Freestone good tasting peaches bred for Louisiana with a lot of pesticide assistance. White,yellow, donut.
Maybe the squirrels will at least plant a whole new generation of them for you…?
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I work with peach, it germinates very well, grows quick and is very drought hardy where I am.
I started with three and now have about fifty. Because of their drought resistance I plant them east -west lined as windbreaks. Tall one, small one , tall one…
I’ve ringed a couple now, see if they want to die off on top and use the dead top as a climbing rack for beans and peas.
More drought sensitive trees I plant closely in rows north-south so they shade each other out a bit in the heat of day. Some nitro fixers in between and comfrey for chop and drop.
I want to make another hedge row north south in January. Plums , elder , apples, maybe some shrubs in between.
Becomes this in couple of years, bit hard to see, sorry.
They carry descent fruit, so much sometimes the badger(very small bear) gets most. But he brings fertilizer in and planted a wild cherry, so all is good.
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I have found my peach trees to be only mildly drought tolerant, but I may have harsher standards. (Or you may have more drought tolerant peach genetics, in which I case I hope I’ll find genes as awesome as what you have! 
)
The most drought tolerant crops I grow are apple trees and sunchokes. They only need watering once a month. (We get almost no rain in the summer.)
My purchased peach trees seem to need to be watered about once a week, which I consider not very drought tolerant. Buuuuut the ones I’m growing from seed, I only watered once a month last year, and some of those thrived. So hopefully those will grow into very drought tolerant trees!
When I left Utah I was in the middle of a drought tolerance test with my stone fruit trees. Plum and almonds did just fine with monthly watering. Peaches (seed grown) had very shallow roots due to being in the middle of a watered lawn, so they needed more.
Those I have grown from seed here have never been watered. They are under heavy mulch. They’re not old enough to produce yet.
I almost never water them. Even in three record breaking years of three month drought. I’ve taken out an adult one time. Big roots, it didn’t make the transplantation.
Ooh, I’m happy to hear you had plums that did fine with only once-a-month watering.
And @Hugo, I’m thrilled to hear your peach trees have done fine with three months of no water. That sounds AWESOME! I want peach genetics like those.
You probably already have those genetics. The problem is, what they start out with as seedlings is basically what they will expect as adult trees. That’s why I only have 5 survivors. I didn’t water the seedlings.
Changing the watering as an adult tree is tricky and might kill the tree.
I see what you’re saying , and follow the same line of thinking, although I do have a small nursery next to a ditch which occasionally fills. Also I direct seeded.
In the nursery they’re in semi shade of oaks, but they grow very well in hot years two,three feet. But they had some water…
The direct seeded ones took longer to reach that height. And didn’t all pop up in one year.
They’re descendants of three varieties of peachtrees that were small when I moved in, I doubt they’re anything special.
I’ve heard however of wild peaches from around here, and I know they grow in US as well.
At a local seed exchange last year I was too busy to look what others had to offer. My mom and stephdad rocked up. My stephdad understands what I’m looking for and had reserved a wild no watering peach and came over to tell me, all excited. A minute later mom rocked up to tell she gave it away to a lady because she knew her son already had loads. Thanks mom! Poor lady will be dissapointed.
I do watercan soil microbiome around every spring, but that’s another topic totally.
Aww, I’m sorry she gave your peach away! It was nice of your stepdad to find it for you. Hopefully your mom knows better now. 
@Lauren. So you’re thinking epigenetics is more likely than genetics at play for the drought tolerance of our peach seedlings? If so, that would definitely make sense.
Interestingly, my peach seedlings that did the best were the ones that had the least water, but also the most shade (so they probably made the most of the water they had). They got three feet tall! I’m pretty sure if that I let them get about six feet tall (the furthest I can reach without a ladder – I’m short), the tops will be in full sun and the bottoms will be in full shade, which seems like a promising combination for drought tolerance and fruit production.
It would be awesome if they start fruiting next year, as two-year-old trees. If not, I’ll wait patiently. It shouldn’t be long; peaches tend to start bearing quite young.
