Gold Dust is three weeks before Redhaven and Winblo is two weeks after Redhaven.
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I’ve had a citizen of Georgia call a peach off my tree the best he’s ever eaten, but he may not have been well acquainted with really tree-ripe fruit. You can’t have a valid opinion of where the best fruit is grown if you haven’t eaten lots of it as grown to top quality in various regions. I’ve tasted Georgia peaches purchased from the growers road-side stand and they were fantastic, but I also love the ones off my own trees in SE NY.
I used to have the same attitude as Rayrose about the use of a refractometer, that the point was only how the fruit tasted in my mouth- but when I bought one I began to see the relationship more clearly between high brix and preferences. I was able to see more clearly the reason certain varieties appealed to me more- the highest in brix that didn’t taste as sweet as their readings would suggest because of balancing sweet with high acid. More importantly, brix readings help communicate to others what is going on in the palate of the person claiming a certain variety is great.
Chris in GA makes an interesting observation that suggests another possibility to me than the one he makes- that either he or Rayrose has a mislabeled product. Ripening times should not be so far apart unless one of the two are located in a radically condition changing location, like right near the shore of the Atlantic, at much higher elevation or in a site with limited sun exposure (sun exposure probably only makes a week or two difference at most)…
I definitely see the potential to get caught up in the “Brix Game” and that is likely a bad thing. People from different regions might think their fruit is inferior because it’s not living up to the brix readings they hear other people talking about. People have to get away form that way of thinking.
I bought a refractometer and I’m hoping it can help me monitor a certain crop from year to year. If I have 3 straight years where my best plums are 18 brix and then all of a sudden the 4th year they are 22 brix I can look at all of the factors that may have played a part in causing the brix to change. Like peak ripeness, average spring and summer temps, rainfall numbers, etc.
Congrats Ray on harvesting some great peaches.
Actually Winblo is not working out too good for me here. The problem is that it gets considerable bac. spot. in my orchard. I also have problems with Rich May. I’m removing Rich May this year. I’ll probably slowly replace my Winblos with Ernies Choice.
One nice thing I like about Winblo vs. Ernies Choice is that Winblo is easier to thin. Ernies Choice has to be thinned really really late here because it tends to abort some fruit later than most peaches. But overall, Ernies Choice is much easier to grow for me and produces nice sweet peaches.
I’ve found in good years I can’t tell a lot of difference between most mid and late season varieties (but I don’t grow many of those Zaiger super brix peaches either.) In terms of yellows, I do have one midseason peach that produces more consistently sweet peach peaches than other varieties (in other words it produces very sweet peaches even in a bad year).
This is a bad year for us. We had rain rain rain in April and May followed by 90+ weather for the last couple weeks. Normally peaches love hot weather, but after so much cold and wet weather, a sizzling heat wave really screws with the trees.
I’ve never heard of Gold Dust. It’s not a peach that’s grown in the South.
My trees are definitely NOT mislabled.
I’ve had nothing but hot weather and no rain. I’ve even had to
irrigate all of my trees, that’s how bad it is. Winblo is a peach
that was bred in the South for Southern growers, and I think
that has a lot to do with how it performs in various regions.
None of my trees have or have ever had bacterial spot, and I’ve
never sprayed any of my trees for anything except pc/ofm. I think
too may people plant trees that are disease prone and that disease
can often spread to other varieties. But, many people like to experiment
and push the envelope. I happen to be not one of them.
When we were still on GW, I took a lot of grief on this subject, because
I relied on the testing performed by Dr. Layne, when he was at Clemson.
How could I do any better than the peach specialist at Clemson? I viewed
all of his videos over and over and analyzed the data he collected at both
Musser Farms and Cooley Farms. These are all within 100 miles from me, and his video series is entitled, “Peaches For South Carolina.” I chose the varieties that he recommended as THE BEST. That’s the reason I have such good peaches with NO disease.
I also let my peaches ripen on the tree, which IMHO, gives them more sweetness and better overall flavor.
How do you like Harvester? It is highly praised in Texas for its com o of reliability and quality but I have not grown it yet.
Is this when Winblo ripens in your area? I’m just interested in the extreme difference in ripening times. Nurseries make mistakes regularly and send mislabeled trees to small order customers, especially. I’m not saying yours is the one not correct- in fact I would expect with the care you’ve gone to in acquiring your trees it is Chris with the mislabeled tree, but it would be pretty easy to find out the proper ripening time of that variety and with the ripening time of the two trees so far apart, which one is likely mislabeled.
