Olpea, thanks for the rundown. I, too, have a "mystery" peach that happens to be my best yellow. I have an O'Henry that is a tall, statuesque specimen, that makes me want to experiment using this as a landscape plant. Is your O'Henry like mine? Misterbaby.

Yes thanks for the report, its great to get your perspective. Here is a brief run-down of my peaches this year. Note that unlike you I am not growing to sell, I am more growing to get the absolute best-tasting and unique fruit. Also I am using organic sprays only so I have more need for disease- and pest-resistance in the fruit. These are roughly in harvest order. I like heirloom peaches since they have more different kinds of flavors than the modern ones. For a beer-drinkers analogy, the modern peaches are bud vs coors vs millers; the old ones are stout vs bitter vs weisse.

Gold Dust - fantastic for an early peach, nearly as good as the higher-quality late ones such as O'Henry. It is getting too soft on the tops on inner fruits, that is the only problem. Zero scab. I should have thinned the inner fruits all out, they did not ripen nearly as well.

Saturn - horrible brown rot struck nearly all fruits; the same as two years previous. This guy is getting removed. Its too bad since it is an excellent peach otherwise. I may experiment with more of the new NJ releases in hope of finding a more rot-resistant one.

Clayton - This is an all-around great peach: it is highly disease-resistant yet great-tasting, similar to Early Crawford. It had no scab at all. It is purported to be small-sized but is about average for my orchard. Highly recommended, will blow the doors off Red Haven.

Galaxy - A good but not great tasting white flat peach; not as good as Saturn. Doesn't get brown rot but gets some bulls-eye rot on 10-20% of fruits. Flesh is too stringy; lots of fruits split at pits.

Raritan Rose - Quality varied from decent to pretty good, approaching Silver Logan. Tendency to mealiness, may need earlier harvest to avoid. Overall good but not great. No rot problems and was harvested in a period of lots of rot on other peaches.

Winblo - Close to Clayton in quality; from the same breeding program. They are not super strong flavored but very well-balanced and creamy classic peach taste with excellent looks as well.

Ernie's Choice - Another decent peach, somewhat less flavorful than Clayton. More firm and no rotting at all. Reddish flesh in spots.

Carolina Belle - somewhat less good than Raritan Rose, occasionally bitter. Still fine. However, space is probably better spent on other varieties.

Foster - A truly excellent peach, the very best tier with a wonderful mango-like flavor. It has a big seam on the fruit which was standard 100 years ago but may look odd to some people today.

Lord Napier - An old style juicy white nectarine with excellent flavor. It has also done pretty well against the rots and peach scab and the size is decent so this tree is a keeper. Unfortunately the squirrels got nearly all of them this year.

Violette Hative - Very small yellow-fleshed nectarine. Some of the really small ones have odd-tasting skin. All of them have great tasting flesh, lots of juice and that classic nectarine flavor. The fruit is extremely sweet, it is easiest the sweetest peach I have. Overall its really too small to be viable but I am going to keep it for the unusual nature of the fruits.

Early Crawford - Very similar to Foster; maybe a week later in harvest but thats about it. Foster seems a touch richer based on my sample base. Keeper!

Silver Logan - Rot was horrendous, nearly all lost. An early one reminded me why I was keeping the tree, however, it was wonderful, quenching and rich and better than any of the other whites Still, I need to pull this tree to keep the overall amount of rot in the orchard down.

Peento - finally got a fruit off of this one and it was excellent. Very similar to Saturn but a touch better, less stringy/squishy flesh. And no rot!! This may be my donut peach to keep .. the original one that all the others were bred from. Too bad the squirrels also love it so much. Sometimes the oldie really is a goodie!

George IV - had one early one which was very good, plenty of sour and with a unique flavor I like a lot (but not the standard modern white peach); the squirrels got the rest while on vacation. This is a candidate for top white peach. These may be more prone to rotting, will see. Not a big enough sample got close this year. Not a good market peach since its small and greenish.

