Did you wind up keeping the peach trees? 
17 posts were split to a new topic: Selling spare plants locally
As I stare at the 16lbs of sweet cherries I’m about to pit and process, I have to wonder… would there be any value in washing the pits and putting them all in a few pots outside to see if they’ll grow come spring? Bag says “product of Peru” so I’m not sure if it’s even worth trying to grow them out, but I have so many it could be an interesting experiment… and if it works, maybe I could guerilla garden a handful of them into the wilder areas of some local parks and let nature do some of the selecting/survival of the fittest work?
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You probably don’t need to even clean the pits. Even if you get a 1% success rate, if you have the time, then why not?
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I think mostly the “why not” is because being from imported fruit, I have no idea what conditions they’re coming from or whether they’ll be worth anything in my zone 6b/7a with extreme weather swings area. If the cherries were local, or at least from a guaranteed vaguely similar climate, I’d be planting as many as I could.
Edit: Ok, I realized the boxes actually had a lot of small print info on the label… it was Chile, not Peru, and I was able to find the region. Climate-wise, they’re cooler than I am in summer, warmer in winter with a lot less time below or just above freezing. So these probably have a lower chill hour requirement than is helpful for my area. BUT I’m going to give it a go. Worst case, it’s organic matter for one of my giant pots I hadn’t planned anything for until summertime anyway.
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No action on those cherry pits yet, but there’s plenty of time for them to do something (or not, I’m not really gonna worry about it.)
My husband decided to give me some help on the fruit tree front… he bought me an adorable Bonfire Peach tree. Being a genetic dwarf, it won’t get very large at all and I have it settled into a huge pot out front. As an attractive little tree, I can get away with it even in my HOA, and since it’s self-fertile, I don’t have to worry about distance from my other peach. And any seeds will also be small/genetic dwarf trees… potential grafting rootstock?
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This is 4 or maybe 5 different varieties of peaches from the peach orchard farmers market. Will be going back for more varieties as the season progresses.
Does anyone have a foolproof method of germinating them?
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Around June last year, I planted a bunch of pits from my neighbor’s peach tree in various places around my garden beds. Around February this year, they were popping up everywhere. I didn’t do anything else; I just planted them!
I wound up pulling out the smallest ones and the ones that wound up being in an inconvenient space (usually because I decided later that I wanted to put a different perennial there). Right now, I have roughly twenty that are about a foot and a half tall, and I’m probably going to leave them all.
With the apricot and plum pits I planted outside last year, only about six apricots and one plum sprouted. Most likely they will pop up next spring instead.
I haven’t gotten any cherries springing up yet, and I only got one chokeberry springing up, sadly in a bad spot, and after I tried to moved it, it died.
I stuck the peach pits straight into the soil. I stuck the other stonefruit pits in pots outdoors all winter, then dug them out and moved them to their permanent homes right before they sprouted. I seem to have gotten a much higher germination rate from the direct sown peach pits. So maybe direct sowing is a much better way to go?
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Thanks!
I planted some in the ground last year but they didn’t come up this year.
I don’t want to wait 2 years, so this time I’m gonna assist.
For next years planting I’m leaning towards cracking the pits, 2 months approximately fridge treatment, then direct sow in early winter for them to finish in the ground and sprout when they’re ready.
Since I took the endophyte course I’m thinking I need to do some iroqouis corn medicine on these things for my first generation planting. I guess I need to identify some native trees in the right family if we have any. I really really really want to succeed.
Are tree seedlings frost sensitive?
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My peach seedlings weren’t. They were popping up in February, while we still had some snow. We even had a late snow in May (MAY!), and the peach, plum, apricot, and apple seedlings were all completely unfazed.
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Granted, they had been outdoors the whole time, not in a refrigerator (which is well above freezing temperatures). I don’t know if a refrigerator would activate different genes.
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Collecting seed from mullberry this year. This fruit is in its northern range in Denmark, but there are a handful of old trees in Copenhagen I can collect from.
In the nursery, I have some hardy cultivars with larger fruit, it would be fun to cross with. Here’s a Dutch variety called Agatha that is very precocious:
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A friend gave me 4 American persimmon seedlings this morning. I can read about them all day without getting any real information.
I know they need a male and a female. I plan to put them in the hedgerow.
I’d like information from people who have actually grown them, especially considering that my inclination is STUN.
Any advice or things I should know?
My sister has an apple tree in her yard. It barely produced anything and they were going to cut it down, but since it shades their chicken run it got a reprieve and a severe haircut.
So now it has apples on it. I"ll probably go over and harvest what I can reach, but any idea what kind of apple this might be?
The apples are dry, crunchy, sour, and scentless. I wouldn’t call it a cider or eating apple, but maybe applesauce or pies? Apple chips? It might very easily be a natural seedling as the trunk is more than a foot in diameter.
Whatever variety, it’s old and has no visible graft line.
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I have no idea what variety that might be; if there’s no visible graft line, a seedling is possible. That could be neat.
It may be interesting to keep an eye on it and see when it drops its apples naturally. If it holds onto them late in the season, it may be worth leaving them and harvesting them much later. If it’s sour now, it may be a late-hanging apple that gets sweeter when it’s ripe.
There is precedent: Granny Smith is apparently sweet when it’s harvested in January, but it’s commercially harvested in November, while it’s still sour. Obviously this isn’t a Granny Smith, but it may follow a pattern like that.
My next-door neighbor’s apple tree tends to be ideal to harvest sometime between Halloween and Christmas, so it’s pretty late-ripening. (The fruits are still crisp and in perfect shape after many nights with temperatures below freezing.) Hers is definitely grafted, so it’s probably a common variety like Gala or Fuji.
There are also storage apples, which are better after being stored for a few months. The tree is already dropping its fruit, but that could be because of worm damage or drought as much as ripeness.
Although I will say they are the perfect complement to peanut butter.
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That’s a pretty good sized apple. Could be a Wolf River.
Thanks. I’ll look that one up.
It’s size is representative. I don’t know whether that’s because of the early heavy pruning, but previous years it had maybe one or two tiny wormy apples that fell early.
From what I’ve recently learned about cider varieties, it seems like “the more the merrier”, so if you add cider to your list of uses for apples, seedlings become very useful. Acidic and tannic are prized qualities in old world cider.
I’m growing peaches (nectarines?), cherries, plums, apples, pears, quinces, and several citrus types(in pots) all from seed. I expect reasonable results from the stone fruits and quinces, maybe 1 in 25 of the pears to be decent, and maybe 1 in 50 of the apples. But I’ll just use the ones that don’t work out for rootstock or press the fruit for hard cider.
We have the space and if no one grows out from seed there’s no chance for local adaptation and new varieties. Why should the Ag colleges have all the fun?
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