I’d like to try a Tango that reached 16 brix. I don’t recall if I’ve ever measured mine but they can’t be that high as that is unusually high even for a nectarine. Tango has pretty big flavor for a peach, but not up to nectarine status in my experience.
I’ve only been testing for one season- last season I didn’t bother because with such a small crop I lost focus.
Those are very decent numbers for us.
Yeah mine are better under lights, Figs do really well too. I tested them a couple years ago against the south window, with tomato plants. Clearly better under my lights. Still a south window is nice. I find herbs and such do well there. I have thyme, rosemary, African blue basil hybrid, two kinds of Mexican oregano, and Chocolate mint I overwinter in windows or lights. This is the 2nd winter for most. I made Strawberry-mint smoothies yesterday with my new Ninja blender. Today I’m making Indian Free peach-raspberry crisp. I like the crisps with walnuts. I got this recipe down now, the crust is so good! I use real butter, real vanilla extract, and oatmeal too.
Back to peach seeds, most are shaped as you would expect. But one seed was round, not a tapered cylindrical like usual shape. It may be an inter-specific cross? It’s sprouting too! It’s shaped like an M&M candy Round, flat at the edges. Maybe a cherry cross? Or Nadia?
I’m pretty fond of them too- all the ones in the 14+ range are very nice peaches with lots of flavor. That’s the reason I kept trying to grow them, even with the rot issues. I finally gave up on it last year and attempted to graft over most of it, failing miserably (I think 1 graft succeeded). I think I remember the 16- half of it was rotten (brown rot) and the other half was very tasty. I’m guessing most people would toss the whole fruit, rather than performing surgery on it though…
Keep in mind that those are my maxs- I’ve had plenty lower, some as low as 8, which is barely worth eating (especially PF1).
Could it be crossed with a donut peach? The pits for those are pretty round. Either way, grow it and see what you get! 
Bob,
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has had problems with this peach. It’s the very worst when it rains a lot during its harvest window.
Still I have kept my trees so far. Indar helps quite a bit, but I still don’t know if I will keep TangOs in the long run.
It was one of the few varieties I got some fruit from last year- partially because it was on a high point of my property, but it sometimes comes through when others fail. For a home grower willing to use the right fungicide (just one Indar spray) it is a fine peach here. The peaches may get spots but they don’t rot.
I’m fairly confident I can get higher brix numbers as my trees were young, babied, watered, cared for. Now that they are established I can at least attempt to raise brix. I find it hard to believe that 17 is the highest brix I can get on Indian Free, doing nothing. That all efforts to raise brix will fail. I disagree with that, I think I can even pass 20 by a point or two. Last July we got 1.31 inches of rain, with temps in the 90’s. With that low of rain, no watering, no excess food, the brix can be raised easily.
I’d agree with you for nectarines. But peaches IME are another matter. I haven’t been able to raise brix much by withholding water. Hopefully you can do better. But until you do all these numbers are just talk.
I’m fine with spots (or sooty blotch and flyspeck on apples), but the rot is bad. I’ve got to look into Indar, as protecting them with a single spray sounds great. I had bad rotting issues with 2 sprays of MFF this past year. If Indar also works on Black Rot for grapes that would be even better…
It does, and usually with a single spray when grapes are tiny, tiny. For peaches, a month before ripening does it for me.
I wanted to bring up something mentioned in the article Warmwx linked.
The article says, “Furuyama insists that [peach trees] take at least five to mature and another ten to yield peaches a grower can ship with confidence”
While I wouldn’t quite wait 15 years for a tree to produce high quality peaches (the trees might be dead by then in our climate) there is something to what the guy is saying.
I’ve really found it takes about 5 years for a peach tree to produce large quality fruit. I never noticed this when I just had peaches in my backyard because generally I would have just one peach tree per given variety. So, when I saw any size differences, I attributed it to the particular cultivar instead of the age of the tree.
I mention this because for years I never hardly heard peaches get bigger with the tree’s age. It was something I accidentally discovered on my own when I started seeing multiple trees of multiple ages of the same variety at the farm.
Lately though, I’ve heard two sources mention the same thing. Fukushima mentions it in the above article, and Jerry Frecon touches on it in this talk Matt linked
I’ve also noticed peaches of the same variety not only get bigger with age of tree, but also a little bit sweeter most of the time, under outside conditions here (I don’t know if @fruitnut has seen the same thing in his greenhouse.)
LOL, Yeah I’m good at talk, now to walk the walk! OK, well maybe I better stick to my attempts with nectarines! I do like them better anyway! I think it is possible, as the fuzzless gene does not change them that much, as far as I’m concerned a nectarine is a peach.
No I’ve not noticed that. It is often mentioned that mature fruit trees produce the sweetest most flavorful fruit. I’d second that notion in regards to achieving and maintaining a water deficit in the tree. In fact that’s the way to do it outdoors: big widespread roots relative to top size and some degree of water deficit. But 15 yrs? Most areas don’t have that luxury in terms of tree age and commercial growers can’t wait anything like that long based on economics.
I have not been able to find this, but had good results using MFF and rotating with Bonides fruit tree & Plant Guard. It contains a fungicide that uses a different method of attack on Brown Rot, the combination has worked well. But I don’t have much brown rot pressure yet. I want to keep it that way!
While I don’t have as much evidence to base it on, this is not the case in my orchard- size, yes, but that takes no more than 5 years to peak and may start to decline after 10, but first crop peaches can be as good or better than later ones as far as brix. More developed root system- more access to water.