Sanguine Tardeva - This is a red-fleshed peach. I should rename this peach, its obviously not tardeva ("late"), its normal season. Unfortunately, all of the later ones were mealy. This guy may need an early harvest and off-tree sit or some other special treatment to avoid mealiness; some years it has been better, however.

St. John -A top-class heirloom peach. It is unique on the flavor spectrum as well with its peach/apricot flavor. I got too much rot on it but it was right next to my biggest rot magnet, the dreaded Sweet Bagel. On the soft side.

Athena - These are very good this year, similar to Saturn with better texture. On the extreme soft side, so it is a difficult peach as a market peach.

Pallas - similar to Athena (it is a parent) but smaller fruits. I only got a couple because the critters stripped the tree.

Rareripe - This tree produces nice but small peaches with a unique mild flavor thats a bit like O'Henry and a bit all its own (papaya??). Far too soft and small for me to get too excited about though.

Venus nectarine - a fine nectarine but bad rot; remove.

Stanwick nectarine - fruit very clean on the skin for a nectarine, very nice-looking. Rotting pretty badly however. Taste on the one good fruit I got was very good, juicy and very sweet with honeyed flavor. Probably needs to go due to very bad rot.

JM Mack - tastes like a cross of a honey peach. Soft like a honey peach which limits its growability. Pretty good overall, worth saving.

Late Crawford - A citrus-tinged variation on Early Crawford. I like the Early one better but this one has more citrus tones of about any peach so its unique. Very flavorful.

Indian Cling - this is a great backyard peach, its super productive and bulletproof producer of large firm keeper fruits. Unfortunately its a cooker not an eater, but I love the unique jams syrups ice-cream etc I can make with it. This is a red-fleshed peach but is of a totally different school than Indian Free.

Rio Oso Gem - A very good all-around peach; not up to the Crawfords or Clayton but worth keeping. An easy grower in spite of its west coast roots (well, gets spot a little worse than most; not a horrible one).

Oldmixon Free - very good; more sour but otherwise pretty similar to Silver Logan. Enough sweet to make the sour a plus. Not sure this is the original variety but its a keeper for me!

O'Henry - classic high quality peach. no cracking problems this year and highly productive. A unique "clean" flavor that I like. Its not in the very top tier but is only one tier down. Olpea, I haven't had bad spot problems on mine, its about average. But Autumnstar sounds better in any case; last year O'Henry cracked horribly for me.

Sweet Bagel - my absolute worst rot magnet; its GONE. I don't care if its one of my best-tasting peaches, I can't afford this level of rot.

Indian Free - One of my favorites for its unique flavor (called "cranberry phenolics" in the ARS database). I haven't had as many problems as olpea has. These guys I just harvested today and I am eating many of them now. Yum!!! I had 3-4 fruits crack, only a minor problem. Bacterial spot is bad but not horrible on this tree.

Black Boy - Very similar flavor to Indian Free, but most fruits are mealy; I had thought it was the same variety but now I think its an inferior sport or seedling.

Yukon King - birds and bugs loved this one to death. It seems like it will be a very nice white peach if I can ever ripen enough of them; extremely firm.

Scott

Thanks for your report Scott. I was hoping you'd post another peach report this year.

Regarding Indian Free (peeled a bowl for supper tonight) now that you mention it, it does kind of remind one of cranberry in the undertones. In fact, I'd recommend this peach to someone who said they really like cranberry things - juice/sauce ,or someone who likes tart apples, or someone who likes dry wines. I don't want to give the impression it doesn't have any sugar, but it may be a little stout for some people's palate (as it is for mine) to really fall in love with it. Then again, I'm not fond of things like cranberry juice, tart apples, or stout beer.

Mr. Baby,

My O'Henry is just a couple years old so I can't detect a distinct growth pattern yet. Some peach trees seem to more easily spread out, like Redhaven, but I can't really tell yet what O'Henry will do. I'll keep an eye out.

My crop was so screwed up by early frost and late stink bugs that I don't think a quality report is very useful. It was interesting how so much of the frost damaged fruit held on the tree but stopped growing at golf-ball size and then spread its brown rot around creating more brown rot than during last years extremely wet weather. This years weather was extremely dry. If fruit ever gets damaged this way again, I'll remove the dwarfs early. Hard frost would have to come well after fruit set to create this condition.

