glenn,

i can only offer a suggestion to research and that being a pf-24c. have heard and read about this peach and all positive. wish it came with a sweet iced tea and a southern belle.

have tasted paul fridays peaches and cannot wait for another taste test.

i ordered one months ago for a spring 2010 spring planting. tough to get this one due to popularity. if i decide to try another peach it will be a reliance per jellyman's suggestion.

so far all i have is a giant babcock and nectar that haven't fruited yet.

wildlifeman

Paul Friday's peaches are not bred for brown rot resistance. This should be your main concern if you want low maintenance. You will love most any peach from your own tree. It is only by comparison with other home grown peaches that you become all that picky between varieties. For me Earnie's Choice and Coral Star are standouts in new varieties. Coral Star has the advantage of a long harvest period. Loring is a wonderful older variety as are its newer sports (mutations that ripen earlier). Loring is bud tender, but it has never been a problem at any site I've grown it.

I don't know if any of these varieties have any brown rot resistance, however. Generally earlier ripening varieties are less prone to brown rot as are also some of the old fashioned varities. Where I am in southeast NY anything that ripens up to about Redhaven season can be grown without spraying for BR most years. Later varieties that I've had success with without fungicide are Elberta (very good quality) and Bell of Georgia (ok quality white, but some just love it).

Redhaven is the Standard for peach flavor. It is very bud hardy and it oversets. So it would be a good stand alone peach tree in tough years. I go to all the peach farms on Long Island. Larger peach varieties can't match RH's juicy sweet nectary flavor.

Glenn, by my reckoning peaches are somewhat more difficult to grow than apples. The OFM is more pernicious than the codling moth. The squirrels are a serious pain (I am on a trapping spree now to try to clear them out before the peaches get squirrel-edible - averaging two per day lately). The diseases are worse overall - apples have the fireblight nightmare but peaches have shothole, bacterial canker, and brown rot. This applies to any peach, some are better than others but there is no low-maintenance peach in your climate. Sometimes due to location, etc you can get lucky for awhile, I have also heard stories like your friend. And I sure would like to know how to reproduce it.

I don't have a strong variety recommendation, but I do feel that there are peaches superior to Belle of Georgia, Redhaven, etc (the standards) in taste. I have yet to lose a crop due to a freeze so I don't put late bloom too high on my list - it is Japanese plums and apricots that have more serious issues there. You also should not worry about hardiness, I don't think there is a peach not hardy in your zone. I would say resistance to brown rot, bacterial canker, and shothole (bacterial spot) are very good things to look for. As harvestman mentions, brown rot is primarily a problem in later varieties so if you want an early one you are not so concerned there. One downside of the earlier peaches is they tend not to be as flavorful as the later ones. My current favorite early peach is Gold Dust - it is an early peach tasting like a late peach. It is not common in the east but I have found it an easy peach to grow.

Scott

As you get further north, peaches can actually be easier than apples. I have seen unsprayed peach trees bear nice fruit. OFM is not as large an issue up here- we have something called tarnished plant bug that can be, but when peaches are grown in mulched plots surrounded by clean turf (few broadleaf weeds which attract TPB) they often can be pest free, believe it or not.

OFM is more of a problem on flagging branches for me than entering the fruit (my trees are sprayed for PC).

Red Haven is a good choice, although I no longer consider it to be on the supreme list. In fact, last year Redhaven got no sugar, but that can happen to most any early peach if a stretch of cloudy weather comes at a bad time. Even at its best, I don't think it could win a contest here with some of the peaches that come a bit later. It is the first really rich peach of the season (freestone) of the varieties I grow. It also tends to have about a 3 week harvest period which is very nice for the home grower.

I would think about any variety would work in that zone. Maybe try to get a 3 in 1 tree or something. You could also try nectarines too...

Wildlifeman-

That PF 24C ripen around Sept 1 in Michigan... That seems very late. Do you think the tree would have enough time to go dormant before cold settles in? Reliance ripes about Aug 1 here.

I'm a fan of Elberta. Sometimes you can get them here locally.

Hi Guys-

Thanks for all the great comments!

Until this posting, I didnt realize that my biggest disease threat would be Brown Rot. Knowing that, I started searching, and from what Im seeing so far, there are only 3 varieties with known resistance to BR: Elberta, Glohaven, and Babygold No. 5. (Source 1, Source 2, and Source 3). Any further opinions on these? Any one of those also resistant to something else I might face? Taste decent?

I would think that both a dormant spray of Kocide, and also sprays of Immunox would be particularly easy for me, because Ill be doing that for my apples anyway. Spraying an additional tree is easy for me its the gearing up for an additional spray of a new chemical that Id prefer not to do.

Its sounding like my biggest problem is going to be the tree rats. We have tons of them here, and with so much woods around, I think there will be an unlimited supply of replacements. Not saying that I havent eliminated pests before, Im just not sure I have the stomach to eliminate so many of them. For just one tree, do you think it would be possible to have a mechanical solution here? (Like an electrical fence or something)?

Thanks again for everything guys!
-Glenn

Glenn, if the tree is completely standalone with no way to jump onto it from a higher tree/house/etc and there are no low branches, then you may have good luck with putting tanglefoot on the trunk up to about 3-4'. They will not go on that stuff and if there is no way you get around it you have them. Someone else also had luck with putting an obstacle on the trunk to block them, like the things used on bird feeders. Its hard to design one of those that work however - squirrels have all the time in the world to try to get around your barrier.

I don't think brown rot is a big problem on early peaches. Last year I had a brown rot nightmare but all of the early peaches were spared.

Scott

Yeah, probably the reason only those peaches were listed is there just isn't much research. Commercial growers aren't really that concerned with BR anymore with the new SI fungicides (orbit and indar amongst others). Even if you did the research it would only apply in the area where it was done.

Earlier peaches are less exposed to hot humid weather so they tend to be less affected. Sites make a huge difference. Low sites near water tend to have heavy dew which encourages BR. It is helpful to have early morning sun to dry up the dew quickly as well.

On many sites I can control BR with a single application of Indar in early July on a normally wet year. From Harrow Diamond season to Redhaven brown rot is usually no problem even without spray.

The Canadian breeders at the Harrow Station do look at brown rot and often list BR resistant varieties. Harcrest is a really good late peach from their program that has great brown rot resistance. If you can find it, you can't go wrong with that peach. It is even better than Elberta in my opinion.

frank,

can't say for sure, but i believe a sept. 1 harvest would leave enough time for a tree to go dormant. generally speaking trees don't start loosing their leaves until about nov. here.

folks here are seeking them if they don't already have 1 planted. this includes at least 1 nursery here locally. i have sampled flaming furys' here at the end of august from orchards along the river.

elbertas are a fine peach and are sold by both our local nurseries.

trouble here is we have so many micro climates unless one is at an extreme you don't know whether you can grow an individual fruit until you try.

along the river they grow "georgia" quality peaches every year. the rest of us get some or none every year. quite often the fruit is very small. i won't know until my trees get a few years of bearing in which class i will fall in. am not planting many until i assess my 2 existing trees , the pf24c i have on order and maybe a reliance. if things go well i will add maybe 25 more slowly adding the more tender cultivars.

wildlifeman

Hi Guys-

Thanks again for all the great ideas. I think my best route here will be to wait until I have a space large enough to plant a peach tree from which no squirrel will be able to jump to it. I do have spaces like these, but not yet with enough light (got to take down very tall trees first).

Once I do that, I'll probably just choose an early ripening peach in order to avoid the brown rot. If BR does still become a problem, at least I can use my Immunox (which I already have on hand and spray for the apples) to fight it. If anyone can think of a great early ripening peach that is better than those mentioned here (possibly in flavor, or in resistance to some other pest/disease), feel free to mention it!
Thanks again everyone...
-Glenn

Immunox won't help much for BR. It is only affective in the blossum blight stage which isn't even usually an issue up here- I've never seen it in the 20 years I've been growing fruit all over NY and CT. If only there were small quantity sources of Orbit or Indar for home growers.

Hi Harvestman-
In my quick searches, I came across this link which is why I thought Immunox would help. Perhaps this site is mistaken and I will have to find a way to obtain Orbit or Indar. Thanks,
-Glenn

Glenn, Orbit is available for homeowners as Monterey Garden Fungi-fighter. I bought some and used it once in the early spring to try to clear out the horrible brown rot I had last year. I am now using Saf-T-Side and Serenade, two organic controls for brown rot. But if things start looking bad later this summer I'm reaching for the Fungi-fighter.

So far things on the brown rot front are looking OK in spite of all the rains lately, but its still early for the major rots. One of my cherries got blasted by brown rot blossom blight (cherry bloom overlapped with major rains this year). The big disease this year for me on the stone fruits has been black knot on the Euro plums. I never had it bad until this year. Just yesterday I did a major thinning on my primary European plum block to open it up more to airflow, and also find and remove the black knotted limbs (a dozen or so were found).

Scott

I am working under the assumption Immunox is myclobutanil which originally was touted for BR control but has since been removed as a recommended chem for this purpose because of failing to perform well. Now Cornell only recommends it for blossum blight sprays. I will read the label of Messinger to see if it is even labled for use against later BR when I get an oppurtunity.

