Check with Vaughn nursery in TN, Clayton is not listed on their web site but they had it for sale sale last year.

I see Clayton is known to be quite resistant to bacterial spot. That interests me, what are some of it's other qualities and what are it's bad points? Is it hardy to Z6?

Its excellent on all counts but size. It is smaller than tennis ball.

Scott

how would you rate the taste compared to indian free?

Its hard to compare, Clayton is basically a classic yellow peach and Indian Free is an unusual cranberry-tasting peach. People who want the classic peach will prefer the Clayton for sure. Indian Free is a bit more sweet and more sour along with the cranberry.

If you can't find Clayton get a Winblo, its also classic yellow peach flavor of similar season. Its bigger as well.

Scott

okay. do clayton and indian free bloom at similar times?

Indian Free is a later bloomer but I think it overlaps. Its not clear if a pollinator is needed for IF, some places say its self-sterile but the evidence of that has been lacking in my orchard (too many red-streaked seedlings coming up and the red is a recessive gene).

Scott

they said they won't have any for this coming spring :(

not sure what i'm supposed to do now, i wanted it for the disease resistance

This post was edited by nuthen on Tue, Sep 16, 14 at 9:49

Scott, does Winblo have comparable disease resistance to Clayton? Or a better question, what is THE most DR peach available for the mid-Atlantic? I'd prefer free stone yellow varieties, but if there were a good DR peach, I'd be willing to make some serious concessions.
I looked into this 2 years ago and all I came up with was PF35-007 (I think) Fat Lady. After speaking with Paul Friday himself I was left feeling as though he wasn't so enthusiastic about this reported DR.

i believe clayton is the only variety that is resistant to both bacterial spot and peach leaf curl. Harken and Loring are taste test winners at DWN and have bacterial spot resistance.

here is a list of cultivars that have high bac. spot resistance

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/ho/ho6/ho6.pdf

maybe someone with a lot of peach experience can give us ideas which varieties in the pdf taste the best as well

also this http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1039/F-6210web.pdf

This post was edited by nuthen on Tue, Sep 16, 14 at 20:06

Apple seed, its hard to say whats the most disease resistant. It depends a lot on climate etc. The main thing is to avoid the highly susceptible ones. Rio Oso Gem came with bad spot and it spread to all the less susceptible trees around it. For me curl is irrelevant, the hot weather usually fries any outbreaks I get.

I haven't tried too many commercial peach varieties myself, there are just too many to sort through and they are all pretty similar. I like the NC releases (Clayton, Winblo, Carolina Gold) because they are classic peach taste bred to be more disease resistant than the preceding generation. Much of the more modern breeding work is on large size, firmness, low acid, high yield, etc which I don't care as much about, the NC program is one of the few that aimed mainly at disease resistance and taste. Winblo I would say is similar to Clayton, maybe not quite as disease proof but still very good on that front.

On that pdf list I also like Ernies Choice. It took 5+ years to really settle down production and flavor-wise but now its a great tree.

Scott

Nuthen,

Harken scored well in DWN taste tests in several years.

I've grown it for quite a few years. It's a fine peach, but flavor no better than Redhaven (which ripens 5 days later). As long as there is not a tremendous amount of rain, Redhaven tastes quite good here.

Harken is smaller than Redhaven and has more fuzz. it's also a less reliable cropper than Redhaven, but when it sets, it sets a ton of flowers.

One thing Scott didn't mention about peach varieties developed by North Carolina is that they also tend to be bred for more cold tolerance. North Carolina peaches Contender and Carolina Gold both had a fair amount of cropping this year in my backyard while most had either very light crops, or no crop at all. Carolina Gold produced about 1.5 bu and Contender produced about 1 bu. (smaller tree).

Intrepid and Challenger (both developed in NC) are also supposed to have above average cold tolerance.

I've been thinking about some of the newer DR varieties from West Virginia University's fruit research facility at Kearneysville, WV.
A couple have caught my eye:
Crimson Rocket:
www.google.com/patents/USPP15216
Sweet-n-up
Summerfest

All these are pillar varieties, this interests me because I have a spot or two that would bode well for columnar growth. All these peaches have fabulous color and nice size. I also believe they are all freestone.
Does anyone have any experience with these varieties? I wonder what (if any) downsides they come with. I also wonder if their resistance to bacterial spot is solely because they are pillar forms and air circulation is simply better.
Adams county sells all three of these varieties.

I don't grow any pillar peaches, but I would think a strong disadvantage would be the height. Unlike dwarf apples in which the rootstock dwarfs both canopy width and canopy height, pillar peaches only reduce the canopy width, so the trees grow pretty tall.

My guess is any commercial grower using this system is also using a mobile platform to pick and thin (or using a mechanical string thinner to thin, which is supposed to be a big advantage of the pillar systems).

This would be a disadvantage for a backyard peach because all picking and thinning would have to be done off a ladder.

Lastly, many peach varieties have a natural upright growth habit. I think it would be quite easy to conform these to a pillar type system.

Below is an article from Good Fruit Grower where they tested pillar vs. upright vs. standard (vase). You can see the pillar trees in the article look like they are b/t 15 and 20' tall.

Here is a link that might be useful: Upright Peach Plantings Are Productive

Yeah....Kearneysville says 12-14' I think, although like you say, in the photo they are pushing that and then some. I thought about the ladder issue, but think that would be ok with me for now...IF I could just get some nice peaches. Bacterial spot thrives here.
Thanks for the article olpea.