Scott:

Boy, have you re-ignited my peach obsession, and I'm rarin' to go for next year now! I want to try them all!
Would you be interested in exchanging some peach scions?

Carla in Sac

Hi Carla, I exchange but try to limit exchanges with CA since the locals there don't like east-coast peach and plum scions from what they view as plum pox country (it has never been detected in my state but I am closer to previously infected areas than they are). So I think the risk is zero but I am trying to be a good neighbor.

The good news is nearly all of these varieties are available at the CRFG scion exchanges and/or through the Davis repository. If there are some you can't find let me know and I can hopefully dig up a source.

Scott

How are you growing all these varieties- are there several varieties representing different branches on each tree?

My experience is that a few peaches and lots of leaves will generally produce a much more flavorful peach so if the quantity isn't adequate to represent a normal harvest you can't run too far with it (although I always do!). I don't really trust the results from any tree under 4 years of age.

If there are several varieties on one tree, are they all getting similar light exposure?

Funny how many like Belle of Georgia. I much prefer a meatier peach with less fuzz. Its only virtues as I experience it here are productivity and the aroma. I also hate the way they drop the second they're edible. The beauty of Earnie's choice is the lack of fuzz.

My best peaches this year were the lates because of the cool weather. Harcrest, Encore, and probably best of all this year, Elberta, were all late. Last year Encore was much later than the others and really wonderful. In fact my overall ratings were much different last year as was the ripening sequence.

I'd love to try some of the varieties you're growing over there, and I'd really like to know how other people's evaluations compare to yours.

I am still enjoying refrigerated Elberta and Encore that I harvested firm 2 weeks ago. They're still much better than store-bought.

Scott, did you read many old orchard books? Many of those peaches are over 100 yrs old. Cornell has a library of good reading antique fruit books that have a lot of practical and old fashioned knowledge. I like that you said Foster was your best because that is an oldie that I read about. Did you notice any that stood out with disease resistance. I am growing the Indian Blood and few others on the list. IB gets peach scab a little less than modern peaches and no BR yet. I have a 12' Flat wonderful growing three years, nada. It will be the first time I will have to prune down a peach tree before I've tried the fruit.

Scott, I'm very impressed with your dedication to the older varieties of fruit. The picture of your home orchard on your info page is also impressive. If you have time for reading check out Epitaph For A Peach by David Mas Masumoto. I think that you'll enjoy it. Earl

Hman, I have two rows of peaches a total of about 100' long and about 50 varieties, so that averages out to about 2' of row for each variety. Nearly all are on their own roots but I have a couple trees with multiple varieties. They are planted in a zig-zag so most trunks are about 4' apart. In my newer plantings its more like 5-6' apart, I think 4' zig-zag is a bit too close. The average age of the trees is about 6 years old; they have been producing for several years but the squirrels have been eating nearly all the early and midseason ones until this year.

Ace, I have read many old fruit books. I tend to go back to my favorites over and over: the New York series and Downing. I used Peaches of New York as the main guide in selecting the old varieties; I made it a goal to grow every peach rated very good in that book and I think I have every one in my orchard in that category that is still found today. I think their comments are almost always right on; the only exception is varieties going "out of fashion" in the early 1900s I feel they under-rate (that includes Heath Cling and George IV in my mind). For these out-of-fashion varieties I rely on Downing. For example Downing absolutely raves about Heath Cling. Here is his description of it: Fruit very large, oblong, narrowing to both ends, and terminating at
the top with a large swollen point; the suture distinct on one side.
Skin downy, cream-colored white, with a faint blush or tinge of red in
the sun, or a brownish cheek. Flesh greenish white, very tender and
melting, exceedingly juicy, with the richest, highest, and most luscious
flavor, surpassed by no other variety. It adheres very closely to the
stone. It ripens in October, and frequently keeps for a month after
being gathered.

I am also intrigued about his "exceedingly juicy" which is not what Peaches of New York says. I think Downing is rating the peach like the one I found on the ground and Peaches of New York is rating the more hard-fleshed ones right off the tree. So at some point in time the proper method of ripening this variety may have been lost.

Overall I should say these old varieties are not going to "blow you away" compared to the newer ones, I do think they are better than the best modern varieties for taste but it is primarily the diversity and uniqueness of flavors that I like: the mango, cherry, apricot, etc flavors found in these old peaches. To gauge the Peaches of New York ratings against the modern varieties, note that Elberta and Belle of Georgia for example only garner a "good" in that book -- the bigger and more productive varieties historically won out over flavor. One other thing is there are some modern peaches that are every bit as good as the best old ones in my mind: Clayton, Silver Logan, and Sweet Bagel are not all that old and are peaches with outstanding taste.

Scott

The only thing I have a problem with is rating peaches that have just a few in the tree against a variety that is very productive. If you're going to compare the quality of different varieties it has to be in context of a similar leaf to fruit ratio, otherwise the comparison isn't very valid imo.

This is not in any way to invalidate what you are doing, which I think is wonderful. So many people are exploring old time apples but not many are experimenting with peaches that have fallen out of commercial production.

I have to say that I don't find heirloom apples to be superior in taste to modern ones but I love my Golden Russets, Ashmeads Kernels, Cox's O P, etc. for having wonderful qualitities I can't find elsewhere- not better,just different. I appreciate your point that modern peaches haven't been bred to bring a variety of tastes and textures that modern apples have.

In apples I generally find the newer varieties to be more productive and not necessarily more disease and insect susceptable. With peaches I have seen a trend of more brown rot resistance in older varieties, but then, I have chosen to grow a lot of nectarines for their more intense flavor, so I will fight that issue for taste. I embrace the accomplishments of chemistry when it comes to getting those nects.

Hman, what you have a problem with may in fact be why some of these old varieties consistently taste so good: they are just not very productive, period. If leaf to fruit is such a big issue for flavor, they have it in spades. My St. John is in its 7th leaf and it still only produces a dozen peaches a year (aided by the fact it is on pumiselect and in a close planting). Note that these comments on productivity and taste are not just mine, download and read Peaches of New York and you will find their expert opinion to be similar (that book is from 1917 or so, but the scientific method was fully established in the academic fruit world by then). The one variety I so far do not agree with them on that was not an out-of-fashion-in-1917 one is Pallas: bland for me and "very good" for them. But they state they never in fact got it to fruit in their test orchard, and they are relying on some other source for the description. Pallas is a South China type peach and is too tender for northern climes.

One way to test how much leaf to fruit matters is to strip all but a few fruits off an "average" peach and see if it gets better. I have in a few cases noticed limbs with too many fruits on them have lowered taste but it was more a case of under-thinning, not overall low productivity; limbs on the same tree with a good level of thinning tasted much better. But maybe extreme thinning on a couple limbs of an average peach would boost the flavor of those few peaches.

Scott

PS I left a few peaches off the list above.

Oldmixon Free Improved - A later and smaller peach tasting very similar to Silver Logan. In other words, an excellent peach. (This description is from the previous year, it didn't fruit this year because I moved it over the winter).
O'Henry - This is to me the classic American peach flavor, a nice rich yellow peach. There are better ones but not by a huge amount. This year they split badly in one dry-to-rainy episode. Very prouctive.
Stark Summer Pearl - A standard white peach, fine. Hman, I only got a few peaches on this 7-year tree this year thanks to brown rot wiping the buds last fall. But, the flavor didn't improve measurably from past years in spite of the very high leaf to fruit ratio.
Salwey - Similar to Heath in being very late (an October peach here believe it or not) and similar texture but more stringy. The flavor is in the same ballpark as Heath but more mango. I think historically this is a cooking peach and the stringy aspect helps put it in that category.

Scott-
You mentioned this was the first year you got many peaches. How did you keep the squirrels away?

