Peaches are very juicy fruits that come with a large stone in the middle and white or yellow flesh, just like plums. A lot of people claim that white types of peaches are usually sweeter with a lower acidity level than peaches that have yellow flesh. However, in Western countries, yellow peaches are usually more popular. The juicy flesh, tangy sweetness, and sweet flavor make types of peaches very popular. There are also currently over 2,000 types of peaches available, and there are several ways to categorize them.
The sweetest types of peaches are the clingstone ones with white or yellow flesh. A few sweet peaches include Elberta, and it has a very yellow, juicy flesh. The Empress, Honey Babe, and Polly peach are also all very popular, as is the Red Haven. We’re going to go over 30 types of peaches for you and how to classify them below.
There are many types of peaches available, and some are even suitable to grow in small balconies or patios if you’re short on space. Yellow Peaches by beautifulcataya / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Peach Stone Types – Pits or Stones in the Peach
Peaches are technically a type of drupe because you’ll find a hard pit or stone in the middle. Cherries and olives also fall into this category. The stone protects the seed, and many people claim that it tastes like almonds. You can divide your peaches into three different categories, and the type of peach it is depends on the type of pit it has.
Clingstone
Just like the name suggests, this type of peach has flesh that clings to the pit or stone. In some varieties, you’ll have a very tough time removing the flesh from the pits. A few common peaches that fall into this category include Garnet Beauty, Flordaking, June Gold, Halford, and Ruby Prince.
When you compare them to freestone peaches, these peaches have a sweeter, juicer and softer flesh. The flesh tends to have a yellow color, and this makes this peach category much more acidic than white freestone peaches. Because it can be much more difficult to eat the fruit’s flesh, you won’t find these sold in a lot of stores. However, you’ll find them in cans, desserts, jellies, and jams.
Clingstone Varietal Peaches
There are several clingstone varieties, including Santa Rosa peaches that you should eat from May to August to get an acidic but sweet flavor with a yellow flesh color. You’ll typically use them in canning or preserves, but you could also use them in salads and baking to give our dish a firm, crisp bite.
Another variety to consider is the Red Beauty peach. It has a very tender skin with a reddish hue to it, and it comes into season from May to August.
Freestone
Any type of peach that falls into the freestone category features flesh that you can easily pull away from the pit. Loring, Golden Jubilee, Glohaven, fay Elberta, and Early Amber are all examples of larger types of peaches in this category, and freestone peaches are the most popular for eating the fruit’s flesh. You can find firm white or yellow fleshed peaches with a sweet taste, but they’re not as juicy as clingstone.
If you’re looking for baking peaches, these are a great pick. When you cut through the peach, the stone or pit will fall out. This makes them much easier to prepare to bake or cook than clingstone peaches, and you can eat them fresh, bake, can, or freeze them without a problem.
Freestone Varietal Peaches
You’ll find several different types of peach varieties under this category. One of the most popular you can get is the O’Henry peach that has a red skin, firmer flesh with a yellow color, and matures late in the summer months. It has a great balance of tartness with sweetness, and it has a sweet scent. They work well for eating raw, mixing into drinks, and making sorbets or preserves.
The Red Top peach is another variety to consider, and it’s a late-summer type of peach. It has pretty pink flowers with great-smelling leaves, and you get a tart and sweet flavor. Elegant Lady peaches are mildly acidic, firm, and have a great scent to them. You’ll find them used in baking, canning, and eating raw.
Semi-Freestone
Finally, you can get semi-freestone types of peaches that are a hybrid of the clingstone and freestone peach varieties. Florida Dawn, Red Haven, Coronet, and Dixie Red can be yellow or white peaches that offer a sweet to tart flavor. If you get a nectarine peach, you’ll find that they’re semi-freestones.
Categorization by the Color of the Peach Flesh
The second categorization method for types of peaches involves looking at the color of their flesh. Generally speaking, you can choose from two main peach flesh colors, and one is more sweet than the other.
Yellow Peach
Peaches that have yellow flesh are some of the most popular types of peaches in Western countries. Depending on your peach variety, the flesh’s color can range from deep amber to a very light yellow. In some peach types, especially the clingstone variety, the flesh will get a red hue the closer you get to the pit. When you compare them to white peaches, you’ll get a much more acidic but sweet taste. A few yellow peach examples are Desert Gold, Gala, Elberta, Galaxy, and Redgold.
