What's happening today - 2018 edition

Nice~ I have tasted Sugarcane variety and it was really good. But the Shanxi Li that I have tasted from a local gardener’s tree was even better, so I ended up getting it.

Ok! Perhaps when it fruits you all can help me figure out what it is then. Seems the potted trees you buy are mostly mislabeled. I never questioned the variety as this tree does require high chill as does contender and the fruit colors up simular to contender. It also blooms later than my other peaches and just before my intrepid and reliance (those I ordered bare root) whose blooms are Non-showy. Thanks for the correction.

@Olpea, or anyone, are there other attributes that tied back to showy blooming peach trees? Sounds like most at not hardy. I have three white flesh peach trees and they are all showy but my mislabel contender is yellow flesh. Have high and low chill showies so chill is not a consistent attribute. Wondering if there are one or two attributes related to the fruit or the tree itself that are a constant with showy bloom trees.

I am not sure you can draw many conclusions from the show blossoms, other than they happened separately and weren’t particularly bred for. As far as I know, the peach development programs almost entirely focus on commercial peaches, so they just don’t care, as I do, about deliberately trying to create a hardy AND pretty tree. However, my Hale Haven is showy AND has done very well in my yard, so I have a good starting point to cross my commercially focused hardy locally developed trees with a pretty tree developed for other reasons in a different climate.

There’s got to be a variety of Hale-Haven-Contenders or Reliance-Hale-Havens that is strong, disease and pest resistant, grows well on it’s own roots in our red clay soil, that also happens to have poem worthy spring displays, and I hope to find it!

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They do but not all. It costs huge bucks to develop cultivars, often taking 15 years or more before you can even sell one tree. Near misses can be sold to the home market and is a way to recoup r&d costs. Places like Guerney’s specialize in offering these. Zaiger has produced 4 or 5 double flowered peaches or nectarines strictly for the home market. Red Baron peach is actually amazingly good besides having fantastic flowers. In the recent DWN video posted, it shows Zaiger working on genetic dwarf peaches strictly for the home market.

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Excellent point, the times are a-changing. I probably should have said traditionally, or said the “University based programs” or some kind of disclaimer. Of course it could be that I was never right!

No, in general you’re right, we only get the rejects. But it makes economic sense to market to the home. That what really sucks this year as a major home market wholesaler is calling it quits to bare root trees for the home market. The name is escaping me at this senior moment? They introduced many to the home market, and in some cases the only nursery growing them. So we have less choices now, some will be gone and never offered again. They did a lot of persimmons cultivars.

As Mr. Guy mentioned there aren’t really any consistent attributes of the peach, based on flower type.

There do seem to be some trends though. In my experience, most white peaches (not all) seem to have showy flowers. Most nectarines seem to be showy.

Here are some of the showy flowers I’ve observed, based on my notes (peaches and nects). Any peaches/nects on the list are NOT an endorsement. Many of these peaches I’ve removed for one reason or another, but these have showy flowers.

Rich May
Earlystar
Spring Prince
Spring Snow
Harrow Diamond - This is considered a hardy productive peach
PF7a
Sugar May
Silvergem
Flat Wonderful
Avalon
Glenglo
Honeyblaze
Easternglo
Sweet Scarlet
June Prince
Nectafest
BuenOs
Saturn
TangOs
Topaz
White Lady
Johnboy
Johnboy II
Hardired
Ernies Choice
Blaze Prince
Klondike White
Winblo
Flavrburst
Loring
Bounty
Veteran
Honey Royale
Sugar Giant
White River
Scarlet Prince
July Prince
PF24-007
Coralstar
Sweet Breeze
Baby Crawford
Blushingstar
Redskin
Fantasia
Lady Nancy
O’henry
Laurol
Ambre
Autumn star
Snow Giant
Victoria
Sweet Bagel

@Levers101 and @MisterGuy I just noticed I misread my notes when I posted earlier that Madison has showy blooms. Madison does NOT have showy blooms. Madison has non-showy blooms. I will edit the above post to reflect that.

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Of course it does. I should have known because that’s the variety I couldn’t find this year.