Scott, my experience has been repeated many times where a tree comes into bearing and has only a smattering of fruit but the taste is divine. Rariton Rose was definately like that, for instance. Then the tree matures and you have to thin like mad and the fruit is very good but not quite (or not nearly) the same.

If a variety doesn't produce well I really don't care what it tastes like, I'm just not that much of a connesseur- trees have to earn their space with production. Maybe it's because tending fruit trees is all I do and it's so much work and worry that I expect a reasonable payoff.

You seem to approach your trees like a vinophile approaches their various bottles of wine. I have a more purely practical system of evaluation. Peaches don't really thrill me in terms of different aromatics and subtle flavor. I just want them sweet, juicey, meaty and productive with lots of peachy flavor. And I want them yellow or yellow and red- none of those sissy whites!

OK, I'm sortof kidding. I'd love to take a tour of your peach orchard someday.

Scott-

Very nice report. I like hearing what other people like/dislike even if we all have different taste buds, preferences.

How would you rate your growing season locally (too wet/too dry/too cold/too warm (can it be too warm for peaches?)

You should really have me come protect your ripening peaches from those squirrels. It really sucks living in a climate that is just too cold for peaches!

Frank, my season is too wet and buggy but is otherwise great for peaches. It can be too warm for peaches, but they are much more heat-tolerant than most tree fruits (only the tropicals and figs and pomegranates are more heat-tolerant). Central California is probably the perfect region in the US: warm, dry, and far fewer bugs.

In England they manage to grow peaches espaliered on a south wall and I am sure your summers are far warmer than theirs are. So, I would say you have enough warmth there in the right spot, the primary problem is the cold.

Scott

Storkace, Re squirrel control, over the winter I baited an area with sunflowers by a window and shot them with a pellet gun. In the spring/summer I used two Kania traps mounted on trees and baited with peanut butter/pecans, plus kept a pecan or two outside the trap door as attractant. I still lost 1/3 of my peaches but I got plenty to try myself. This winter I plan to keep the Kania traps baited and hopefully I won't need to shoot them at all. I have nothing against shooting but I end up missing enough that I get annoyed by it, the squirrel up high taunting me puts me in a bad mood. Plus the need to constantly be looking out the window. I still need to do that for the traps, just not as often.

Scott

Scott, I just went to your page and I'm very impressed by what you're doing, including your excellent effort to share your discoveries.

I await your updates with anticipation, but there are two things I'm curious about which would help me use your acquired info.

First, what rootstocks are you using for apples, plums and peaches? The affects of your close spacing, as I've mentioned before, concerns me in terms of the evaluations. It may strongly push ratings up for varieties that are by nature less vegetative (such as Goldrush and for that matter, Satsuma).

I'd also be very curious as to which of the varieties are being rated based on a full crop, even if that may be a tedious issue with you at this point. I think that you can understand that people with limited resources of time and space might want to invest only in productive varieties.

Best, Alan Haigh

Scott,

Thanks of this report. I sent you an email, but it must have gotten caught in your spam filter.

I was wondering if any of the above varieties are particularly bac. spot susc., or any that you remember seeming especially resistant to it?

Bac. spot is about the only peach disease I can't seem to control.

You've already got me sold on trying Gold Dust (if I can find it).

Alan, my experience is the variation from season to season and the variation based on when the fruit was picked is far greater than rootstock or load on the tree (unless overloaded), so I am not putting a big weight on that. I have about half a dozen varieties on two different rootstocks and I have not noticed much taste difference between those pairs thus far. I occasionally notice a difference with the same variety but in a different location in my yard -- my front and back orchards are quite different, the front runs about a week ahead of the back due to greater warmth there, and I have occasionally noticed minor taste differences on the common varieties. So, overall I just don't see the rootstock or load as a high factor compared to the other factors I have noticed. Since you keep bringing it up I will try to pay more attention to it to see if I notice something. One dimension that I do think can matter in some cases is the age of the tree, young trees can mature fruit in odd ways. I have primarily noticed it as the young tree ruining some fruits by under-ripening them, not by making them better, and so if I get a great fruit off of a young tree that bodes well from my experience. For example my 4-year Rubinette gave one or two very mediocre fruits last year, but this year they were top quality. For all my fruits I log the taste and by far the most common pattern is "same as last year". In fact this year I am only logging new apples or ones that are tasting different from last year since I get tired of typing in some variation on the same comment I have typed for the last several years.