That is, unless another factor can be determined to make such a discrepancy possible. That should not be very difficult, but obviously you aren’t curious about it. I am.
It’s a California peach. Here is some info I collected on this peach:
Best early season yellow peach: very high scores for flavor and overall appeal in Dave Wilson Nursery blind taste tests. Semi-freestone ripens mid to late June in Central California, 2-3 weeks ahead of Redhaven. All purpose, superb for eating fresh. Not an early bloomer.
Opens the season of high-quality peaches. Large, oblate fruits, somewhat lacking in skin color, requires early thinning, then can reach an enormous size. Yellow flesh, little red at the pit, melting, sweet, best of its season. Parent of Suncrest.
http://www.google.com/patents/USPP1144 (exp. Oct 17, 1970). Bred in 1940s by Thomas Burton Stribling at Le Grand, Merced County, Calif.
Gold Dust has proven to be a good peach in my location. It is not particularly prone to bacterial spot or rot.
Many of the California peaches have done badly for me, and when I started my orchard I had many of them and got severe bacterial spot due to the susceptible ones spreading it to the more resistant ones next to them.
I agree! My mid season peaches last year were all excellent and I don’t believe a a single customer could tell the difference between the varieties. It was a very dry year and Redhaven, Fireprince and Winblo were similar in size, color and taste.
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Pea, I have two Winblos and they seem infected with Baterial Spot. Will continued application of MycoSheild (Oxytetrcycline) be an effective control.
As I said earlier, listed ripening times vary from year to year and
can vary as much as three weeks. If you compare the ripening
data at Musser and Cooley farms, you’ll see the differences.
Diana(Muddy Mess) lives only a few miles from me and a lot of
her trees are on a completely different schedule than mine.
Harvester is a good reliable peach and a heavy cropper. Requires
a lot of thinning. It’s supposed to be free stone, but mine never is.
It’s not in the same league as Winblo or the Prince series. But I can
understand it’s commercial application.
Sequence is a bit more reliable although not absolutely true either. But the difference year to year is mostly about when spring begins and the weather in the region. I manage all these orchards and all the varieties ripen around the same time- except right by the water. Are you sure about Diana’s being so different in timing?. That does not mirror my experience at all but it certainly is interesting. How can it be explained?
You can ask Diana. We’re very close distance wise, but have
different micro climates. Last tuesday she had a torrential down
pour, while I didn’t get a drop. She also has lots of shade, while I have
none.
I have heard the comment about it being clingstone too. Many nurseries around here bill it as a “semi freestone” which in my experience means clingstone. I have heard it is really reliable probably why it is used in commerce over here. Thank you.
That was wise planning Ray. Unfortunately we don’t have anything in KS or MO comparable to the testing Layne did for SC. I believe the only available peaches developed for MO are Loring and Topaz.
The trees in my back yard have much much less issues w/ bac. spot. I don’t know if it’s because there are so many more trees at the farm, or because it’s windier, or because of the large numbers of varieties, which makes the difference. My guess is it’s a combination of all the above.
I am trying to cull out the more bac. spot prone varieties. I think they may be acting as “typhoid Marys”. I’ve read that can happen w/ bac. spot, causing infection even in resistant trees. At a minimum at least I won’t have to deal with those varieties most susc.
Tuff,
I think the Mycoshield will control the bac. spot on the Winblos. I have used it for years in my backyard orchard with very good success. However, at the farm I used it for the first time this year (5 sprays) and it did very little good. We did have a ton of rain in April and May. The conditions were excellent for bac. spot. It may be there was just too much innoculum to respond to the Mycoshield and conditions to adverse.
It also could be some resistant issue, but that would surprise me, given this was the first year I used Mycoshield at the farm.
What diseases did he breed resistance to? I expect brown rot and and bacterial spot to be the ones he’d likely focus on and I doubt the resistance would be regional. It would be extremely interesting if it was. I would expect the varieties bred for resistance there would share those qualities anywhere it was grown. In CA BS is not a big problem so they don’t breed for that- and obviously they don’t worry about extreme cold. Chilling hours is another very regional issue that breeders deal with.
In the past, U,S, growers never even looked at brown rot resistance and it was only the Canadian programs where relative resistance was listed. If the program in SC bred varieties particularly resistant to brown rot maybe I should look at them for growing here.