I don't find Redhaven to be a very good peach here- this year or ever. I think it needs more heat than what we tend to get early to get really rich. However, well exposed fruit gets pretty good and the variety is very productive with the virtue of having a long harvest period.
I prefer the quality of the slightly later Johnboy which has sweeter deeper orange flesh.

I don't find that Coralstar is especially firm here and doesn't have that quality of staying firm on the tree as does Blushingstar or White Lady, which hang firm ripe on the tree for a month. It does hang well but softens up like most peaches although it stays frim ripe a bit longer. It is the backdrop of acid, giving it almost a nectarine quality, that I like about it. It is firm in the sense of being meaty, but not rubbery.

The older varieties did a better job of providing a full crop in spite of the frost- these included Madison, Elberta and Belle of Georgia. Of these Elberta had the best quality. Elberta is pretty ugly, but for the home orchard it's greenish color discourages bird pecking.

On other sites I noticed that Rariton Rose was especially good this year in the dry weather. These peaches look so beautiful in the trees- I really need to start taking some photos. It is a very easy peach to grow and although its quality is not top flight, IMO, my customers often think it's just great. I think RR is much better than Georgia Belle but it's pretty much in Redhaven's season. Lady Nancy is better than either of these but is a rot magnet and requires dilligent rot control at most sites. Might be worth the effort if you're selling the fruit because it will just blow away the competition in terms of a late white.

I'm amazed how Redhaven gets dissed so much. I'm tellin' you, from my experience, it's a great peach here. I have planted Johnboy which I believe is a sport of Loring. If the weather is favorable I expect it to fruit next year. Maybe it will put Redhaven to shame, but it's hard for me to imagine.

I've heard repeated reports that Elberta is a pretty good peach (tastewise). I've read enough comments regarding decent flavor, I've decided to try it. I believe Redskin's origin is from Elberta (and is sometimes called a Redskin Elberta) so perhaps it won't be much different from a regular Elberta. It will be interesting to see.

Coralstar is indeed a good peach, but I would describe it as rubbery here. I'm not against rubbery, as our unknown favorite peach is very rubbery. Coralstar is very much like it, but not quite as intense.

I appreciate Scott and Hman's comments on white peaches. Both Silver Logan and Lady Nancy sound very rot prone. Boy, it doesn't sound very optimistic for either one (both of which I've ordered).

Scott, you didn't report on Carolina Gold. I bought one this spring based on your past favorable comments. Have you changed your mind?

Also, when does Early Crawford ripen for you. I read part of an old online book about peach ripening times and Early Crawford was all over the board. Generally it was listed as between +10 thru +20 Redhaven, but one reference listed it as July 15th in KS. That would be about 10 days before Redhaven.

As an addendum, old literature obviously didn't have Redhaven as a reference, since it was bred in the 1940's. I extrapolated dates from Elberta to get a reference to Redhaven ripening times.

Olpea, my Carolina Gold died, not from variety problems but because it was in a spot with too little light and it got too much of that white peach scale stuff. I put in a new tree this spring (in a spot with good light) because I liked it enough to give it another shot. It is pretty similar to Winblo, what I call a "creamy" flavored peach. The one consistent thing I noticed on both Winblo and Carolina Gold is you need to let them hang good and long to get best flavor.

My Early Crawford ripened 8/18 last year; I didn't log dates this year but it was 1-2 weeks before that. It ripened right with Silver Logan so if you can find a date on that one it should be similar.

Scott

Olpea, I would suggest that if Redhaven gets dissed it is because it may be one of those varieties very affected by regional conditions. It is when early summers are cool that Redhaven is at its worst. Some peaches get up their sugar on both cool and wet seasons and dry hot ones. Maybe even your cool early summers are not as cool as mine.