My Arboreum order is in so I will be planting tonight after work. Still trying to figure out how to cram all of my order in my available space, thought I had more room than I do. :expressionless:

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I believe you were thinking of LE Cooke. They have some really interesting blog posts about how many of their tree introductions came into being. Most start with something like ‘this guy in Long Beach says this peach tree is super low chill with great fruit; you should test it…’ Hopefully California Rare Fruit Growers can replace some of that along with people who are on sites like this. It’s hard for a guy like Dave Wilson Nursery that is producing millions of trees a year to investigate the small things.

http://www.lecooke.com/le-cooke-blog/content/introductions-by-l-e-cooke.html

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My “Reliance” is showy --and it blooms earliest of my peaches, lol! It figures it would be mislabeled. I bought it at a little local sells-everything kind of store because it looked healthy and was on a big sale.

I like every peach I’ve ever tasted, though, so it’s only its earlier bloom that bothers me much about that (so far).

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DWN does offer cloning services for other nurseries.and Cooke was using them. So having some stock,there already, could continue it. The Felix Gillet Institute nursery is not a big operation, It’s a very cool nursery especially for CA.
What a fantastic collection of fruit trees and a very interesting organization. That nursery has very rare heirlooms. Dave Wilson grows Walnuts for them using their bud wood.Gillet made that industry in California. Out of the 30 varieties Gillet introduced currently the Institute is selling 5 of them. Actually they might not all be his, they offer five heirloom walnuts. I didn’t read all the descriptions. The plums look very interesting that they sell. Cherries and other trees too.

A few observations from my orchard today. All of my Japanese plums and hybrids are at least at bud swell or further along up to popcorn stage. As always, flavor delight is the farthest along and very inappropriate for my location. Luckily it’s just a single grafted limb so I’ll leave it for the heck of it. My other observations in terms of earliest blooms to latest.

Flavor Delight,. Last year’s first bloom was 2/26/17. So we are at least 2 weeks later this year.
Satsuma,
Methley, FK, FS, FQ (all similar stage).
Emerald Beaut, Flavor Grenade,
Shiro,
DD,
Toka even later.
Nadia,

All of my cots look late with the exception of the hybrids.

Last year Nanking cherry was very early as well but this year they are probably as far along as Toka. All in all I think we are 1-2 weeks behind last year’s early bloom.

Here is the popcorn stage flavor delight

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Uncovered my grapes today in the greenhouse. It looks like they all survived, but time will tell.

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Hi Ursula. I assume you have these up on a trellis of some sort in summer? Are they hard to pull down for winter? Do you have mice/vole damage after covering them for the winter? Do you taking measures to counter that? I’m stumbling along with over-wintering grapes through long winter seasons, but haven’t tried taking them down and covering them yet. They are surviving but certainly not flourishing.

I have them planted on an angle so the main trunk runs fairly horizontal as I find it gets too sturdy to bend as it ages. I chose 3 or 4 strong canes that are trained to grow up the hoops of my greenhouse and overhead on wires. These get taken down in the fall and rolled up in a circle, laid down and pinned with landscape pins. I then cover with burlap, and put a large bag of sawdust on top. I find this method easier than laying the long canes out and having to bury them all.

I put out the pre-made bait stations for the mice and voles next to the plants. My cat also likes to sleep in the greenhouse in the winter, especially when the sun heats it up.

This is the third winter for 2 of them and only the second for the other 3. I cannot speak to fruit production as the first couple of years I did not cover them as well as this year. I started covering my outside jelly grape a few years ago and the fruit production certainly increased. I mistakenly assumed that the greenhouse would be better protected, but it gets just as cold in there as outside. We do not heat it during the coldest winter months.

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Went to the local hardware store and picked up this kiddie pool to use as a makeshift water tray for some of my container garden. Everything is growing pretty well but some of the bigger plants, the determinate tomatoes especially, have reached the point where the plant growth above the soil is so much more than the root mass in the pots (everything is being grown in those 2 or 2.5 gallon black nursery pots) that the pots are drying out every day, or sometimes in less than a day. I put just a small level of water in it before I went out this morning and when I came back home tonight all the water was gone but the tomato pots were still moist, rather than bone dry like before, so it appears to be working. Would have done individual trays but the only ones I could find were half the cost of the pool and I would’ve needed more than two:

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The day was sunny and the Plum tree flowers are showing a little color and will probably pop open in about a week,so I sprayed the plants with soap and oil.
That worked extremely well last year against Curly Leaf Aphids. Brady

Fruit trees just came out today at Wal-Mart. Great deal on the Red Haven and Loring! $25 for the Super Sweet Peach. Also had a lot of Choke Cherries for $39.

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