White Peach
You’ll find peaches with a silvery-white flesh tone in Asian countries over Western countries. The biggest difference between these two types of peach varieties is the flesh color. Both yellow and white peaches have a sweet taste to them, but many people claim that the whtie peaches are much less acidic and sweeter than the yellow variety. A few examples of this peach variety include Belle of Georgia, Arctic Supreme, Snow Beauty, polly, and White Heath Cling.
White peaches aren’t very common in Western countries, but you’ll find them used all over Asian countries. White peaches by Like_the_Grand_Canyon / CC BY-NC 2.0
30 Types of Peaches
Now that you know how people categorize most peaches, we’ll take a look at 30 types of peaches that you can either grow in your garden or find in the store.
1. Babcock
Babcock peaches are white types of peaches that come in medium or small sizes, and they’re classified as a semi-freestone peach. You’ll get a very mild tart taste with them with small hints of sweetness. This is one of the most popular types of peach trees to try to grow along the West Coast and in California.
2. Belle of Georgia
You’ll get large, white-fleshed types of peaches with the Belle of Georgia, and they’re freestone peaches with a bright red skin. They are delicious if you want to eat them fresh. Since this peach type comes with a firmer flesh on it, they make great canning or baking peaches. It has a self-pollinating tree that blooms with pretty pink flowers that give way to bigger fruits that ripen at the end of summer.
3. Cresthaven
This type of peach is firm and yellow, and they offer a very sweet flavor with a slightly tangy hint. They have a deeper red skin with a larger size to them, and they fall into the freestone category. The firm skin makes them very resistant to browning, and this makes them great candidates for baking, canning, and using to make peach cobbler. If you live in a planting zone that has colder winters, this peach will do well planted in zones five to nine.
4. Donut
This is a relatively new type of peach to the market, and the main difference between donut peaches and rounded peaches is the shape. Donut peaches feature a disc-like shape. They taste the same as any regular peach, and the following are two very popular varieties of donut peach:
- Galaxy Donut—This is a lovely flat peach type that comes with an excellent taste, and it’s very easy to bite into. It has a golden yellow colored flesh with a yellow skin that is very easy to bite into.
- Saturn Donut—The original peach with this name was a clingstone variety that had a sweet taste with a white flesh. You can now find other types that were bred specifically to fall into the freestone category and offer a yellow, juicy flesh.
Donut peaches are instantly recognizable due to their flatter, donut-like shape. You get a sweet flavor with them too. Donut Peaches by John C. Chu / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
5. Elberta Sweet
This is arguably one of the sweetest and biggest yellow-fleshed peaches you can get. The flesh has a golden yellow color with a firm texture, and it doesn’t have a lot of acidity with a rich taste. The skin is a yellow color with a slightly red hue, and it’s excellent to use in baked goods or for canning because it’s a freestone type peach. The peach trees will give you baseball-sized fruits as they mature, and the trees are also self-fertile. You can pick from dwarf varieties, and they work well if you have a very compact and small backyard.
6. Fairhaven
Fairhaven types of peaches are round, yellow, and fall into the freestone category that offer a firm skin with a good taste. They’re slightly fuzzy, and they have a reddish-yellow skin. The lack of browning with the firm skin means that this is an excellent peach to choose for freezing, baking, and canning purposes.
7. Golden Glory (Dwarf Peach Tree)
This type of peach tree comes in a dwarf variety, and this makes it very popular for people who are short on space. In spite of the fact that it grows on a dwarf tree, you’ll get larger peaches. As a matter of fact, you get some of the largest peaches from any dwarf peach tree with it. This is a freestone peach with a delicious flavor to it. As a bonus, since the trees have a much shorter stature, they can grow in containers on balconies or patios without running out of room.
8. Halloween
This is another larger type of peach that comes with a yellow flesh. The skin on this peach is yellow with a pretty red blush. Just like you’d think due to the name, these peaches are ready to go right around the end of October.
9. Harko Nectarine
You should pick out Harko nectarines if you want to get one of the most flavorful nectarines on the market. This is a type of clingstone peach that has a red, smooth, and shiny skin without any fuzz and an excellent flavor. It’s a cold-hardy fruit tree that produces fruit with bright yellow flesh with a very sweet taste.
10. Harmony
Harmony peaches are a type of peach that is very large and yellow. It has a dark red cheek with an orange skin, and it is in the freestone peach category. It has a bright yellow color that slowly fades to red around the stem, but it’s not an extremely attractive type of peach. However, you’ll get a very juicy flesh that has a slight acidity that balances out the sweetness nicely.
