Peach fuzz and big noses: comparative profile analysis.
Peach harvest was a bust this year; of seven varieties of leaf curl resistant peach trees only one bore fruit, and for that one tree, one fruit was its maximum output. Yes, I picked one peach for my year’s worth of peach tree pampering. (Good thing I already have plenty of dry firewood.)
Tree-ripened peach: As rare on Vashon as a washed truck and shaved face.
Now that my whining has subsided, and I’ve enjoyed this one succulent peach slowly, deliberately and ceremonially, I can write about it in a mature fashion, sharing its delicious legacy without the use of expletives and pouting. Avalon Pride is a great peach for the home orchard and next to the Frost peach, the best peach to grow in our cool climate, and in my opinion, the sweetest tasting as well.
One of Avalon Pride’s quirks is its tendency to grow a tandem peach, a mini me of sorts that piggybacks on the mother fruit and stays put until harvest. Any time I’ve tried to remove the sidekick, the larger peach dropped in a couple days.
Here’s a look at Avalon Pride before I savored every little bit in slow bites and lengthy chews. The remaining mini-me peach is more garnish than mainstay.
If you’re nosing around to find a good peach tree for your Pacific Northwest backyard, I’d suggest Avalon Pride, a profile in reliability and good taste.
Ten reasons to love the Avalon Pride Peach (Tree)
- Reliable producers (most years)
- Semi-freestone, though seed does tend to split as seen above
- Very sweet
- Nice texture
- Full-bodied peach flavor, aromatic
- Self-fertile (doesn’t need a different variety peach tree for pollination.)
- Peach Leaf Curl Resistant ( a huge plus for the Pacific Northwest)
- Handsome tree
- Fruit often sprouts a novel nose
- Is readily available to home orchards and gardeners.
Mail Order Nursery Sources: Burnt Ridge Nursery (WA), Grandpa’s Orchard (MI), One Green World (OR), Raintree Nursery (WA)
One peach? Seriously, I’d be very angry. It looks like it was at least tasty.
My Avalon, is a 5 year old tree. I bought the tree from Brunt Ridge Nursery in Onalaska Wash.
It produces maybe 2 peaches a year. My tree is not peach curl resistant. Every year our come the copper sulfite spray. Nope no help.
The tree has a wonderful vertical shape to it.
I’m scratching my head on this one Steve as Avalon Pride has been PLC disease-resistant from the get-go for me. But oddly, this new tree of mine is a light producer. I really need to get serious on properly pruning it. Truth be told, I’m just about ready to give up on growing peaches in Western Washington, even PLC varieties struggle to produce, and suffer wet springs and poor pollination.
Renae I went to my happy place and then ate a jar of jam. So far, so good.
That’s so bizarre about the hitch-hiker…you learn something new every day 😉 Good to have a recommendation…if I ever have a bigger place, peach trees are high up on the short list of “must-haves”!
Scott, Portland is a good spot to grow peaches…more heat units than Seattle!
You worry about “heat units” and down here in Silicon Valley we worry about “chill hours”, except this year when we haven’t had many hot days either. Good for the humans, bad for the tomatoes and cantaloupes.
a conjoined peach? are you sure your not near a secret government site?
Brion, hmmmm…I better get my Geiger counter out…we do have winds prevailing from the west…
How very interesting! Boy, this strange weather has
really affected everyone’s gardens so much this year. I love how you plan ahead and have that jar of jam to feel better with!! You know, I once met a guy
who told me that when his fruit trees were not producing that he would take a ‘strap’ to um’!!
Why hell!! I would never consider this because I’m not in to S&M lol 😀
Trying to grow peaches up here is a very tricky business. Those blasted things will break your heart every time.
I know this because peach trees have lured me in for several years …. there’s always a variety that ‘just might work’….. HA!
🙂
Oh, man, after all your hard work, Tom! I’m so sorry. Your tandem peach is fascinating though. And leave it up to you to make a very entertaining and informative post from your peach misfortune. 😉
Shirley
I had a $40 tomato this year!
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It does look tasty, but it also looks like a butt — or two butts.