The best tasting peach

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EQGuy

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My father bought a 7 acre peach orchard in Suisun Valley in 1955. The orchard had a few trees of J H Hale variety. This is a large peach and is the best tasting peach I have ever eaten. I sure do miss them as it has been 50 years since I have had the pleasure of eating one. The Fae Elberta was a pretty good eating peach too.

My brother was taking basic training at Fort Ord in 1960 and a fellow recruit from Georgia kept bragging about how Georgia had the best peaches so he had my father send him a few of the Hale peaches to show his friend what good California peaches were. The orchard is long gone as my father sold it after his cheap labor (me) left home. I did pay for a significant portion of my college education from the pay I earned while working in the orchard. To this day I refuse to buy a peach at the grocery store as it just is not the same as picking a dead ripe peach off of a tree and pealing the skin off and enjoying a real treat.
 
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Fifty years ago, I was working a summer job for my dad. Part of my job was to drive through alleys in small towns looking for natural gas leaks. One hot day, behind an abandoned Catholic rectory, I found a tree so loaded with peaches it was falling over. I stopped the truck and ate for hours. I got on the 2-way radio to advise some other employees in that town to stop by.

I bought some fresh peaches a week or so ago at the local store and they were very good also, but not as good as that day years ago.
 
You might try the "Belle of Georgia" white peach... I planted one back in 1995...and lost every bud to a late frost every year until 2000. They are extremely good peaches... but Missouri is a little too far north for them.. no matter what the planting guides say... I'm not sure what planting area you guys are in...and whether you get hit by cooler weather due to the mountains or not........But heck, the dwarf peach trees are pretty cheap.. and as long as you have the room...plant several varieties and find out which you like & which do the best in your local clime.....
 
max said:
Fifty years ago, I was working a summer job for my dad. Part of my job was to drive through alleys in small towns looking for natural gas leaks. One hot day, behind an abandoned Catholic rectory, I found a tree so loaded with peaches it was falling over. I stopped the truck and ate for hours. I got on the 2-way radio to advise some other employees in that town to stop by.

I bought some fresh peaches a week or so ago at the local store and they were very good also, but not as good as that day years ago.
Click to expand...

Free is always better.:)
 
wbraswell said:
I love them, I don't peel them, and I want a freestone peach, with the red around the pit.
Click to expand...

Yes, yes, YES! The freestone peaches are so much better, to my way of tasting. I especially love and watch for the ones from Georgia and Alabama. I grew up on the ones from northern Georgia.

ETA: The freestones make sublime peach ice cream, and nothing--nothing--is much better than homemade peach ice cream made with heavy cream.
 
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We have a neighbor that grows peaches and he will have some ready for us tomorrow. I don't know the variety but they are good raw and in pies and ice cream. I LIKE PEACHES!!! Larry
 
da gimp said:
You might try the "Belle of Georgia" white peach... I planted one back in 1995...and lost every bud to a late frost every year until 2000. They are extremely good peaches... but Missouri is a little too far north for them.. no matter what the planting guides say... I'm not sure what planting area you guys are in...and whether you get hit by cooler weather due to the mountains or not........But heck, the dwarf peach trees are pretty cheap.. and as long as you have the room...plant several varieties and find out which you like & which do the best in your local clime.....
Click to expand...

I think I have room to squeeze in one more dwarf tree and I see that David Wilson Nursery sells dwarf J H Hale trees. I think I will plant one this winter. I have a volunteer plum tree that was growing on the fence line when I bought this place. I cut it down but it grew back and last winter I grafted several varieties on it; Golden Nectar Plum, Santa Rosa Plum, Heavenly White Nectarine, Royal Apricot and Geo Pride Plout. I could graft on a J H Hale if I bought the tree. I got the above scions at the local scion exchange last January. I have never seen any hale scions at the exchange. Next year I might graft a couple of cherry varieties on the plum tree to make it a complete fruit salad tree. For a white peach I like Babcock or Nectar. I do not have much room in my suburban back yard.
 
