It has decent bud hardiness, as far as peaches go. It was one of the peach varieties which produced a crop in my home orchard after the -10F low for last winter.

Others were Earlystar, PF7a, Contender, Carolina Gold, Redskin, O'henry, and Encore. There were some other varieties which produced a handful of peaches, but I don't count those with any degree of hardiness.

I picked Encore yesterday. It didn't produce very good peaches this year. Too much rain.

I've not had a problem with Redhaven rotting on the tree. Although, if we get a lot of rain during ripening, the skin will have what I call "skin rot". That is, it will have small checkered spots on the skin, but the rot doesn't go into the flesh like typical brown rot. This only occurs if there is a lot of rain just before they are ready to pick. Some other peach varieties also do it. It's a bad enough cosmetic injury the peaches can't be sold, but wouldn't be a big deal if you were growing the peaches for yourself.

Thanks for the report. i need to look into the cold hardy ones, as I have a feeling we are in for a decade long cold spell, dispite the ignorance of the general public, it's been getting colder and colder every year. The west coast had a warm summer. We had one of the coolest I ever remember.
We had 2 days where temps reached 90 or higher.
Luckily cool summers tell us nothing of the following winter, so who knows? It's been a great growing season really as temps kept in a range where vegetables just kept producing. I have 70 tomatoes slowly turning red right now.
I never harvested so many as this year. I'm getting 60-80 raspberries a day. My freezer is full of fruit and vegetables to the very top! It's a good thing my trees didn't produce, I have absolutely no room! I'm going to need another freezer!! Dang! The sugar snap peas and lettuce are growing like crazy, what a good year!

Olpea,

How's your Autumn Star bud hardiness. Mine is not. My PF 24 C is a lot more bud hardy than AS.

I know PF 24 C does not get much praise for its taste here but I like mine because it's the best I have. This year in particular, everyone of my friends and co-workers who tried it, gave me rave reviews on how sweet and aromatic it was to them.

It goes to show you how most people never have had opportunities to eat tree-ripened peaches. When they did/do, even 24 got high praises.

Hi Mamuang,

Autumnstar didn't produce a single peach for me this year in my home orchard. I think the Stellar series isn't as hardy as some other peaches, as a general rule. Risingstar, Coralstar, Autumnstar, Blazingstar, and Allstar produced no peaches. Only Earlystar had a crop. As a caveat, I'm not sure Risingstar in my home orchard is really Risingstar. It ripens before Risingstar is supposed to, so it may be yet another mislabeled tree from Adams (They've sent me a lot of mislabeled trees.) I have a few Risingstar peach trees out at the farm, so perhaps that will offer some clarification in the future.

I have a few new PF24c at the farm. I don't know if they will fruit next year or not. I'm kind of excited about this variety. I've wanted to try it for years. From what I've read, it is a very decent peach w/ the bonus of being as hardy as Reliance, or some of the other very hardy peaches. Thanks for your feedback on it, BTW.

Like Drew, I don't know how cold the future winters will be, but this winter has taught me I want to minimize the very winter tender varieties, while have more of the cold hardy varieties, as long as they are good quality.

This post was edited by olpea on Fri, Sep 26, 14 at 13:54

I think it takes more than one "test winter" to usefully evaluate hardiness. There are many variables, so I would be inclined to run with varieties with a long track record. -10 will not even affect the crop under some conditions and whatever was the nature of fluctuating temps, relative cropping the season before and on and on may skewer a one season assessment.

Red Haven has a rep for relative winter bud hardiness established for many decades by many growers in many regions. Madison is another with a long term reputation for both winter and spring bud hardiness.

I just spent 20 minutes searching for researched information on relative winter hardiness of various peach cultivars and found almost nothing, so maybe Olpea's evaluations are about as good as it gets. There's another orchard man in a Z5 that has a blog where he lists several varieties as particularly winter hardy based on quite a few years experience, but I didn't save it.

Spring flower bud hardiness is what is more often evaluated.

I've been wondering the same thing. I've seen generalized statements that peach buds are good down to -10F with a 10% reduction in buds for each degree below that. So at -20F there is total loss of fruit buds. However, they never clarify the variety and conditions for these guidelines. Clearly, all varieties don't have the same thresholds. It could be they are referring to Redhavens since they are a standard peach for the north.

The only peach tree I have producing at the moment is a Halehaven (a parent of Redhaven) and it had a total bud loss at -18F.

H-man is right about testing winter hardy over time. My PF 24 C was planted in 2010 and starting fruiting since 2011, still is a young tree.

We had one of the snowiest winters a couple of years ago. The tree was fine, bloomed well. This past winter was so cold for so long. Everyone I know around here complained. It's down to -15 to -18 a couple of nights due to a windchill factor. Otherwise, It's around -5 to -10 for the coldest side.

My PF 24 C probably bloomed about 40-50% of its previous years, still more than the PF 1 and Autumn Star (worst of the 3).

My location has good protection from the wind since I live in a small subdivision that is surrounded by tall oaks and maples. That's helpful to the trees, I am sure.

