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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] pondering peaches in zone 5

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  • From: Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] pondering peaches in zone 5
  • Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:05:25 -0400

Melissa, I would be very wary of trying to grow a peach on peach
rootstock on heavy clay. Peach (and apricot) roots like lots of
oxygen/air and apparently on clay they tend not to get enough.

What soil is your neighbour's friend's tree growing on? If it's on
peach, and you have the same soil and drainage, go for it.

The classic peach-compatible (and apricot-compatible) rootstocks for
heavy clay are Brompton, St. Julien A, and Pershore Yellow Egg (which I
have been told by a professional who tried it is not very windfirm in
Ontario). I think that St. Julien A is often used as a semi-dwarfing
rootstock for peach, and was more used in the past.

The usual commercial orchard plum rootstock here is Myrobalan, because
it crops better in droughty summers than the others. Different apricot
cultivars have different degrees of compatibility with Myrobalan, e.g.
Harlayne seems not bad, Harcot impossible (personal experience with
both). Compatible interstems have been used between apricot and
myrobalan; for example the Vineland strain of German Prune works
according to the late(?) Dr. Aleck Hutchinson of that station (7 miles
west of me). I've never heard of Myrobalan being used with peach, fancy
tricks or not. The seedling Myrobalan stocks which used to be used in
Ontario I found were damaged or killed by a test winter at the northern
edge of AgCan zone 6a near Kingston. There are hardier strains of Myrobalan which may not be commercially available.

Many rootstocks can be propagated from root cuttings (stem end up).

In your position I would check all the possible nurseries to see if they
had hardy peaches on Brompton or St. Julien (there is a St. Julien C
which seems from what I've heard to be a little more dwarfing but
trickier than A). St. Julien A seems reliably cold-hardy in USDA Zone 5
from reports. If you figure you need a peach on a clay-tolerant
rootstock and can't get one but you can get St. Julien A budwood (maybe
from the Geneva station?) you might be able to propagate it on a nurse
root, Prunus besseyi (P. pumila is an eastern relative) or P. tomentosa (Nanking cherry) perhaps; though P. besseyi especially might not last long in clay (I would guess they don't call it sand cherry for nothing) my guess would be that it will live just long enough. Then you could bud peach to the resulting stock.

Peach trees were sometimes offered on Prunus americana for clay. My experience on heavy clay was that the tree looked unhappy (e.g. reddish leaves) and soon died. I wouldn't bother with this.

Vineland station's recommendations for commercial growers were not to bother trying to grow peaches on Brompton on clay, as the trees were not productive or long-lived enough to be competitively profitable. However for home growers with good surface drainage I expect they are good enough.

If some member with serious experience of growing peaches on clay would post I'm sure that would be much more valuable than the above.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


Melissa Kacalanos wrote:
I'd heard that peaches are subject to every disease and pest out there,
so I'd resolved not to bother with them. Then my neighbor had to go and
tell me about her friend's completely neglected peach tree, which produced
oodles of delicious fruit for no effort at all. So now I'm thinking
peaches again.

Should someone talk me out of this? I'm in zone 5a, and have heavy clay
soil (although it's on a slope, so water doesn't sit on it.) I'm thinking
either 'Reliance' or 'Fingerlakes S.H.' on standard rootstock might have
a chance. Does anyone recommend one over the other? Or recommend a
different cold-hardy peach? Or maybe I should stick with trouble-free
stuff like mulberries.

In other news, my one blooming plum tree is shivering in the cold
today. These silly Prunus species.

Melissa
zone 5, central NY





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