Concerning what rootstock I am using, I am using about every rootstock under the sun. If you want to know the gory details send me an email and I can send you my spreadsheet with the full data in it, including row spacing, ripening dates, etc.

olpea, I didn't get your email, sorry about that. I at first had every peach with tons of bacterial spot (before I learned how to control it) and now I have only a little bit on all trees and I don't pay attention to it. So, I do occasionally notice it is not evenly distributed but I have not been collecting good data. I also find that bad soil/roots/sun is usually a bigger issue than variety when I have a standout tree. The one peach that I do think is horrible is Baby Crawford, it was the original source that infected my whole orchard and it has done very poorly (I have two trees in two different locations which further cements its claim on this). Overall I would say plums have a much bigger problem of some varieties being highly sensitive. Hey are you doing dormant copper right after leaf fall and right before bud break? That is how I nailed it. Also make sure to prune trees nice and open.

Scott

Scott, I think you miss my point about production. I am not going back to the issue of smaller harvests improving fruit quality, although I'm very surprised that your considerable experience there in no way mimics my considerable experience. I'm trying to figure out how you get such different results.

My point was about the desirability of productive varieties for production sake. I just would find it useful if you included productivity as part of your evaluations and I'm sure I'm not alone. I wouldn't be surprised if in time even you decide to pair down your orchard to varieties that pull their weight.

Anyway, I'm grateful for any info you choose to post. Thanks.

Scott-

What about this summer vs """"normal"""" :)?

Oh right, yes I do try to mention production if its unusually high or low, I think I did on a few above but not consistently. I left out the fact that Indian Free, Indian Cling, Carolina Belle, and Heath Cling are very productive. For the low productivity many in the last year got reduced by brown rot so I don't think that data is super helpful but a few have been consistently low and I tried to mention that. Even though that is not the most important element to me, it is pretty important.

This summer was very rainy in the latter part (but less so in the earlier spring). Overall it was much worse than average for me as far as rain.

Scott

Olpea:

Gold Dust is available at Bay Laurel:

http://www.baylaurelnursery.com/order/clicksite.cgi?cart_id=&xm=on&ftr=Peaches&p=Peaches

and FYI Scott, Dave Wilson lists Heath (they call it White Heath Cling) as being very juicy too, so I think your juicy one was the way it's supposed to be.

Have you ever looked at Arboreum's descriptions? They have a lot of yours with photos. I wanted to order from them last year, but they never responded to my e-mails. But I like their website, anyway!

http://www.arboreum.biz/

And a funny story about Gold Dust--I was looking at the USDA scions available, and looking for Gold Dust. And then I figured out that somebody had spell-checked the site, and it automatically replaced abbreviations, and so their listing of Gold DunitedstatesT was really a listing for Gold Dust "improved" by their computer (i.e. Gold D-US-t)

Carla in Sac

Carla, thats good to hear Re: Heath. The peach that was juicy was sitting in the sun for several days; maybe all that sun in CA gets them juicy. Dave Wilson (via Bay Laurel) was my source for Heath.

Re: Arboreum, I ordered from them last year and received fantastic-quality trees for a reasonable price. I was excited to see Carman listed there, it is a "very good" peach in Peaches of New York which I had thought was extinct, so of course I had to get one! I believe Todd Kennedy and a friend are running it (based on the picture, one guy is a spitting image of Todd). They did not respond to all of my emails but I sent the order in anyway and voila, the trees showed up! So if they get their website going again I would just order. Todd is probably the most knowledgeable person in the US when it comes to old peach varieties, and you can see he donated many of the scions to the Davis collection. Of their listed peaches, Early Crawford, Gold Dust, George IV, and Silver Logan are ones I also liked a lot (it looks like I also left out George IV from my above list but its an excellent unique and small peach). I am growing most of their listed varieties.