I only base my evaluation on my own tree as I never seem to get a chance to sample other Redhaven trees I manage and my tree is clearly excessively vigorous. Before it had its massive root system it made sweeter peaches. Next spring I'm trying out root pruning on this one. These days I mulch it only with enough spoiled hay to cover fabric but it hasn't slowed it down.

You are correct about the geneology of Johnboy which I didn't mention because my foggy brain refused to spit out "Loring" in spite of my command. Loring and its sports are supposed to be frost tender but I've yet to have that issue- same for Lady Nancy except that Lady Nancy sometimes sets light crops.

I must admit, I don't have a broad base for my evaluation of Redhaven either (My own tree - three harvests, and one tasting at a big commercial orchard.)

The potential winter tenderness of Johnboy concerns me some. I certainly hear a lot about it with Loring. I wonder just exactly how cold it has to get to freeze buds on these trees?

Scarlet Pearl- an early white peach from Rutgers breeding program, two weeks before Redhaven. When I first tasted it I thought "unbelievable" I had to try another to make sure. It has a bursting tangy smooth white peach taste, excellent. Probably the best single peach I ever had.(I haven't eaten a dozen yet in one day) I have gone to all the peach farms on LI to find the best. I grow them here in my own yard.

Redhaven-I have two trees and without a doubt deserves to be the most widely planted and flavor standard peach. Great color too. Lots of thinning.

Flat Wonderful-I don't remember if this ripen before or after Redhaven. I start eating them once they get color but still hard. It has a tangy flavor I find irresistable. When they are ripe the tang looses to the sweet mostly but still good and great texture. The tree is full red leaf in spring and early summer.

J.H.Hale- I don't have to thin this tree. It needs a pollinator. The fruits get very large with full peach flavor.

Georgia Belle-what can I say, I don't like it. Folks that eat store bought peaches say it is great.

Hale Haven- now this is a firm peach with super rich flavor. These I freeze and eat.

Indian Blood cling- now don't confuse this with Indian Free, it is not the same. It is a very large white and purple fleshed peach. Juicy but not yellow peach flavor eats more like a big juicy cling plum. It is good enough. The purple color flesh bakes nice with yellow peaches.

I have had no brown rot on any fruit this season, none, not even the drops. Monterry Fungi fighter does it. I stopped spraying in Late July. The peach scab came back on the late peaches without spry but it is just cosmetic without BR.

Its funny the differing opinions on Redhaven. I have never grown it but have gotten many from many different U-pick places. Its always great-looking but is only average compared to the other varieties the U-pick has going at the same time, so I never got up the interest to try it. The flavor there is good, its just that I want more of it.

Scott

Yes, and now that I've given it some thought, I've picked Redhaven from other sites and never considered it exceptional, just a good reliable peach. Customers have mentioned that they like it's quality of being very easy to skin.

Redhaven is an early season peach here as far as mainstream commercial production and as such doesn't really have time to accumulate the brix of later varieties. I do think my evaluation is affected by the age of my tree as my evaluations of peaches does switch around a lot because younger peaches on my property tend to have better quality. My Redhaven is at least 15 years old and a large very vigorous tree.

I actually don't have a better peach to recommend in Redhavens season as Johnboy is a bit later but I intend to try some others.

With my limited experience with Scarlet Pearl I'm surprised by Ace's high praise of this variety which I've considered an unexceptional peach besides its early fruiting habit. Has anyone else tried this one?

Olpea, I believe that the bud sensitivity of the peaches mentioned is about spring tenderness and that these varieties will only occassionally be jeopordized by this tenderness. It may be just that the flowers open a couple days early and all at once.

With Loring maybe it's a combination of both (early bloom and dormant bud tenderness).

Here's an excerpt from an Auburn University paper talking about freeze problems and cold hardiness of peaches:

"Lack of consistent annual crop production is the most important problem facing the peach industry in Alabama today. Late freezes cause the greatest part of the problem. Winter freeze damage to fruit buds can also be disastrous, especially among the commonly grown, older "southern" varieties and the more bud-tender varieties from California and the USDA breeding program at Byron, Georgia. Extremely low temperatures throughout the winter months cause freeze damage to fruit buds and may also cause tree damage. Winter fruit-bud damage to tender varieties such as Camden, June Gold, Loring, Goldcrest, Goldprince, Juneprince, O'Henry, and Topaz often leaves few fruit buds to produce full crops.

