Yes, this is a relatively unprofessional attempt to make an interspecific hybrid. It still has potential to work.
One thing we do is make an effort to encourage learning. Though I might be considered an “expert” in some areas, I’m just an amateur in others. There are several posters and others who read but don’t post who would be considered skilled in the area of hybridization.
I know Zaiger crosses thousands to get a few to take, so I too doubt this will work. Why I suggested using fruit that already has the genes you’re looking at. All the same it hurts nothing to try. Ploidy level is another issue I have had to consider crossing brambles. None of this is easy no doubt.
I set my goals low myself. I like red fleshed peaches. I have a red fleshed nectarine that ripens around August 1st and a red fleshed peach that ripens September 1st. I crossed them with the goal of having a peach that ripens between them. It will be a peach as the fuzzy gene is dominant. I did this awhile ago and got three seedlings but in the fall of 2017 we had an early fall freeze (21F) and I lost all three! Argh! I lost all kinds of stuff that year. Anyway I crossed again last spring and have 2 seedlings going. now.
As I learn I will try harder projects.
Well the guy doing it has already created many of his own interspecific crosses. This is far from his first attempt. So yes he is an expert at crossing and creating interspecific fruit.
He has mostly been working on rootstocks. He lives in a challenging area to grow these fruits. So far he has not met his goal of creating a rootstock that will work well in his area and other challenging areas, but he certainly created some unusual interspecifics. It’s hard to do when you cannot make thousands of crosses at once. This has been a huge problem to moving forward. You need the resources to make at least 3K crosses at once. He still tries anyway.
So we had to talk about getting patents too. I have a few friends that are professional breeders and they have helped us in how to obtain patents. The first thing you need is a large pile on money! How to go about getting farmers to trial your patent, and how to attract nurseries to sell it.
I myself have no interest in doing this. I just want to have fun breeding fruit. It floats my boat, it’s just a hobby for me. I met the professional breeders seeking help in crossing techniques. Some will not respond others helped me out, gave me their notes, even giving me seeds they crossed and wild species they collected. Breeders in general are awesome people who encourage others to join them in this adventure.
Zanzi,
I don’t know how many “experts” we have here. I do know we have many experienced growers here. We also have many newbies as well. All are welcome here.
We welcome people to do things experimentally and report their findings. We also welcome input and comments/criticism as long as they are cordial and constructive. We love to have people contribute their knowledge to help one another out. That’s what the forum is for.
If you use the search function, a looking glass symbol on the upper right hand side, you can find out other topics that have been discussed and may interest you.
A peach cherry hybrid could be delicious.
My “professional” prunus interspecifics arent doing that great in my orchard.
Sweet Treat Plurrry had some nice tasty fruits then died suddenly. It always looked sickly and bloomed too early in my climate. Nadia has been a deer magnet but I finally got blooms, no fruits, last year. There are lots of flower buds for this year. Vigorous growth and now above deer height, so who knows?
Of the old Asian x Americam plums, most have not fruited at 4 years, despite blooming. Toka was delicious but canker killed it. Other grafts on that tree remain vigorous and healthy. Ember and Hanska grew nicely as grafts, bloomed past 2 years, no fruits. LaCrescent grew a little, blooms, no fruits. Not a prunus, but my Maxie Pear, a hybrid between red Bartlet and Asian Pear (I forget - Nijiseiki maybe?) isn’t very good, small hard round red pears, don’t seem to ripen.
I have lots of potential pollinating varieties but who knows? Wrong ones?
Of my own seedlings I have an American plum that blooms each year, no fruits. A seedling from Oregon Curl Free peach is indeed curlfree at 4 years so far, bloomed last year, no fruit but lots of flower buds now. Two farmers market purple “pluots” - unknown variety x unknown pollinator - grew plants with variegated purple / green leaves. Those are grafts on other trees, might bloom this year. We’ll see.
So I have a lot of respect for anyone who attempts making their own crosses! The hybrids can be delicious. Growing them takes patience! Reading about your efforts inspires me to continue trying!
Those sound cool! Keep us updated. Yes plums are hit and miss here. All fruit some. For me the most prolific so far are pluots. They are also the oldest. So I need more time to make conclusions. Some pluots are very slow to produce, and others fruit like crazy. Nadia for me does not fruit much, but this year I have a lot more other varieties around it, see what happens. Seems to be a pollination issue.
A peach x cherry hybrid would be possible by using embryo rescue. This tenique is used when the fruit has just developed, usually a week old, but it would be later aborted due to pollen incompatibily. Thus, the embryo is extracted from the kernel and then is submerged into sugars inside a tube until it germinates and it’s ready to live on it’s own.
One reason I just decided to grow out whatever pollinated my fruit. Intentional crosses seem unlikely to take at least in my lifetime! In my first batch of seven plants one has red leaves and none of the mother plants do, but next to the pluots is a nectplum with red leaves. My plants got attacked by spider mites, although they left the red one alone. This may seem insignificant, but it’s not. I noticed Japanese beetles would not eat nectaplum leaves. So maybe not a cherry plum cross but a pluot x nectaplum cross! Time will tell if I can keep it alive it’s 1/2 inch tall right now! I have Fall Fiesta that should fruit this year. It includes plum, cherry, peach and nectarine in its parentage. Curious to see what pollen will work with it and grow it out. I just want some unique fruit and I’ll let mother nature do the crosses for me. Seems to be working well in this first round with pluots with fat red leaves and others with green peach like leaves, easy and fun and who knows the fruit could be special. I’ll let you know in 3 or 4 years! I’m going to grow out one more round next year then wait and see what happens. I may try intentional crosses too.
Here are some of the new pluot hybrids
Even if your red-leaved hybrid is a pluot x Nectaplum cross, the fruit will probably end up looking like plums, like most plums hybrids.
Yeah that’s fine, I’m all about taste anyway. Hoping for flavor with some depth and richness. adding necatrine to the mix should help. The leaves look like plum. The nectaplum though is more like a nectarine, if you told me it was just another nectarine, well I would believe it. I don’t really taste any plum in there, so curious as to what comes out of this one. Any that don’t work will be used as rootstock for the many varieties I have.This purple will be planted out in ground and allowed to grow into a full tree. Others will be grafted unto it too. I’m not positive but I believe the seed was from Flavor Grenade, shape of fruit will tell me that. The Nectaplum is a huge fruit too, so this thing may be more like a football! Hey you never know. It may be a loser too, time will tell. Also both work really well here and fruit abundantly so should any hybrids of the two. It’s all looking good.
I did research tonight on Cherries for a future project of mine, even amongst other cherry varieties, some cherries can be incompatible with others pollen wise. A lot like the pollen of hazelnuts.
I think that if you hybridize two different cherry varieties together then, that cross might be more compatible with Peach or Apricot, than any of them separate. Based on my research I feel very good at the thought of a Black Eagle, and Waterloo cross, they are compatible with each other pollen wise, they both appear to resist cracking well, both are considered two of the very best sweet cherries. Although Black Eagle is not self-fertile, while Waterloo is self-fertile, so if a cross is done you’d be looking for seedlings from that cross that are self fertile. Most sweet cherries are not self fertile, not much to choose from.
I’d then either use apricot instead of peach, or I’d do a cross between apricot and peach, before crossing with cherry.
The self fertile gene was taken from tart cherries, chemicals had to be used to get the same ploidy level. I think Stella maybe was the first? Cherries that are incompatible are too alike. I don’t know the exact mechanism but it is meant to diversify the offspring. Same with hazelnuts and other fruits and nuts. Some exceptions of course. And being too different also results in failures. You can’t win sometimes.
Many like Bing and Rainer cherries because they are so firm, and being firm means they crack easily. So cherries that are softer tend not to crack. Not a good trade off, just can’t win here!
I’m not that interested in inter-specific crossing as it is so unlikely I’m more into developing rich flavors, interesting shapes and colors With flavor being the main thing, but also productivity ease of pollination, and growth habit. The pluots have a diverse gen pool to work with so I find them interesting.
I also wondered about peaches as we have white peaches and yellow. Are any crossed with each other? Is one color recessive? I would like to do crosses of whites with yellows just to what one would get?
I know that with tomatoes colors like blue, purple, black (dark purple) appear to stay permanently once they are in the DNA, same thing with pomegranates, purple, black (dark purple) always stays during a successful cross. I think that during crossing of a lot of things, there are colors that are there permanently that are always dominant, other colors that can change.
I find that a lot of fruit comes in way more colors that you’d think. Tomatoes are a great example of that, and it seems like the best colors originally came from the smaller fruits, often wild fruits. For example ‘Helsing Junction Blues’ tomatoes, has wild blue tomatoes in the cross used to make it, if I understand correctly crossed with wild cherry tomatoes. The smaller the fruit the less natural chemical there needs to be to color the fruit. ‘Helsing Junction Blues’ tomatoes not only have blue in them, they can have a dark purple skin when fully ripe.
I have paid less attention to peaches, apricots, than I have a lot of other fruit, yet since I want to experiment with some hybridization now, I am starting to pay more attention.
Another reason that I chose the two cherries that I chose as the two best, was because they are disease resistant. Me living in the south I am always thinking about things like fungus based diseases, like cracking/splitting, and so on. A lot of sweet cherries don’t do well in the southern US climates.
Both varieties of cherries I chose it sounds like they taste noticeably better than Bing. Taste is something that I keep in mind when I dream up plans about hybridizing something. One thing that I love about the thought of hybridizing things with cherry is the interesting cherry/heart like shape that the fruit usually has.
I’d also like to see Prunus hybrids, that have much greater pest resistance, while starting to bloom a little later in to the year so that less blooms get hit by frost, which could insure high production.
Some excellent points Alan really well thought out and useful too. The cherry sounds awesome, and keep us informed of any progress. I want to work with Utah Giant, but first i want to taste it. I should this year. My peach hybrids were hit by mites and lost all leaves. I think they will survive. I have killed the mites. Kinda a good thing, delaying a bit as I can’t wait to get them outside!!
I’m also excited about a mulberry a Morus nigra from zone 6 in Bulgaria. The plant looks to be overwintering fine so far, time will tell. I also have a number of fig trees I’m excited to try the fruit next year. Spring hurry up! Soon I will be very busy and looking forward to it.
You mentioned hazelnuts I’m buying 4 this year.
Yes, I have 3 OSU hazelnuts bushes 2 Theta and 1 Eta. I also had a Jefferson (also OSU) and it died. I bought a second Theta by accident, planted it before I realized, now we have no room for a Jefferson. Who knows maybe some day I could graft some Jefferson on to one of the Theta, yet they are growing way faster than I though they would, at first they start out very slow and in time they grow very fast, like a weed. Anyway, Jefferson is the one that I wanted the most.
A person who knows a lot about breading new plants, sounds like he might try and teach me, yet I am not going to get my hopes up just in case. He was very vague, and I might have misunderstood.
Utah Giant sounds great, yet I have not tried it, and climate can make a variety not so desirable, it’s not self-fertile, and it’s fruit cracks a lot in a wrong climate). I hope you have luck with it.
Here some years we have huge mite problems, yet I try spraying before they could show up, it helps. Around here slugs can be just as much a problem and they will eat just about anything plant that is still delicate. We temporarily gave up growing a lot of things because of them, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach and so on. One thing that I have learned the hard way is to know what will show up and destroy crops, and sometimes whole plants, and start spraying before they’d show up. Prevention is much easier, although still does not get of all of them.
Every year I wish it would come sooner. In part so I know that the chances of cold damage are gone, a relief. Also so that I could eat the fruit, or see them get closer to production. I also love making Jam. We’ve had enough figs and peaches to do that. Once we have higher production I will start making other things with them too. Like fruit breads, and cakes. Maybe even candies. Like I bought some pomegranate salt water taffy, they make them with Pomegranate Juice, yet lower quality pomegranate juice than what I squeeze myself from store bought pomegranates, the pomegranate juice from our future own fruit will be even better. I don’t see myself making Salt Water taffy, due to the special equipment I’d need. Yet there are plenty of other kinds of candy out there.
Each year our fig trees have better fruit than the year before under the same conditions, last year was not the most ideal year for fig production, so the overall fruit quality was less with some of the fig trees, like when it rained a lot for days, or weeks, after a long dry spell last year was better than the years before, under the same conditions.
It’s only indoors here, outdoors the natural predator mite is all over. I can’t wait to get the put from under the lights.
I can only grow in containers, but the more mature trees do put out better figs. yeah last year sucked. So looking forward to this year. I like to dry them,. I have a bunch of new ones under lights now. I plan to start more in the spring too. My indoor room is limited. I have good light, but only so much room.
@Drew51, @alanmercieca
Glad to see some others growing hazelnuts. I planted three and they all appear to be healthy and growing well (Theta, Jefferson, and York). Jefferson is supposed to be the large and most desired nut so last year I grafted two J and one Y onto the Theta. My plans are to only leave enough limbs of T, and Y to supply pollen for the Jefferson. If your considering doing something similar they appear to be easily grafted. This is probably more information than you desire but the Theta has been the fastest grower followed by Jefferson and the slowest is york. I only cut off enough wood this winter to continue grafting but going forward I can send scionwood if you want to do a little grafting.
No information is good! I have been grafting for 5 years so starting to get some experience under my belt. I’m only buying 3 not four as mentioned. Jefferson , Dorris, and Theta. I think i should be good with that. Dorris is a desirable nut, only Theta for pollination.
That’s an awesome experiment and result!
I don’t know if I have it in me to create many new hybrids, but I think about it. This year there are lots of flower buds on my two seedling, dark skin, variegated leaf, “pluots” and on my “Son Of Oregon Curl Free” (SOCF) peach tree. No leaf curl whatsoever the past 3 years. Maybe it will be a dud. I would love to see it produce peaches.
Which brings me to my point. The Zaigers etc seem to make wonderful varieties that flourish in their California climate. That mostly leaves amateurs to produce varieties that flourish in other, often very different, climates. Here, we get so much leaf curl, it completely kills some varieties. It’s hard to figure out dormant sprays because they are still full of leaves long into the fall rainy season. There are few peach varieties that are free of leaf curl. Oregon Curl free was one. But that died of canker in its 4th year. Mary Anne (I think) was advertised as curl free but succombed to leaf curl. Charlotte is OK, survives but does get it and the crop is affected. Salish Summer does OK, not much curl, not many peaches yet. Tri-lite Peach Plum, died of leaf curl. It looks like Kreibich Nectarine will have it. Even Sweet Treat Pluerry had some. So for me, growing a locally adapted variety would be wonderful. Maybe “Son of Oregon Curl Free” will be one?
That tree is near a Hollywood plum. That would be a nice cross. Hollywood has a deep color, big plums, easy to grow, no diseases for me, and a rich flavor. Plus hybrids, taken from peach seeds, would be easy to identify via purple leaves, like yours. Bloom is early which might be an issue.
Or, maybe I could try to cross Salish Summer or “SOCF” peach with Nadia? That might be easier since plums seem easier to cross with peaches, compared to cherries. Or, I also have a Crimson Pointe fastigiate flowering plum. Dark purple leaves, small plums (apricot size, or a little smaller), deep red color in plums, delicious rich flavor but clingstone and not much flesh compared to most. That, crossed with a peach, would be interesting.
Peaches are self pollinating. Might take some effort…
Before the flower opens I cut right above the calyx and cut through to the stamens. it takes a little practice. I use a box knife razor blade, held in hand, not mounted in a knife. Then I bag them with organza bags to keep pollen out. The ovaries should be good even though the flower didn’t open, so you can apply pollen at that time.
My peach seedlings I have now are from Indian Free, which has sterile pollen, so no need to do this. Indian Free is one of a handful of peaches which is not self fertile. I was thinking of crossing Nadia with Fall Fiesta pluot. Both have cherry in them. To increase cherry percentage. This year will be the first year FF will bloom. I will use the pollen of whatever one flowers first. The most hardy pluot I have found is Dapple Dandy. it produces like crazy. It works very well here, so I for sure want to use it in crosses. I may use Dapple Supreme or Dapple Jack depending on how the perform.
We can trade any hybrids that work down the road. I would love wood from a variegated plant! I will be adding some pluots this year, but not many. I already have a lot. Adding mostly plums, not a lot. My orchard is almost full. I did gain 2 trees. One of the reason i want to grow some out is to have more trees to graft on. Even if a keeper other cultivars are going on it! Yeah have a plan and reasons why you want to cross. And give it a go!
Hi Bear,
Your review of the curl resistant peaches is the most comprehensive I’ve seen. I know in the past you also mentioned Nanaimo, which I don’t think you had acquired. Tom from Tall Clover Farm on Vashon Island rated it tops for curl resistance before he ended up putting everything in a greenhouse. Nanaimo was hard to chase down for a while, but I see Fruitwood Nursery has scion, if you are interested.