For people not in CA I would avoid their plums and apricots as they may not work out in other parts of the country, but the rest of the fruits are worth an experiment. I ordered many of their guigne-type cherries as that type is my favorite and they are quite uncommon now.

Scott

Scott, for the sake of continuing this discussion I submit the following to you;

Years ago when I managed an orchard on an estate that had many varieties of old fasioned peaches, I was generally unimpressed, as I was with a King George IV I grew on my own property. The older varieties that I tried, and a few are on your list, were often very fuzzy, poorly colored (George is green!) and didn't really get the sugar up until they were soft.

However, at that time, Fuji was my favorite apple, and I responded much more to sweetness and texture than any other quality in fruit. That has changed over time as I now prefer much more complex types of apples like Cox and Ashmead's K.

You've renewed my curiosity about the different aromatic possibilities of peaches, but I still believe that breeding efforts to create peaches that sweeten while still quite firm has provided even home growers some wonderful advantages.

The discovery of Elberta revolutionzed the peach growing industry because of that ability to be quite sweet while still firm, allowing them to be shipped sweet but firm.

I believe that this quality much improves the value of peaches in general as they make more appealing preserves and freeze much better. They're also a lot easier to distribute to your friends without bruising. How many peaches can you actually eat off the tree?

I wonder what percentage of people prefer a real meaty textured peach- that is, dense and firm (not hard), while still very juicey. I have to admit that some modern varieties go to far in this direction for me, such as White Lady and Blushing Star, which actually seem to be disigned to stay on the tree hard-ripe for about 2 weeks. It is convenient, though, if you happen to be out of town a lot during harvest season.

I would say quite a few of the old ones fit in your category of not sugaring up until soft -- they end up very soft and juicy, and if you pick them at the level of hardness you would for a modern variety like O'Henry they will be poor.

I agree there are advantages to firm peaches, even for home growers. Some of the old ones are quite firm so its not like they are all soft: Foster, Indian Cling, Heath, etc are firm. I don't think its that big a deal for home growers however; I prefer the less firm ones for preserves. My Indian Cling preserves had too-hard chunks of peach in it.

Most people these days prefer a meaty peach because thats what they think peaches are - the soft ones have gotten very uncommon. People tend to prefer what they are used to.

Scott

Scott, people also tend to like things that others can't have, that are rare and hard to find- so that can work both ways.

I have tricked people by giving them a Fuji or a Goldrush apple and telling them it is a rare heirloom. I purposely do this to prove a point to people who claim to much prefer heirloom apples. They usually embrace the Fuji and or Goldrush with great enthusiasm. I'm sure I could get similar results with Pink Lady and other outstanding new intros. I doubt such trickery would work with you, of course.

The French had most of the world convinced that really good wine could only be made from French grapes and traditional methods of production until a group of French winemakers were duped into a blind taste comparison to high end CA wines. They were trounced by the upstarts.

The point is that it's hard to know why people prefer the tastes of things and how much they're influenced by the idea of a thing as opposed to its actual qualities.

In fact I'm probably resisting the allure of your peaches because you have them and I don't. I'm a bit jealous.

Incidentally, I wasn't actually talking about peach preserves in general but specifically of jarred half peaches where firmness and a high level of sugar is quite an asset. Of course, some acidity in the mix is a plus a well.

I agree on jarred peaches, firm is best for those. I used to can peaches with my grandma when I was a boy and I still have a vivid memory of eating those peaches every time I visited her.

Taste is indeed a fickle thing, and I don't think anyone can claim immunity to being influenced by "outside" information. I was once an "heirlooms are better" kind of guy (and I still am on tomatoes), but I did decide to plant a few modern fruits and its hard not to get wowed by a perfectly-ripened Gold Rush or Fuji. Some of my old posts on this board I was dissing Fuji based on the local orchard version which was overwatered/overfertilized, but I have had some incredible honeyed Fujis off of my own tree.

