Blushingstar Peach Seedling (Bundle of 2)

Overview

Blushingstar is our favorite white-fleshed peach we have tried. It does very well for Tom and Lynn McCamant at Forbidden Fruit Orchard in Paradise, Montana. When we tried it for the first time in 2022, we were blown away by the flavor—super sweet with a slight subacid skin and a wonderful peach aroma.

Some had mentioned they wouldn't can well, but we had so many that we decided to can them regardless, and they turned out great. They do not keep as long as the yellow-fleshed peaches in our experience.

Hardiness

In terms of hardiness, Blushingstar seems to be one of the hardier commercial peach varieties. For mid-winter extreme cold, Tom ranks them behind Reliance, although we personally have not had good success with Reliance and have had better success with Blushingstar. These can withstand -30F, but likely not colder than that.

So in our experience, we rate them behind Contender and Veteran in terms of hardiness, but better than Reliance earlier on. It could be that as Reliance ages, it gets hardier—and according to Dr. Bill Shane, who bred many of these peaches at Michigan State, this is typical for peaches (they get hardier as they age) but only as long as the tree doesn’t have winter injury from previous years. If the tree does have winter injury from previous years, then it is technically "less hardy" (i.e. open wounds).

If you want a hardier white fleshed peach, go with Siberian C, which we mainly offer in seedling form, so the hardiness may be a little more variable, but the clan from which all of our seedlings have been selected were from those by Miekal at Driftless Sacred Grove in Wisconsin, and had consistently survived sub –35°F.