11. June Gold
One of the juiciest peaches available on the current market is June Gold. This type of peach is a medium size, and you get a yellowish-golden flesh tone with a yellow skin and red blushes. The flesh on this peach is medium firm, and it will cling to the stone because it is a clingstone-type peach. They’re perfect for eating fresh due to their juicy flesh.
12. Loring
This is another large type of peach in the freestone category. It has a pretty yellow color, and this peach variety is prized for the sweet taste, excellent flavor, and very firm yellow flesh. Despite the fact that it’s a yellow peach, you get a sweet flavor with a lower acidity content. Many people think that this peach is one of the best available, and the firm texture makes them excellent for freezing or canning.
13. Madison
Madison types of peaches are from Virginia, and they’re a freestone peach. You’ll get a yellowish-orange flesh that turns to red near the center where the stone is. You’ll harvest this peach very late in the season to give it a very rich and sweet flavor profile. They’re great for freezing or canning.
Canning peaches is a great way to preserve the excess so you don’t end up wasting them if you get too many to eat or use before they go bad. Canning Peaches by M Prince Photography / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
14. Melting Flesh
Melting Flesh peaches have a flesh that will soften easily or fall apart, especially as the peaches age. If you were to try and cut this type of peach with a knife, you’d end up with a torn and ragged pile of fruit. You can find them in both the freestone and clingstone categories, and they’re a great addition to pies, cobblers, or baked goods. You can also eat this peach raw for a slightly sweet and fresh taste.
15. Newhaven
This is a very sweet type of peach with low acidity, and they’re medium-sized. It’s very similar to what you’d get if you had a Redhaven peach, but they’re sweeter and smaller. You’ll get juicy yellow flesh with yellow or red sides, and the flesh will pull away from the stone neatly. This is a mildly firm type of peach that is great for canning and freezing. It’s also a cold-hardy variety, and you can easily grow it in cooler climates without running into problems.
16. Peento
Peento peaches are one a lot of people haven’t heard from, and they’re a Chinese peach type. They’re now grown around the United States in California and Washington. You can find them in a huge range of flesh types and colors. However, instead of the usual round shape that you’d expect from peaches, they come in a shape that is similar to doughnuts or flat.
17. Polly
Polly peaches are a type of peach with white flesh that falls into the freestone category. It has a paler skin tone with pretty red blushing, and the flesh turns a translucent white when it’s mature. It’s best to eat this juicy peach fresh because it has a very tender flesh that doesn’t hold up well to cooking or baking. This is also a very hardy fruit tree that can survive temperatures as low as -20°F, and it’s one of the sweetest white peaches to taste.
18. Red Globe
As the name suggests, this type of peach is a very large freestone variety that has a firm but sweet flesh that is very juicy. You’ll typically get a golden yellow flesh that is very bright, and it has fuzzy, red skin. The peaches grow to the size of a baseball. Because it’s in the freestone peach category, they work well for baking, freezing, canning, eating fresh, or using in ice cream making.
19. Redhaven
This is a semi-freestone type of peach that has a yellow flesh with a medium size. For a lot of people, they consider this to be the classic peach with a firm, sweet yellow flesh. It’s a delicious but versatile peach that you can use in canning, eating fresh, or freezing. The fresh doesn’t turn brown, so they also work well in fruit salad. This is one of the first peaches to ripen each season, and you get a self-fertile tree that removes the need to plant a second one to produce fruit.
When people think of peaches, they typically imagine the Redhaven variety. They have an iconic look with bright yellow fresh and a reddish-yellow skin. Redhaven- by Jackson’s Orchard / CC BY 2.0
20. Snow Beauty
The Snow Beauty type of peach cultivar is on the best tasting freestone, white peaches available. It has a very low acid content paired with a higher sugar level to make it very sweet. The silver-white flesh offers award-winning sweet flavor, and the larger peaches come with a deep red skin that contrasts sharply with the white flesh tone.
21. Sun Haven
This is another sweet type of peach that has a very pretty golden yellow flesh color to it. It’s a clingstone peach with a rich flavor and a very fine texture. The firm flesh also resists browning, and this makes it an excellent addition to baked goods and pies. It has a bright red skin, and it’ll get to a larger size late in the season right before it’s ready to harvest.