I'll admit peach hardiness is a bit of a puzzle to me. My mature trees clearly suffered greatly from a -10F winter. A commercial peach orchard about 20 miles SW from me had no peaches this season because of the cold winter. Peaches in various yards around here also suffered from the -10F winter.

A few years a different commercial peach orchard about 30 miles away had a complete crop loss when temps in his orchard got to -12F.

Juxtapose that with accounts from this forum where people have temps in the -20s and still have a peach crop on isolated trees. Or how Hman has mentioned -10F doesn't appear to faze peach trees much at all in his area.

I think the exact point of damage is based a lot on the condition of the buds when the lowest temps come, which I know you know, Olpea.

As I remember it, and in tradesmen parlance, the more water in the cells of the buds at the time of freeze the more delicate they are and the water is moved out as they harden off for winter and brought back in as spring approaches. When the water in the cells freeze they burst the cells "skins" because of the expansion of freezing.

A big part of the equation is the weather leading up to low temps, but I don't think anyone has a clear map of cause and affect here. All there is is the reputation of certain varieties based on growers experience over many winters- at least as far as I can find. No one has devised a scientific test of winter bud hardiness, I guess.

I have much more experience with relative spring bud hardiness, and that seems to be all over the map- I've had years when only the earliest flowering peaches bore well after a hard, late frost and the opposite is supposed to be the case and usually is. The ones known for best hardiness to spring frost tend to be those with long bloom periods.

Yeah, sunscald could account for differences. The air temperature is not as important as the trending temperature of a tree itself and its effect on the tree's cellular activity. The temperature of a tree is affected by solar radiation, ambient air temperature, ground temperature, air currents, and any other nearby heat sources. These site specific factors can be broken into long-term seasonal components (sun angle, winter shading, ect.) and short-term components (temporary weather patterns like El Nino).

It could be blessing to live in hilly area if the hills are blocking morning and evening sun. Where I live, the valley is also protected in autumn/late winter by morning fog. People living on the hilltops are above the fog and typically have more issues with sunscald.

South Central NY, is that the Hudson Valley or further up? South or north of Woodstock?

Rolling hills of the Southern Tier.

Olpea

Of those that produced at the house for you this year can you share some insights on how well you and the family like each?

"I think the exact point of damage is based a lot on the condition of the buds when the lowest temps come, which I know you know, Olpea.

A big part of the equation is the weather leading up to low temps, but I don't think anyone has a clear map of cause and affect here."

Hman,

That's what is puzzling (that, and rare reports of peaches fruiting following weather of close to -30F, which is so extreme it seems to defy reason).

I know I posted this link last winter, but Penn State (see link below) claims flower bud damage is generally extensive at -10F (which is exactly what I experienced). Yet I've read from you (and others) of no problems at -10F.

Last winter we hit the -10F in the deepest part of winter, when trees should have been in the deepest dormancy. As I recall, there were no warm days to de-harden trees prior to the low temps. It was just long steady cold. It seemed to me it was really one of the better winters to harden off peaches before minimum temps hit. Yet my peach trees didn't shrug it off, like the ones in your area do.

I think you are right, no one really has clear map of cause and effect.

"Of those that produced at the house for you this year can you share some insights on how well you and the family like each?"

Hi cckw,

As you know, we had a weird summer (weatherwise). We had lots of rain early on, then a period of very dry weather, then lots and lots of rain toward the end of summer. So much rain the grass didn't go dormant at all. Lawns were green down here, when they should have been brown.

I think rainfall is the biggest factor affecting flavor for some varieties. I had posted a few weeks ago that later ripening varieties don't seem to be affected by rainfall as much, but not too long after I posted that, I picked Encore, and it was clearly affected by the rain.

O'Henry (a late peach which ripens before Encore) was very good, even with all the rain. Redskin ripens a bit earlier (but still a late peach) and it was also very good, as was Carolina Gold.

Contender ripened in the dry part of summer, so it was also good.

Redhaven and PF7a ripened during some pretty good rains this year. Redhaven is a hands down better peach than PF7a, but during heavy rains it does produce some watery flavor diluted peaches in the more shaded parts of the tree.

I hate to mention that because by far most of the peaches are very very good, but it happens. Still I think Redhaven is such a good peach, it deserves to be planted in the Midwest.

Earlystar always ripens during the rainy/wet part of summer and is always a good peach for an early peach.

It's hard for me to say what variety was the best because the first picking from the very top of the canopy almost always produces great peaches. But I suppose (of the varieties I've mentioned) this year Carolina Gold produced the most consistently best peaches throughout the canopy. I like it that they don't brown either.

Our unknown variety (which we've adopted and re-named Tubby Dubby) is still the best (which is why we "adopted" it). It's almost a nectarine - very little fuzz. It was the very best this year but only produced a handful of peaches.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grab Some Buds

Grandpa's is selling Veteran which is an old time variety that is supposed to be very hardy too. May be worth a try also. Sounds like we have a few worth trying for sure.