Good Tasting Peach Varieties

I have to give a huge thumbs up to redhaven peaches.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:I have to give a huge thumbs up to redhaven peaches.

Eric

I've heard Redhaven is a top tasting variety!

I also heard it has large yields, has that been the case for you if you're growing it?

It looks like Redhaven may have pretty high chill hours and blooms late to avoid late frosts, which is always nice in our area!

The tree is also supposedly a vigorous grower with a natural spreading branch structure, with firm fruit good for storage but creamy flesh when ripe for fresh eating.

No wander this is such a popular peach! I'm going to have to get one soon!

Is anyone growing this?!

A while back we used to get the greatest peaches at the greatest prices at the Jamaica Farmers Market in Queens,N.Y. A farmer by the name of Siek Postma used to come in from No.New Jersey .He was thrown out of the Union Square Market for charging too little. He was a farmer who liked to help poorer people.
This particular year there had been a drought so Siek pumped water from his rich pond to feed the white peaches. He brought them to market at their peak and at the end of the day he had about twelve left.He gave them to my wife and I for 50 cents! We went home and the next day it was 103 degrees outside. We decided to make peach pie.We had a great recipe for pie crust from a lady who worked the church thrift shop.It had lard in it.With sweat pouring down us and a cold towel on our necks we peeled those sweet white peaches and rolled our dough. The aroma in the oven could have knocked over Betty Crocker! Did we enjoy that peach pie so much in our air conditioned living room! When we are 100 years old we will remember Siek Postma whose drought made for the sweetest and best pie we ever ate!!!

That's a great story Stuart!

It made me think, my fruit plants aren't irrigated and often go through our hot droughts of summer, and the fruit is always super flavorful in my opinion. I wander if that period of drought helps make super flavorful fruit?!

I found this beautiful picture of a redhaven peach. It has such great color!


(source)

Anyone here tasted Frost, Avalon, or Salish Summer peaches?

James Landreth wrote:Anyone here tasted Frost, Avalon, or Salish Summer peaches?

I was looking at the Frost peach also recently, hope to hear from someone who's grown it too!

I've got a Frost,  an Avalon Pride as well as a couple young Salish Summers that were grafted a few months ago.

I really like the flavor of Avalon, it has yellow flesh and is the earliest of all the curl resistant peaches, but my tree is not very big or productive. It got damaged several years ago in a snowstorm and has never really grown much since. I've tried to grow more Avalons from seeds, but the seeds from mine are not viable. Four stars.

Frost has excellent flavor, it also has semi-freestone yellow flesh and ripens in mid-season. My efforts to grow them from seed have not been successful so far. This one has the best leaf curl resistance. Four stars.

Summer Salish (Q 1-8) has white flesh and is supposed to be really good, but I have not tasted it yet. This one ripens mid-season, is from Washington state and has excellent curl resistance.

But my favorite peach is Indian Blood Free- I've got several of them, all seedlings. This taste-test-winning variety has dark red/brown fuzzy skin, but inside is super delicious purple/magenta flesh marbled with white. Excellent curl resistance and is easy to grow from seeds. This is also the last peach to ripen, between early September and early October. I've given away and sold dozens of these trees and I recommend them to just about everybody. There's also a thread on this site devoted to them. Five stars.

https://permies.com/t/23607/Propagating-Blood-cling-Peaches

By the way, I've also tasted Redhaven- they are super delicious, but I've seen them succumb to leaf curl and gummosis  in my climate so I don't grow them. Five stars for flavor, but one star for disease resistance.

I never met a peach I did not like. Especially the raggety kind!