The January 1985 record freeze (temperatures ranged from 2 to -20 degrees F across the sate) was so severe that the entire peach crop in northern Alabama was eliminated 2 months before the normal flowering period. However, growers are more likely to remember the annual damage caused by spring freezes during the flowering-early fruit development period of March and April as occurred in 1996 (worst freeze in 40 years). Growers must be prepared to deal with both winter and spring freezes."

You guys are lucky you can grow RedHaven... Up here i have maybe 3 or so varieties I can chose from, Reliance being probably the most common. Personally..i think the peach sucks. I've had store bought that are just as good, if not better (that is saying a lot). My only option is growing in pots if i want something special. I'm tempted to try one of the white peaches and something later.

Hey my very last peaches are now coming in, here is the addendum.

Heath Cling - This is an extraordinary cooking peach. It stays somewhat firm so makes excellent tarts etc, anything where you don't want mushy peach. The flavor is unique as well, clean and something like a grape. For eating its like an underripe plum, too chewy (but still with good flavor). I had a couple that cooked on the ground in the heat that tasted great, so maybe if they were cooked a bit and let cool and eaten that way they would be nice. I have let them sit on the counter for weeks and they don't ever fully soften. Peaches of NY says its the best of all peaches to pickle, and I believe it. For me I really appreciate this peach for its unique flavor and cooked texture and its one of my favorites. Its also an easy tree to grow but the moths like it a bit more than average. They don't get very far in though since the peach is so hard. I let it overset and thin out the moth-bitten ones.

Sanguine Tardive de Chanas - another red-fleshed freestone peach. This one is a loser, its much more bland than Indian Free and rots like crazy.

The last of the Heath Clings are coming in now and then peach season is over for me until next year..

Scott

Frank,

I know you've looked into trialing some other cold-hardy varieties PF-24C, Madison, Contender, etc. Wondering if you've ever pulled the trigger on planting them?

I agree with you about Reliance. I thought the quality was only fair and pulled it out, but it was much better than grocery store peaches down here.

I think if I had to live in someplace where &$!% freezes over, I'd take a serious look at enclosing a couple peach trees in temporary low heat shelters.

I bet you can grow some fantastic apples.

Sounds like Heath might be a real season extender, must keep in the fridge for weeks ready to heat up with the oatmeal or on pancakes.

Olpea, I am always somewhat skeptical about those kinds of adviseries becuase they are really little more than anecdotal observations that often don't mirror my own experience.

I assume these varieties do decrease the odds of a crop but does anyone ever suggest in scientific terms what those odds are? The only way you can really evaluate how they will comparatively perform where you are is by growing them yourself.

In 15 years of growing Johnboy here it's never performed less productively than Madison or Redhaven with our one test winter destroying everything when we had a couple -22 nights. The late hard freeze this year which knocked out my Harrow Diamonds, almost all nectarines, Earnie's Choice, most Harcrest affected my Johnboy no more than the nearby Madison (good yeald but mostly under canopy). Lady Nancy suffered a great deal, however.

Mine would regarded as a less than favorable site for a cold Z6.

harvestman, in Peaches of NY they say they have been known to keep until December (!). I think these late keeper peaches are a great old tradition that has been lost. Another similar one which is even later is Salwey; it maybe too late for you, I harvested them around Oct 1. A deer buck de-barked my Salwey a few years ago but I plan on replacing it.

Scott

Scott, do any nurseries propigate the Heath that you know of? If it keeps that long I don't see any benefit in a later ripening variety anyway. I believe you've really come up with something valuable here. Maybe I'll finally have to learn how to bud a peach. Thanks for sharing your special knowledge!

Hman, I got my Heath cling from Bay Laurel. It is part of their "special order" program, you need to order it by mid-November. See link below.