I inadvertantly have some fig “landraces” going. I have a very large collection of fig trees and I live in California which has the fig wasp for pollination. So a certain number of my fig trees are wild pollinated every year.
My dogs like to eat figs from my trees, and then they do their elimination thing in my yard. Surprise, surprise, I have fig trees popping up everywhere from that. So I figure that these are trees that might be more adapted to my area because they pop up without me doing anything for them. They just get hit with runoff from the irrigation for my existing figs.
The health on these compared to the cultivated varieties is pretty amazing. I figure a lot of these will be male caprifigs, but it still will be interesting to see what comes of it. At least then maybe I will have pollen from the males that are adapted to my area here.
But I’ve been reading this thread out of curiosity for how well fruit trees can landrace. I really do think that natural sprouting of seeds in the existing environment and soil could be a helpful indicator. And then grafting branches of the seedlings to mature rootstock will give a faster answer if they are tasty or not.
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Oooooh. And if any of them are tasty, you could take cuttings to share with other people as brand new varieties that you bred! 
I don’t have the fig wasp in my climate, but I’m thinking about landracing fig trees anyway by hand-pollinating them (which will require a syringe . . . wry laugh). I live in zone 7b, which is marginal for figs, and I would love to breed more tasty varieties that are parthenocarpic (and therefore don’t need fig wasps) and ideal for cooler climates.
It would be particularly neat if I can breed some new varieties that cold-hardy enough to live as regular fruit trees here, rather than as dieback perennials. Then I could get some breba crops. 
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I’m hoping for some tasty, common ones! If you don’t want to bother with getting a persistent male caprifig for pollen and hand pollinating, you could try getting some seeds from others who are already doing that.
This guy here is in 7a in New Jersey and he sells seeds of crosses he has made using a persistent male and certain female varieties:
Some of his crosses are more likely to be cold hardy & earlier fruiting than others. I think he also sells some of his seedlings. But it would be a faster start if interested. 
I’m really digging the hand pollinating thing that’s gotten popular with figs. Hopefully some good varieties will come of it!
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Thank you! I will check out that link!
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If you want to try a max population size/genetic diversity approach you could also try Sheffield’s, they have fig seed sourced from Pakistan and you get the bulk pricing.
Yeah, I’ve already noticed that, and I’ve been heavily leaning in that direction. Much cheaper to get a whole lot of seeds, and that raises the chance I’ll get some germinating that like my soil and climate conditions.
For anyone following this thread who’s like, “Ooh, where’s the link?”, well . . .
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My first 2025 Skillcult apple seedlings are just beginning to rear their faces. Some mystery Wickson Wickson x Subrosa and Chestnut Crab x Roxbury Russett crosses are the early willing damsels.
The robust winner, early, however, still remains the ‘Good Eating Alaskan Crabapples’
sent to me by our vey own @ZachDYates this past fall.
And, last year’s Oikos Dolgo, Antanovka, Kerr and Hewes crosses continue to show immense seedling promise. These will be planted out this fall in a block adjacent all the above miracles, gods willing.
I also still have a handful of the Emla-111 grafted Palouse (Tim Steury’s Orchards and Phillips Farm scion harvested) blizzard January 2024 harvested trees remaining to plant out (likely this fall). Looks like some Non-Pareil, Haralson, Flameuse, Ribston Pippin, Porter’s Perfection, Hewes Crab, and Fall Jenetting in this current mix
Still awaiting visual word from
the Pomiferous goddesses on my Gnarly Pippin grafts and the heap of other grafted apples I planted the past month. Will update as I learn more.
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For reference of what my exterior growing conditions are like, I pulled out a handful of the same grafted Palouse group to place in my new planting zone the same time
the above pictured robust looking Emla 111 trees were bud breaking. It was a test. ‘Frost World’
Interesting! So far this year, I’m seeing the highest number of seedlings in my row of seeds that Steven Edholm saved from Wickson! Maybe Wickson has especially great genes for seedling vigor, or something. 
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So far I’ve seen maybe 5 apples (or pears) pop up in the main garden this spring, and two from the seeds in the dry garden that were planted 2 years ago.
I am slowly, slowly getting the foundation I want.
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