Ruby Prince Peach Tree

If you want to start your peach season off with a bang, you need a top-quality variety that ripens early. There are some very good reasons for growing early varieties of peaches, or of any fruit. For starters, it means that after almost a year without the taste of garden-fresh, tree-ripened fruit, who wants to wait even longer? We are anxious to reach up and pluck that peach, and an early variety makes that possible – earlier. The second good reason is prices at the store. The first fruits of a season are always the most expensive, so you get the biggest return on your work by growing those early varieties at home – save shop-bought fruit for when it is cheapest, at the peak of the season. If you feel the same way, then the Ruby Prince Peach Tree is an obvious choice, and the peach you want. Ripening in early June, it will satisfy your hunger for that first peach of the season – and satisfy it in a big way. Packed with flavor and sweet goodness, you will love the melting yellow flesh and the way it ripens slowly on the tree, meaning fresh-picked for longer.

Growing the Ruby Prince Peach Tree

Size and Appearance

The Ruby Prince Peach Tree is a vigorous, easy-to-grow deciduous tree, with slender leaves about 7 inches long. It blooms in March with lovely bright-pink blossoms all along the bare branches. Those blooms quickly develop into baby peaches, and since this variety is self-fertile it sets a full crop with no outside help. Those babies grow and grow, until by early June they are 3 inches across, and the greenish-yellow skin has been replaced with a scarlet-red coloring over more than 80% of the fruit. That rich ruby coloring makes it look absolutely delicious. Biting into it won’t disappoint either, because the beautiful melting flesh, free of fibers, turns to liquid gold in your mouth, full of sweetness and a touch of tart to make it interesting. The golden yellow flesh clings to the stone – this is true of just about every early peach, we have to wait for later crops to get that easy-slice freestone varieties. The fruits ripen slowly, so you can always find one that is just right, without facing a sudden glut of fruit all ripe at the same moment.

Using the Ruby Prince Peach Tree in Your Garden

You don’t need an orchard to grow this peach – just plant it on your lawn, and enjoy the lovely blossoms, as pretty as any spring-flowering shrub. In cooler zones you can grow it as an espalier on a sunny wall. This is the recommended way to have top-quality peaches in cooler zones.

Hardiness

The Ruby Prince Peach Tree needs at least 850 chilling hours over the winter, with temperatures below 45 degrees. This makes it ideal for cooler zones, all the way through zone 7 and into the cooler end of zone 8.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Plant the Ruby Prince Peach Tree in full sun – lots of sun means perfectly ripened sweet peaches. The ideal soil is lighter, with some sand in it, so that it is very well-drained and doesn’t stay cold and wet in spring. If you have heavier clay soil, try to plant at the top of a slope, in a higher place, or on a mound of soil.

Maintenance and Pruning

The Ruby Prince Peach Tree is relatively resistant to diseases, and it’s vigor and toughness mean fewer problems. Remember that home-grown fruit will usually not look as perfect as supermarket fruit, but it will taste better and be grown naturally – a worthwhile tradeoff. Prune in late winter and immediately after harvesting, to develop an open, vase-shaped form on your tree, to let the sun in and ripen your crop. To grow full-sized fruit you should thin the young fruit when it is about the size of a quarter, leaving just one fruit in each cluster. If you don’t thin and have a lot of baby fruits, the fruit you get will be very small and mostly stone.

History and Origin of the Ruby Prince Peach Tree

Georgia has been producing peaches since the middle of the 19th century, when they were carried by river-boats and steamships to New York for sale. Bryon, Georgia has been a center for peach growing since those days, and it is also the center for scientific breeding, at the US Department of Agriculture’s Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Laboratory. How can you tell a peach variety that came from the breeding work of Dr. Dick Okie, who was the lab’s chief stone-fruit breeder between 1980 and 2010? Simple – it has ‘prince’ as part of the name. He released 15 different princes over 25 years, all of them great peaches. Why ‘prince’? Because his predecessor in breeding, and the driving force behind creating the lab was Dr. Victor Prince, and Dr. Okie always said that it was ‘just a great name for any peach’. The variety called ‘Ruby Prince’ was released in 1997, after years of careful development.

Buying the Ruby Prince Peach Tree at the Tree Center

Make this variety the peachy prince of your garden, and pick wonderful sweet peaches at the very beginning of the season, by growing the Ruby Prince Peach Tree. But don’t hesitate to place your order, because lots and lots of gardeners feel exactly the same way, and our stock will soon be gone.