22. Sunhigh
If you want to pick out an excellent type of peach for canning, this is it. You get an oval-shaped fruit that is very large, and the flesh will peel away from the pit very easily. The defining characteristics of this peach variety are the bright red coloring on the skin, sweet yellow flesh, and a well-rounded taste profile. You can also eat this peach fresh because it’s on the sweeter side.
23. Veteran
The veteran peach also falls into the freestone category, and it offers yellow skin with a soft yellow flesh. It’s not the best one available to eat fresh because it usually tastes better if you add it to baked goods or can with it. You can grow it in zones five to eight, and it’s very cold-hardy. Also, this peach offers a large amount of peaches per tree.
24. White Heath Cling
Just like you’d glean from the name, you get a white flesh that will cling tightly to the pit because it’s a clingstone peach. The flesh is very sweet and juicy, and it has a low acidity level. This makes it a good choice to eat fresh, or you can it to eat it later. This is a medium to large peach type with light red blushing and white skin.
25. White Lady
The final type of peach on the list is also arguably one of the sweetest white peaches available on the current market. It’s a larger peach with lower acidity and a higher sugar content. It’s also a freestone peach that is excellent for eating right off the tree.
Are Nectarines a Type of Peach?
Did you know that nectarines are also a type of peach? The botanical name is Prunus persica var. Nectarina. Many people assume that nectarines are a peach hybrid. However, they’re actually a true member of the peach family. The only difference between peaches and nectarines is the shiny, smooth skin. People describe this fruit as shaved peaches, peaches without fuzz, or fuzzless peaches.
Nectarines are a type of peach. They have the same flavor profile, but they don’t have the fuzzy skin that peaches have. Picking Nectarines by sand_and_sky / CC BY-SA 2.0
How to Can Peaches – Step-b-Step
If you want to can peaches to have them later in the year because you have too many to feasibly eat right now, we’re going to give you a quick step-by-step overview of the whole process below.
Step One – Pick Your Peaches
First, you want to start the process by getting ripe, fresh peaches. You don’t want peaches that are mushy and overripe, but they shouldn’t be rock-hard either. You want ripe but firm peaches for the best results.
Step Two – Carve the X
Get a small paring knife and carve an X into the bottom of each peach. Doing this will help you peel them in the later steps to speed the process up.
Step Three – Blanch Your Peaches
Get a large pot of water and bring it to a rolling boil. You want to take a few peaches at a time and quickly dip them into the boiling water. Leave them for 30 seconds before removing them. This process will cook the peel and the very outer flesh layer, and this will help you peel them.
Step Four – Shock Your Peaches
Get a large bowl of ice water and immediately transfer your peaches from the boiling water into the ice water to shock them. This will immediately stop the cooking process, and you want to do this with your whole batch, swapping out the ice water as needed.
Step Six – Peel
Get each peach and use your finger to gently rub at a corner of the X you cut earlier. The peels should start to slide off easily, but you may need the help of a knife for stubborn ones. Put your peeled peaches into a bowl with an anti-browning agent of your choice.
Step Seven – Slice and Remove the Pit
It’s now time to get a sharp knife and slice your peaches and take the stone out. It’s also a good idea to scrap out the inner red flesh because it’ll turn an icky brown color over time.
Step Eight – Create the Syrup
Get a large saucepan and heat up a mixture of sugar and water over medium heat. You can add vanilla extract or vanilla bean for extra flavor, but this is optional. Bring it to a boil and stir it until it starts to thicken.
Step Nine – Add the Peaches
Remove your peaches from your anti-browning solution and put them into your syrup. You want to bring everything to a boil before ladling and packing your peach slices into your sterilized pint jars. Cover the peaches with your syrup mixture.
Step Ten – Close the Jars
The final step is to put the lids and rings on each jar and put them in a water bath for 20 minutes. Allow them to cool and test the seals before you put your canned peaches into a dry, cool place.
How to Store Canned Peaches
Once you get the seal you need on the jars, you can store them all in a dry, clean place away from direct sunlight. The temperatures should stay between 50°F and 70°F to keep the environment ideal. If you properly store and can them, your peaches can easily last for a year or two. If you see any discoloration, signs of mold, or if the jars have signs of rust and leaking, you may want to throw them out because these are all signs that the peaches went bad.
Bottom Line
We’ve outlined 30 types of peaches and how to categorize them. You can grow one or several different types in your yard, depending on your planting zone. If you have too many peaches, you can easily can them to eat them over a year or two. They also make excellent gifts.