North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> I know Reliance is one of the few peaches some northern Nafexers can 
> grow, but it's such poor quality I couldn't recommend it.  The peach 
> is small, and gets soft so quickly.  It isn't especially tasty, and 
> it's flesh is stringy.


Mark, this is the first year I've had any peaches, but this doesn't 
describe my Reliance peach at all. (Then again, there's been a lot on 
the list about misnamed fruit trees, hasn't there?) I got the tree from 
Stark Bros. in 2006, and it set on a ton of fruit this year. I had to 
thin it heavily. But the remaining fruit were really big,... and 
absolutely wonderful! I was just delighted at how they turned out.

OK, before this year, my previous experience with peaches was entirely 
from grocery stores. But still, this was a really, really good peach! 
Maybe I just had an especially good year?

If anyone's interested, here's my result on peaches this year. I've got 
four dwarf trees planted in the same hole (actually, 18" apart) in my 
backyard. (Yeah, I probably wouldn't do that again, but I've got limited 
space.) All are two years old, bought from Stark Bros.

The Hardired Giant Nectarine ripened first. I don't know about "giant," 
since these weren't too big. And I had trouble deciding when to pick 
them (I had the same trouble with all my peaches). They got really, 
really red - they looked like apples! - but stayed quite hard. The 
squirrels finally convinced me to pick them, since otherwise I wouldn't 
have had any left. It turned out that they stayed much firmer than I'd 
expected, but they were very sweet and delicious. I was very happy with 
them (though the bugs like them much better than they do fuzzy peaches, 
apparently).

The Reliance ripened immediately afterwards (good timing). This was the 
only tree with a ton of peaches set on, but I dutifully thinned them 
(and then knocked some off by accident). I learned that I needed to pick 
these before they got soft, too. Partly, that's because the peaches grow 
so tightly against the branch that they bruise themselves, if left too 
long. And partly because of the squirrels. But they ripened beautifully 
indoors, and these were probably my favorite peaches of the bunch. 
Really delicious!

When the Reliance finished, the Redhaven peaches started to ripen. 
(Again, I really loved how these trees ripened at different times, 
something I can't say about the plums!) These peaches were smaller than 
the Reliance and firmer. At first, I was not as impressed with them. 
However, they seemed to keep forever on my kitchen counter. I cut up one 
for my cereal every morning, and I had no problem with the others 
getting too ripe. They were very tasty, too.

Those peaches ran out weeks ago. The fourth tree is an Intrepid peach, 
and they're still green (though the squirrels just destroyed one of 
them). They're small, too (or maybe they just have to grow some yet). 
Unfortunately, this tree produced very few peaches, so I'll be lucky to 
get any, after the squirrels and birds get through with them. I was 
going to wait and post this stuff after they'd ripened, but this talk 
about peaches changed my mind.

Note that I've got a huge problem with Oriental Fruit Moths, and I don't 
know what I'm doing when it comes to pruning these trees, either 
(especially since they're planted in a square only 18" apart!). I'd 
never even seen a peach tree before I planted these. But despite all of 
my problems, I was very pleased with the results this year.

And as I say, my "Reliance" peach certainly doesn't match your 
description. I don't know why.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
Freedom is never an achieved state; like electricity, we've got to keep 
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