North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Scott Smith <scott@cs.jhu.edu>]

For best taste plus best diseases resistance I would pick Clayton for the 
peach and Tomcot for the apricot.

Clayton is an excellent tasting yellow-fleshed peach, they don't come any 
better.  It went out of style because of its supposedly small size but it is 
pretty good size for me.  Unfortunately it doesn't have many sources; Vaughn 
or Cumberland are some places that may have it.  If you can't find that one, 
Winblo and Carolina Gold are from the same breeding program at NC and are 
also very good tasting and highly disease-resistant.  Carolina Gold is also 
supposed to be late-blooming; I don't have problems with peaches getting 
frozen out though so I don't pay attention to peach bloom times.

Tomcot has been the best on the brown rot front of the couple other 
yellow-fleshed apricots I have and its blossoms are quite cold resistant so 
overall its well ahead of the pack, especially when you add in the excellent 
flavor.  It may in fact not be very resistant to rot but it is so early that 
the harvest is in before brown rot rears its ugly head.  The Puget Gold right 
next to it gets nailed by rot every other year.

For brown rot resistance I find it is important to plant the trees in an open 
spot without wind breaks nearby, and to prune them so there is a lot of light 
coming through.  Lessons I learned the hard way :-)

Scott 
z6/7 MD