I wait eagerly each year for the one truck to arrive from Georgia and sell out the cargo in just a few hours. Wonderful peaches, I know they are freestone but nothing else about them...just thankful to see them show up each year in NW Wisconsin.

Although I can hardly imagine what a better peach would be, I suspect (as redlevel has previously hinted) that the very best peaches never cross the Georgia border.

Now, you folks in Colorado might raise some good peaches, but where you truly excel is in sweet corn... Wander over to a small town on the western slope some time and try their namesake: Olathe Sweet Corn
 
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My Father sold most of his peaches to produce stores in Napa, Peatluma and Healsburg. I really enjoyed riding with him in the 1958 Studebaker Pickup with a load of peaches in back and going for a drive. He also dried the peaches that were too ripe to ship. We used to pick up the windfall fruit as they were dead ripe with the most sugar and made the best dried fruit. We just had to cut out the dirt clods and rotten spots. They passed a law that said this was unsanitary and we had to plow under the fallen fruit. After spending 12 hours in an atmosphere of pure sulfur dioxide I am sure they were perfectly sanitary. When they came out of the house they were a pale greenish white but when they dried they got their color back. I remember the time the sulfur house caught fire and burned down. There went a significant part of that years profit. We had a mini railroad that we loaded the fruit laden trays on to move into the sulfur house and then on to the drying field. There was a set of wide tracks that went form the cutting shed to the sulfur house. A wide car ran on this track and on top of it were a set of rails that the narrow car rode on. We placed the fruit laden trays onto this car.There was a spur line that ran out to the drying yard. This was a one man power or sometimes one boy power system. The sulfur was placed in a can buried in the ground under the fruit and it would burn all night. I remember one morning we opened the house and I discovered a toad in the sulfur can. He had turned hard as a stone and was cherry red. We would take a portion of the peaches and peal off the skin and place them on wax paper to dry. They were just like candy. The dry fruit you buy in the store today is no where near as good as the fruit we dried back in the 60’s.
 
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Jst1mr said:
Now, you folks in Colorado might raise some good peaches, but where you truly excel is in sweet corn... Wander over to a small town on the western slope some time and try their namesake: Olathe Sweet Corn
Click to expand...

It's the geography and climate that makes both Olathe corn and Palisade peaches so good. August around here is delicious, and my canning and preserving schedule gets mighty heavy!
 
Father in law had a White Peach of some kind growing on his farm for years till a lightning storm took half of it and then the other half didn't survive but for 2 more years. Was always a prolific producer of 4-5 inch peachs, would love to know what it was.. Must have been a 30 year old tree.
 
I must have an unsophisticated palate. I won't walk away from any peach. Love 'em.

When I lived in Florida, a lot of folks would "put up" pickled peaches. Kinda like a "bread & butter" type. I got quite used to them. Don't see them around much any more.

Where's Deathgrip when ya need him?
 
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Speaking of white peaches there was one Nectar tree at the back of the orchard. We had a septic tank/ cess pool at the house. One year Dad needed to have it pumped so he made a deal with the local honey truck driver. He let him dump a few loads from his truck at the end of the orchard in exchange for pumping the tank. The Nectar tree was the one to receive the loads. Man that tree had the best peaches ever that year and some very nice tomatoes also.
 
Come on, guys! We all know that the best peaches come from South Carolina! I remember growing up and going to pick peaches with my mother. We normally got several bushels full. She would "can" or freeze some so we'd have them all year long. The thing we kids liked best was making peach ice cream! Took a lot of effort to churn it, but we'll worth it! :)
 
I don't know the variety but I had an old farm house built 1921 that had two peach trees on it. The smaller of the two had the biggest peaches I've ever seen and good too. We canned them and nothing better middle of a cold Michigan winter than those peaches. Sorry I sold the house just for the fruit trees on the property.
 
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