Reliance. Start with a couple of these. They taste good and bear fruit as soon as the second year.

Nancy:

Agree with Frank. If you are in a zone 5 situation, with winter temps below -10F, your principal concern will be bud hardiness of the trees. Reliance or Contender would give you the best shot, although you still might get peaches only once about every 3 years. I grow both of these here, and prefer Reliance to Contender, although Reliance is said to be a "poor quality" peach in some quarters. I don't think so.

The only inbred disease resistance in modern peach varieties is some (I say some) resistance to bacterial spot on the fruit. My Reliance peaches do not suffer from b.s., but I dormant spray with copper every season. Peach trees can also suffer from bacterial canker on the limbs, but you can control it by pruning it off promptly and spraying with copper in the dormant season.

After you get a few peaches you will have to thin them and figure out how to protect them against plum curculio and the oriental fruit moth. You can spray with insecticides, but I bag my fruit in shoe store try-on footies to keep the insects from ruining the peaches.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA