peach tree from the pit?

[bennett]

my inlaws have some peach trees, and we've gotten some of the pits... we've tried to grow trees from them before and it hasn't worked.. is there a trick to it? i have six right now that are drying out at room temp..

 

[patandchickens]

They won't come true to named variety -- varieties are propagated by grafting -- so it'll be a cr*pshoot how good a tree you'll get out of them.

Not all peaches even set viable seed on a reliable basis, I believe -- I know that I've accidentally split pits on some store- and farmers-market-boughten peaches, and not infrequently found a wizened undeveloped thing inside rather than a proper seed. I have no idea how common/uncommon this is.

Are you planting them in pots or just in the ground? Might try some both ways, some things do better in the ground. Just leave them til next summer, see if anything happens. As I say, though, any resulting tree would be a gamble, fruit quality wise.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Greensage45]

Hi,

So this pit is fresh out of the peach? Then you need to just set it aside and let it dry out. One of the easiest ways after that is to let nature do what it does best; put the pit (whole, not broken) into a pot of soil outside. Place it near a water source so that you remember to water it just as if it were really growing. Let it winter out in that pot and by next Spring you will have healthy vibrant peach seedlings.

At this point, this is very important. You let your peach tree get past the first set of 'true leaves' and top it. Completely remove the top growth. This will cause the next growth to come from between the first 'true leaf' and the stem. This is the Cultivar you have created. The fruit is naturally more succulent from the off-shoot branching than from the original center growth (which you removed).

Again, like said before, it is a bit of a gamble. You do not know where the bees were prior to visiting that bloom. This new Cultivar might be a perfect hard stone-throwing peach, or it could turn out to be a delight for years to come. Typically any fruit tree that is a known Cultivar that is grafted, only has a limited life-span. I would say that a healthy orchard rotation of grafted fruit trees is to start after 10 years and every 5 years a new row is added. Subsequent older trees are usually removed before disease and failure take place. Seems cruel in the sense that a tree is a living organism, but these clones growing on foreign rootstock always fail eventually.

Wishing you luck. I think you might be surprised.

Ron

 

[bennett]

the pits where right out of the peach and are still drying on the table. i'll get the planted this next week.

thanks for the advice!

 

[ChickenMomma91]

Alright so I found a web post on Facebook that said to refrigerate a pit in lightly moistened potting soil for three months. I kinda forgot about it and it was closer to four months, well it's potted now.

Should I cut off that top growth as described above? Or let it grow up potting as it grows till it's big enough to go in the ground and not get ran over by my husband with the mower?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't know how important it is to cut that sprout back so it makes a stronger trunk. It's probably a good idea. But to keep it from being run over by a lawn mower drive a tall, easily seen stake in the ground near it, maybe stakes on two sides. Do not tie the tree to those stakes but paint them a bright color or use something that can be easily seen. Make it easy on your husband to see that tree.

 

[Nyboy]

I don't know how much room you have for trees, but even if fruit is not good, nothing is prettier then a peach tree in spring flower.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

We had a purple leafed peach for a while, a Hiawatha if I recall from the label. That's technically an ornamental/root-stock peach (a lot of root-stock peaches have red leaves, so you can tell when the suckers come from the stock versus the graft) but we did each the peaches (when we could be the squirrels to them.) little golf ball sized things. Not great but no worse than the supermarket ones.

On a side note, I have been trying to do apricots from seed for a while. Specifically I have been growing the pits from little tan apricots you can get in bags from Indian and Middle Eastern grocery stores, in the hope they are Hunza type apricots and, as such, have edible pits (I used to be able to get unimpeachable Hunza pits from a supplier that stocked to Whole Foods, but they went out of business so I have to simply guess with these. This is a little nerve wracking since it means that, if I ever CAN get one to grow it will be unknown if the pits are safe to eat until I test them (someone told me that you should be able to taste high cyanide before you get enough in you to poison you.)

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I had a neighbor in Kansas that raised fruit and had a stand to sell things in the summer. He ate a store bought peach and thought it was really good and he took the pit and buried it at the corner of a building and in no time he had a peach tree. He could grow anything.

 

[PhilaGardener]

@bennett , the best thing is to (1) plant without drying out and (2) vernalize (chill) in your refrigerator for a few months. I happen to have some peach seeds in my crisper drawer right now. Start now and you might have seedlings in time to plant out next Spring! They will not be identical to their parents, but we might get some good peaches from them (and can use the root stock for grafting on regular varieties too) Good luck!