Hmm, Googling some more it looks like Sanhedrin Nursery has it as well and no need to special order. It looks like Sanhedrin is selling all the Dave Wilson peaches now, nice! Olpea, they have Gold Dust.

Scott

If you are talking about White Heath, Dave Wilson does. I was looking for it for years and this year I finally found one, so I have a young tree which hopefully will fruit next year. Dave Wilson also has it on this year's special order list on Nemaguard if you want to order it.

Carla in Sac

Thanks Scott,

I thought the Arboreum was the only one who sold Gold Dust, and they didn't offer it this year.

I plan to order one from Sanhedrin. I'd like to order another peach tree to go with it (to make the shipping work out).

I'm thinking about HaleHaven. Ace, can you (or anyone else) tell me how many days it ripens before Redhaven? Any info. on fruit dropping or % split pits would be nice. I can't seem to find any of this info. with Google.

I bought a few pounds of Colorado peaches yesterday, the box had "Cresthaven" printed on it, so i figure that is what they are. Excellent peaches for this time of year.

Olpea, I have two HaleHaven trees. They get ripe about 30 days after Redhaven. I have not noticed split pits or dropping. It is a firm peach with rich flavor at the end of the season when you want to think about canning some for the winter. Color is red over yellow giving a nice orange hue.

Ace,

Before, when I did an internet search on Halehaven, the only ripening info I could come up with was from some nursery that said it ripened before Redhaven.

Then I went down and looked in my files and found, as you said, it ripens after Redhaven. The old evaluation I found rated it very good for flavor, size and firmness, a lot of nice attributes. The only negative said it was disease prone, but any peach developed in Michigan as part of the Haven series, should be growable in the Midwest.

Unfortunately, I need more peaches that ripen before Redhaven. I plan to keep this peach in mind for later trial though. Thanks.

Right now, think I'll go with Gold Dust and Sugar May from Sanhedrin, for a couple earlier peaches.

Scott, Heath is white? If so, do you know of any yellows with similar keeping qualities? I kindof like my carotene.

Heath is not white, its yellow. Not sure why they call it white. The only other late keeper peach I know of is the Salwey I mentioned earlier. It more orange but still not as orange as your average peach.

Scott

Thanks, I'll order one tomorrow.

This was the first year I fruited Scarlet Pearl and it was an excellent peach for me here. Very good sweet taste with some acid. The other peach we grew that was excellent was Nectar, a bit soft but excellent and juicy when ripe. Galaxy for me here was disappointing, kind of a bland peach.

Harvestman:

If you are into grafting, the National Clonal Germplasm Repository lists "Golden Heath" scionwood, which I would assume is a yellow sport of White Heath.

Carla in Sac

Thanks Smom, but Mark informs me that he bought a peach called White Heath which is the one he is rating here and says it's not a white but a pale yellow. Anyway, it's Marks description of his peach that makes me want to try it so I'm running with White Heath.

Most productive peach= Polly, a white peach developed in Iowa in the 1920s. Got it from Baylaurel on their special order program. I broke a branch for the second year in a row, in a spring that was tough enough to take out the'Honeycrisp' apple set. Somewhat variable in quality, but I always seem to underthin. Can be sublime. Took a long time (like four years) to come into production.

Second most productive peach (for its size): J.H. Hale. Excellent flavor. What they say about it not being vigorous is surely true.

Redhaven: Fruitista at work said it was the best peach she had ever tasted in this state. Not to contradict Harvestman,but our spring was actually more snowy than cool. This is a very widely adapted tree, that finds a way to set a crop any which way it can. Its probably not right to draw conclusions from the more marginal situations.

Fantastic Elberta. Second year in a row it gave me good fruit after I almost gave up on it. Won't grow it again, though.

'Contender' Not growing much, and the one or two fruits it put out weren't anything special.

'Gleason Elberta' Maybe it will grow and produce fruit.

Here's a post of my 2009 Peach Report, with my 2010 report to follow. All of my trees are Peach Leaf Curl Resistant varieties including: Frost, Avalon Pride, Charlotte, Q-1-8, Kreibich Nectarine, Indian Free and Oregon Curl Free.