamin Fury peach trees and have had mixed results. I do have one of the later varieties and have never gotten a peach off of the tree. The PF-5D is one of the better early producers.
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I had an Indian Blood Peach Tree at my old house and it produces a little early, hoping to find something later. Thank you for the recommendation.
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There is this one, “The harvest of Sweet September begins in the 2nd week of September and extends as late as mid-October”
www.wheretobuy.davewilson.com/product-information-commercial/product/sweet-september-yellow-peach
I see it available here Sweet September Peach | C&J Gardening Center
There is also a late white peach, not as late as, Sweet September Peach White Heath | Dave Wilson Nursery
I see it available here White Heath Cling Peach Tree » Store » Tomorrow's Harvest
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Here is one more
- ‘Fairtime’ peach, crops September - October, cropping date varies depending on Seller, and on climate Fairtime Peach Tree for Sale - Grow Organic
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I have only one of the FF versions. I picked that version just because of the later ripening date. I, like you, have not had any peaches from it yet. I planted mine in 2017,PF 35-007.
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What ripens in late sept on the west coast is unlikely to ripen at all in VA, I’m guessing. Victoria is the only one I know of with the endorsement of commercial growers. I’ve grown it for several years now and it’s a good peach for me in NY, a much more practical one to grow than Indian Blood as far as reliable harvests of useful fruit- and I love IB when it comes through for me- beautiful, uniquely deep purple skin whose color spreads unevenly into the fruit with high acid and sugar- but very fuzzy. I will always grow both. White Heath, on the other hand, doesn’t really appeal to me. Not much juice, for one thing, or peachy flavor, as I recall. But it was reasonably reliable before I eliminated it.
You are welcome i figured since it was mid october it would be late enough… im not sure i could grow many peaches much later than that. Best of luck.
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But in 23 it came through in spite of endless rain, due to extra sprays on my part. I often get frustrated with unusual varieties in terms of productivity… it is an ongoing process of evaluation and my opinions fluctuate. Why did you bring that comment up, exactly? You’ve done that before. Anyone obsessed with fruit has evolving and changing opinions. I also grow the peach in two other sites where brown rot isn’t the problem it is on my own, even though I failed to consider that in my comment 2 years ago. My latest comment mentioned IB’s lack of reliability .
Focus on your own comments, please- unless you have a specific question regarding mine. No one else on the forum does this kind of stalking and I find it unpleasant. The last time you took one out of context.
I didn’t read that IB ripens too early in VA, but I first tasted it at a NAFEX meeting at Monticello which must have been in late August, now that I think about it. I guess I have no idea about what peach would be worth growing in VA that provides late Sept into Oct harvests- unless there are multiple strains of Indian Blood.
Adams sells nothing later than Victoria, besides the white peach September Snow. That may be the latest peach commonly grown by commercial growers on the east coast so I’d try that if IB ripens too early.
At one time i wanted to try IB but it certainly sounds unreliable. I’ll stick with Indian Free which has never failed to fruit for me. I have three seedlings one fruits even later the other two earlier. Fruit is close to Indian free. I would not grow this commercially as the fruit has a very short shelf life and some years can be very tart. In a good long hot summer it produces the highest sugar of any I have grown but not every year and it produces a lot of acid sweet or not.
Last year was a good year and I dried the fruit and it was the tastiest dried fruit I ever made. From now on all the Indian Free fruit will be dried.
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I can second deer loving peaches … they were eating all of my crop on my shorter trees. Now I train peach trees to go up up up their first 3-4 years so they can get above the deer. Peaches are very hard to train high because the limbs bend so much with fruit load. When I get a new peach I now remove all but one dominant shoot, it needs to send one shoot to the sky before I will let it branch.
Re: late varieties, my latest was Salwey which is an October peach for me. It’s hard to find though. I like White Heath a lot, and for the deer it would be great, but it is also hard to find these days. Of the ones readily available I think Fairtime might be the latest.
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My comment is on that thread. You’re welcome. I only commented on that thread because i grow both Indian Blood and Indian Free and they both interest me.
I honestly did not even read your post at all. But i did go back and re-read it after you accused me of stalking…which is strange behavior.
You asked me to ask a specific question about your comments.
Now that i read it the post should probably be amended or removed by someone as you stated that Indian Blood peach is a bust. Since you later on say that its freestone its not even an Indian Blood. Luckily the other members picked up on it and the Indian Free discussion carried on.
I will edit my post to remove ‘your’ thread…as it is misleading with the false title.
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