Peaches

[jmsieglaff]

I'm in zone 5 (5a more specifically) and I'm looking to grow 2 peach trees in our small yard. Anyone in zones 4 and 5, and maybe even zone 6, would you recommend growing them in our area? I'm looking at some self-pollinating dwarf trees, one early ripening (late June/early July) and one late riping one (mid September). Do you have problems with bugs or disease? I'd rather not put in trees that I need to spray with pesticides just to get edible fruit.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Justin

[Worth1]

Go to stark brothers type in you zipe code and they have plenty of peach trees for you, I just looked.
About 99% of all peach trees are self pollinating.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...5HMpOKDrzz5Vvw

[nicky]

'Reliance' has done well for me. The little tree is covered in peaches. Zone 5b Canada

[jmsieglaff]

Funny you mention them Worth, I just got their catalog and that reminded about wanting to put peaches in.

Thanks Nicky! Do you have bug/disease pressure that requires spraying?

[rockman]

We like the white varieties best. Raritan Rose and Blushing Star. Have grown both for 20 yrs. They bruise easy. We slice and freeze. Make fruit slush and home made ice cream. I don't know of any peach trees that are disease or bug free. You prune, keep it healthy and latex paint the trunk to deter borers. We also have twig borers on our yellow peach tree. If you don't have good air flow, brown rot is a concern. Our local orchards haven't grown peaches for years. They take some TLC but are well worth it.

[Worth1]

I dont know about where you live but where I live you are going to have to spray use nets or something.
That is at least for most growers a real must.
Not only for fruit but the life of the tree.
You end up with a ton of worms in the fruit leaves striped and so on.
One thing you will need to do is paint the trunks white.
This keeps the borers out.
Then there is the pruning of the tree cutting out suckers and thinning of fruit to consider.
But it is rewarding.

Worth

[jmsieglaff]

I'll enjoy pruning, painting the trunk (will need to read up on that one), etc. What I don't want is something I need to spray over and over again with pesticides and fungicides. The thought of tree ripened peaches certainly can make me cope with some of that.

[Worth1]

You should only need to spray when the critters are on the run then you wont have to.
This will be determined on where you live like sometime after fruit set.
It isn't like tomatoes and weekly spraying.
Sevin is one of the best products to use as far as I am concerned.

I like the Saturn peaches and all white peaches, like candy.

Worth

[Cole_Robbie]

I think there are only two varieties of peach that are not self-pollinating. One is JH Hale, which is the best peach I have ever tasted.

What I don't want is something I need to spray over and over again with pesticides and fungicides.

Then you don't want peaches. They are the most spray-intensive tree fruit I know of. You also have to thin the peaches in a good year, so they don't all come out golf-ball size. You'll get peaches year 3, but the trees are short-lived. By the time it is 8-10, you'll probably want to replace it. Oh, and every 3-4 years, there is no crop at all, due to a freeze happening after the tree blooms.

If you want a low-maintenance tree, pie cherries, pears, and Asian pear-apples are all a lot easier to grow. Even plums are easier than peaches, but you'll want to hit them with fungicide so the fruit don't get brown rot on the tree.

[rockman]

I mostly spray in the dormant season with the oils ect. A little fungicide before bud swell and after bloom drop. Once the fruit is on the tree, I use deterrents only such as dish soaps ect. The bugs get some peaches but if you bug them enough they will leave you some!

[greenthumbomaha]

No spraying for me. I used neem in prior years but had no increase in bugs (save for japanese beetles which have no predators) or disease when I stopped.

I have semi-dwarf Contender and Reliance from Starks. I love peaches but everything cole robbie said is true for me too. Branches will break in a storm. Once every few years a frost will nip the buds. Despite the late frost we got last year the peaches produced like crazy so go figure. I also had great success, kind of , with a Super Sweet from Lowes. It is a standard size , and boy did it put out fruit. One time it was all gone overnight. I mean at least a hundred peaches. I thought I had been burglarized but it was squirrels or japanese beetles that wiped out every peach. Sadly that property was sold before I could enjoy the trees full potential in the following season.

At my acreage north of Omaha I get only a handful of fruit off the same peach varieties. Darn cold; a few degrees makes a huge difference.

Pears and plums grow well here too, but I haven't grown them myself. I have apples that do fine without any spraying. Cherries are okay but you need to net or share the crop with birds. I love the peaches best.

- Lisa

[jmsieglaff]

I appreciate all the feedback. Lisa your zone is similar to mine, good to hear you don't require much (or any) spraying. I'm OK spraying some, I just don't want a weekly extra spraying job to do, especially when tomato spraying has to be done. Based on posts here and reading more, it seems as if the spraying required is spread out--dormant spraying, bud swell, then maybe after for bugs a couple times. That would be OK. I love growing tomatoes, but the leaf pruning and spraying for foliage disease can get kinda old after you've been doing it for a couple months.

I still have plenty of time to think about this. Maybe just doing 1 tree and seeing how it goes is a good plan, especially because we're not looking for storing peaches, but mainly fresh eating. I'm going to read some local extension documents about fruit tree growing. I'm also considering dwarf apples. But I'm guessing apples have similar requirements to peaches in terms of spraying and disease/bug pressures.

We do have Japanese Beetles as well and man do I hate those things. They really showed up en mass about 7 years ago and the first two years were really bad. Since then they are still an issue but not to the level they were when first arriving.

[jmsieglaff]

A useful peach document:

https://learningstore.uwex.edu/Assets/pdfs/A3639.pdf

[jmsieglaff]

Rockman, do you paint the entire trunk annually? If so, how far up the trunk do you paint?

[clkeiper]

We tried to grow peaches for a while I finally gave up and cut them down. our property wasn't conducive to peaches. We had woods to the west at the top of the property, on the slope facing the east was where the peach trees were at. we couldn't get a decent crop for nothing. that said... the neighbors directly to the West of us on the next road had a beautiful peach orchard. Location location location. top of the hill no woods to block the flow of air not mold being spewed out of the decaying matter all over the floor of the woods. West sunshine- no shade. sometimes it isn't just the varieties... it is the location.