Mackinaw Peach

The Circus in Your Mouth is from Northern Michigan

“Well they’re in!” We named this peach after the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer enters eating a "Mackinaw Peach" from Oregon which is ripe for only two weeks a year. “It’s like having a circus in your mouth!” Kramer exclaims. It is a miracle of nature and like the Aurora borealis, it is here for only a short period of time. The peaches ripen later in the season than most and ripen over a month.  This northern Michigan and Canadian heirloom peach is often grown from seed  producing peaches which are cling-stone (the flesh sticks to the stone or pit).  For us it was an accidental discovery of growing numerous  seed strains of peaches that can tolerate our non peach like world of late frosts and other peach like calamities. 

Note: We have started a seed planting of them as well as doing a better job managing the few mature trees we have but...when temps hit -27 F at our farm in 2019 it took out the blossoms. The trees however were fine but of course that meant no crop.  The -25F range is probably the limit of blossom hardiness.  Peaches cannot be shipped to CA, WA & OR. 

Update: The Mackinaw peach is an heirloom peach generated from seedling peaches. Some seeds came from a fellow seed collector who lives near Madison, Wisconsin but the majority are northern seedling peaches originally from Canada and northern Michigan. People sent us the pits of these seed grown plants. We then grew them up to fruiting size at our farm in southwestern Michigan. Some of the Mackinaws we are growing were thought to be cold hardy nectarines. These flowered and fruited at three years of age. 

The Mackinaws are not seedlings of commercial peach varieties. Our seedling selections are not from other individual plant breeders or a rootstock used for peaches as well. The Mackinaw peach is produced from seed, not grafted. If a company decides to produce the Mackinaw from grafting then that is not the Mackinaw. From seed to tree is the Mackinaw peach. It is uniform enough to produce this way despite being open pollinated.

not available as plants anymore. see seeds in the fall seasons.