Your conditions are unique. You get a particularly strong sun and very little cloud cover during the growing season. You also get very sudden changes in weather. Trees may or may not ripen sooner there than at other locations, it depends a lot on when they flower there. I have relatives that live in CO but none of them grow fruit, so I don’t know about the relative arrival of spring there.
Pauline’s recs are good and sensible. Harcrest is hard to find, but a high quality, bud hardy peach. This nursery has a good selection of cold hardy varieties.
Paul’s recs are spot on. Probably the only caveat I’d add is that Risingstar seems just as frost hardy for me as Garnet Beauty (they both ripen two weeks before Redhaven) but Risingstar is a better quality peach. I’d also add Baby Crawford and Madison to Paul’s list.
Just for your information I have had six fruiting seasons with Indian free and it never failed to have fruit. Lots of it too. This year grafts on the tree of two nectarines was the only source of pollen. Arctic Jay and Fantasia. That was plenty to pollinate all fruit. I had two nectarine and one peach tree that died when a flash flood hit my yard. First time that ever happened in the 52 years my family owed this house. Surprisingly Indian Free came out of it with no damage at all. So did a multigrafted pluot tree on citation. Indian Free is on citation too. A rootstock not recommend by our extension services. Goes to show experience can trump even the professionals advice. My trees in the front were way above flood level so no damage. I replaced one of the trees. Since I get so much fruit I don’t think I’m going to replace the other two. I keep the tree under seven feet tall. Easy to do too. I try to thin enough to keep production at around 60 to 80 fruit. It has a total of six cultivars on it. Too many ideally but it has worked well with equal production of cultivars. I try to produce about 15 fruits of each type but I didn’t thin them that well this year. Each produced about 60 fruits I thinned to 20 for each cultivar. It was too much. I will thin to 15 next year. That’s plenty to meet my needs.
The tree is 8th leaf. This photo is old the tree is 6th leaf in photo.
I asked on here earlier about tree size and asked a few nurseries about tree size on peach trees. Someone said on here that their tree on lovell rootstock was kept at only 8 feet. Many nurseries have stated to me that I can keep the trees to a manageable size by pruning including here. I think citation only dwarfs trees to 85% from what I have heard. Given our summers are very dry I would worry about the tree entering early dormancy because Bay Laurel Nursery openly states that citation in dry area leads to early dormancy. The dryness of Colorado is great when you consider the fact that too much water lowers brix in fruit. The recommended tree rootstock here is Lovell I believe. Vigorous enough to penetrate our clay soils, no issues with drought and not the hardiness problem of nemagaurd. I would be super concerned with anything shipped with nemagaurd here because I have read it is only hardy to 5 degrees. In regards to the fruiting season I will have 6 other peach/nectarine trees (3 Gold Saturn, 2 Stark Saturn and 1 necta zee nectarine). Given the fact that Necta Zee is zone 6 I will have it in my garage though and it is highly likely to fruit very early because I remember my mulberries were coming out of dormancy in March last year in the Garage.
Lovell is also preferred here. I like that citation saved my trees but I plan to use raised beds or at least mound in the future. All trees lost were on Lovell. Never use in wet or low areas, which I learned the hard way. The one replacement tree is on Lovell. I have had no problems keeping these trees small. I don’t care to use dwarfing rootstocks except on cherries. I have three plum trees either on St Julian or Marianna. I like those rootstocks too. So I’m down two trees but still have 9 trees on the property. I have trees on two other properties also. One has two tart cherries, one peach, two jujubes, a Shipova, and 4 hazelnuts. The 3rd property has 16 dogwood cherries ( hedge), a sweet cherry and a beechwood.