If you are jealous I have an easy solution: get a few of 'em! I am happy to send you some scions if you are interested. If you want a productive, disease-resistant Crawford-type just get the Clayton. I think the Indian Free is also tops; these two are both productive.

Scott

Did you notice the high leaf to fruit ratio of your heirloom tomatoes?

Yes definitely. My view of this however is the modern tomatoes were bred for productivity (and disease resistance, looks, firmness, etc) at the expense of taste, and if I took a non-heirloom and thinned it to only a couple toms per plant it would still get beat for flavor by an heirloom. In other words, in some past generation they had to select from a batch and picked the most productive/firm/virus resistant instead of the most tasty and those tasty genes are gone forever in that plant.

Scott

And you think there's no connection that a tomatoe plant that ripens its entire crop at the same time produces tomatoes with a lower sugar content and that indeterminate tomatoes, even modern ones, tend to produce sweeter more flavorful tomatoes? Where do you think those sugars are produced?

Come on, Scott, concede the point.

Alan, determinates are a different case since they are ripening so many at once. I grew non-heirloom indeterminates for many years and sometimes they were lightly loaded for whatever reason (low pollination for example), but I never remember those few fruits turning into tasty heirlooms. I would agree a light load helps bring out the very best in a variety, but at some point you hit the wall of genetics.

Come on Alan, concede the point :-)

Scott

Hey Scott,
Have you tried any of the Texas varieties of Peaches? They are pretty much all I know other than a few other common ones but the ones I have tried from the Fredricksburg orchards have been great. Among the varieties are Tex Royal, Regal, Denman, Ranger, and one I'm sure you are familiar with Redglobe. I am curious as to what your opinion of these are and how they stack up against your heirlooms. In my opinion the Texas grown varieties have been fantastic. Great post by the way.

Thanks,
Scape

I concede that a Better Boy will never taste as good as a Brandywine even if you thin it to where it only bears 5 fruit from a huge plant over an entire season, which is about all I can hope for from Brandywine as I grow it here.

I always grow some of the newer more productive varieties but I have found Rose (from Johny's) to be extremely productive and flavorful for an heirloom. Not this last season, however, where I was lucky to get 3 fruit from one plant before it was completely dead from early blight.

Next year I'm going to stop growing my tomatoes organically and hit them with some Bravo. I'm sick of the abbreviated season created by blight.

Scape, I've never tried those (first I thought they were Texas tomatoes - getting discussions mixed up!). I haven't actually had all that many of the modern peach varieties, there isn't much variety in what is grown around here. I did once attend a tasting at Andy Mariani's orchard in California and tried about 50 different peaches then. Speaking of that tasting, my favorites were the Red Baron and Double Jewel peaches - both double flowered peaches with extraordinary peach flavor. There were many of the "latest and greatest" California varieties there and none of them made much of an impression on me.

Scott

I'm going to jump in here and ask if anyone has any information about an old peach variety called Dixigem, or Dixie Gem? My sister-in-law's parents owned an orchard in Oregon that has Dixie Gem, but when I asked about getting scion it was as if I had committed a deadly sin!

They truly are wonderful peaches, but they certainly can't be shipped! Dixigem is the parent of Coronet. (I'm not even certain if the "Dixie Gem" I ate is the same as "Dixigem").

I have tried in vain for several years to find this cultivar. I doubt it would grow here in Denver, but I'm not opposed to trying.

Does any one have information about this variety?

Scott, Yeah I forgot to put Red Baron on my list. It is quite popular here and it is pretty good. Out of the ones I have tried I really liked Ranger and Denman they were both very good oh and 1 more I have tried that was very good is La Feliciana from LSU. It was bred for resistance to fungus and rots and such and is really good IMO. I'll bet that would be a good one for an eastern climate I'd imagine.

Scape