Hi Scott/Harvestman-
I'm now working with a friend's orchard which has a few 9 year old peach trees infected with..., you guessed it, Brown Rot. So, apparently, the advice/recommendations/warnings in this thread were right on!

I've found the Monterey Garden Fungi-fighter (Orbit) at the link below. As for the timing of the sprays, all it says is "Start applications in early spring and spray every 21 days, making no more than 4 applications". Do you have any better timing recommendations than that? I.e. Start at "Calyx Green" stage (I only know what that is because of this table). Or, in RI, you probably want to do the first spray around this date. And perhaps you've found that we really don't need 4 sprays, but less? Thanks,
-Glenn

Glen,

You're right, that's some pretty crappy instructions on that label. For reference, the real Orbit label says 3 sprays through petal fall for blossom blight and two pre-harvest sprays for brown rot. Some folks, I think Hman is one, get by with a few early SI sprays for blossom blight and spray nothing later in the season. I suspect this works for them because they severely knock down, or wipe out the inoculum, and there is little to affect the fruit later on. Blossom blight, if left untreated can work its way into the shoots where it can infect fruits at harvest.

I have plenty of inoculum here with lots of unsprayed fruit trees around, so I do early season and pre-harvest sprays.

And of course, amount of rainfall is a biggie.

Nope, myclobutanyl has no place in my BR control program. I have found that a single application of Indar in early July (bout a month before Redhaven starts to ripen) can sometimes control BR for the whole season for all the stonefruit on a given site. When I need to deliver pristine peaches at least one and as many as three more sprays are needed at 2 week intervals, unless it hasn't rained since the first week, in which case I can wait until after the next rain. Since I've been in business Indar has been my only BR fungicide and I haven't had any resistance problems.

Nectarines have to be treated like pristine peaches.

Hi Olpea-

Good point on checking the Orbit label for better timing.

I'm not sure if he has blossom blight... Does it go hand-in hand with Brown Rot? (In the same way that Sooty Blotch and Flyspec seem to go together on apples?) I seem to see the two of them together a lot. I wouldn't want to spray extra for something that isn't a threat.

With his orchard unmaintained this year, and plenty of mummies on the tree, even if he gets the orchard all cleaned up this fall, I'm going to assume he has plenty of inoculum around. I'm surprised to learn that you spray for Brown Rot starting just a month before harvest. (sorry, Im new to peaches this is very unlike apples which Im more used to) What I am just realizing is that his mummies are from last year then. (Like I said, he gave up when his spraying/efforts were, ahem, fruitless). In fact, he might have mentioned in passing that the mummies were from last year and I didnt pick up on it until now.

Ok, so Ill be looking at 2 sprays of Monterey Fungi Fighter prior in the month leading up to harvest.

So, now that I think of it, my dwarf Empress peach bush with its first 9 peaches is probably very much in danger of brown rot then. I havent been able to come up with a ripen date for it. According to the local UPick, peaches ripen from Aug 1st to Sept 20th around here. So, if I order that MFF now, I might be able to spray it in time. Same thing for my friends orchard.

You may have just saved my peaches! Though I suspect it may be the squirrels that will benefit from your advice, and not me! But thanks just the same!

-Glenn

Hi Harvestman-

Ok, thanks, well attribute my stab at using Immunox/myclobutanyl on BR to that bad link. I dont know of a home-grower version of Indar, so Ill probably go with the Orbit timing info that Olpea gives above. Thanks!

-Glenn

Blossum blight can be a problem when you get very warm and wet weather during bloom, something that doesn't happen a lot in the northeast. I'm guessing it would be most likely to happen if you had BR infections in the small wood, (you can see the cankers next to rotten fruit) which happens, particularly when peaches are alowed to completely rot in the tree.

Peaches in RI ? I would never have dared hope that I could plant a peach tree at this latitude. I used to live in TN a few years back, I can remember going through Georgia orchards..and the taste of fresh off the tree peaches.

More importantly, a fellow RI gardener with experience ( which I totally lack). I hope to grow dwarfs or a least plant a few dwarfs in my soon to be re-worked back yard/garden (I am loosing the grass, serves no purpose).

I would like: Apples (grannny/redelicious), Pear (I like firm flesh), Plum . Maybe apricots and why not peaches. Could you advise me on the best dwarfs to get for our particular micro-climat ? I am more than a little confused by all this information about root stock (could you explain).

ok guys; what are you growing any peaches this year, which ones? what sprays are you using this year.