Aging of a peach tree

Cool, I didnt think Id get any responses being such an old post. =) Lets see I have so many pictures its hard to know which to upload. Ill start with the trunk, front. Taken today.

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…and back.

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Looking up.

Looks like I reached my limit for replies (3, is that it???) for new users =( And I didnt even get to post any pics of the beauitul fruit! lol

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I have 2 peach trees and 1 apple that are 18 years old… looking good as ever… all loaded with new fruit now.

TNHunter

Reply with pictures attached.

It is enormous. Would love to see the fruit!f. Wow

A limit of 3 replies back to back, yet now that other replies have been made you can post again. You could have put more photos in each post as well.

Multiple leaders that all produce the same fruit suggests that the original tree died and what you have is the seedling tree that was its rootstock. It may also possibly have started as a seed and was never trained to be a single leader tree. Here such trees are common as apple trees and simply start from seeds that are widely dispersed.

What this may mean is that your tree is one-of-a-kind and given your description of its fruit and its longevity in your particular climate, may be of special value.

I assume it is too late this year (tree is already leafing out) but maybe you should follow Mam’s advice and share some wood with other growers in case something happens to that particular tree and to see how well it does in other areas.

Of course, the tree is also a patentable commodity, but it is doubtful you would ever get a return on the investment of acquiring a patent. However, I’ve read that the Hass avocado was a chance seedling found in someone’s yard that the owner patented. I don’t know if they cashed in on the patent before it expired, however.

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I wold be happy to do what I can and let people take limbs for grafting etc. as I am planning on selling the home (after being in my family for almost 100 years!) and moving out of Colorado. I also plan on taking grafted trees with me of ONLY that particular tree. Here is the fruit compared to a single normal sized white peach (the sliced peach on the left side) from one of my other white flesh trees.

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These are called Gold (or green) gages. They came from France in the early 1930s from my graet great grandfather who then planted them in the backyard from one of his trees. The story from my grandparents was that they had 10 yellow flesh clingstone peach trees. But after this gage tree had been planted in the mini-orchard that the seedlings that resulted from the fruit of the yellow flesh sometimes grew freestone white flesh. The bees and pollinating insects made a new variety of peach from green gage/clingstone yellow peach and it turned out to be free stone white flesh. Gages ae like plums but with a WAY higher sugar cointent. My grapefruit sized peaches are SO sweet that they ferment on the ground and get squirrels and foxes drunk ( I have videos lol). Notice the peaches have a greenish tint. They are ripe but they stay green, like the gages! This old tree is the only one that grows the white peaches as large as grapefruits though. All other white trees grow normal sized freestone (except for a single clingstone white (pink) flesh tree that started about 8 yrs ago. it grows honest red/pink-flesh peaches. =) EDIT: I see I still am only getting 3 replies so I cant reply individually but the story about the Hoss Avocado is really interesting. Id be happy enough bringing a new white peach variety into Americans homes than money and thats the truth. Plus saving the genetics of my beautiful huge white flesh peach tree that grows huge grapefruit sized peaches. =)

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Surely looks like a true Chinese peach I saw in China, the ‘honey-water’ peach. I thought my Shui mi Tao would be a good replacement. It never was. Your peach is huge. How do they taste when they are ripe?

And I bet the ‘gold’ is a Reine Claude ‘D’oree’. French, very old and very sweet if you let them ripen.

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You have some trees already grafted to you special white one? That is good.

Yes, your plums look exactly like my Green Gages which ripen about with Stanley and Italian here in late Aug.

Excellent pictures and love all your stories. I have told people on here how old some of my families peaches and other trees were and they did not believe me much either!

Love how much effort all your grandparents and you put in to taking care of them. It’s a sellers market so value and mark up the price of the trees and if you can sell it to someone who will value and care for them like your grandparents did that would be excellent. You set the price and get to choose who buys it!

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This peach looks like the one that I grew back in China when I was a little kid, we called it Da Qing Tao (大青桃), the Big Green Peach because the fruit was greenish inside out even when it’s fully ripe. Well, growing a peach was so easy back in China. The only thing I did was digging a hole and putting the tree in and then after about 3 years, the tree was loaded with big juice sweet peaches, no spray, no pruning, nothing. :smile:

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Shuimiato that is sooooo cool to hear! Thanks for your input! I wonder if the “big green peach” was developed from gages or plums? Were the ones you grew as a kid also white flesh?

Do you remember if there were spots on the peeling? If you look you can see spots on the peeling of the big greenish peaches. I think it makes a difference because I also used to have plum trees (red) and I think the normal sized clingstone white flesh peaches I have on other trees came from those. The green gages is what made this special green tinted white flesh humongous cold hardy tree. In 2003 we had a huge blizzard with a -14F overnight temp for 3 days in a row. I lost all y peach trees except for two of them. One of them was this big humongous 40 yr old tree.

I appreciate everyones comments, thank you so much for the replies! I had never even thought of grafting seedlings and selling them. I would be happy to let people take cuttings for free to be honest! I have tried to sell peaches from my yard but I dont get very many buyers for the fruit - maybe the seedlings will do better. I usually give bags and bags away every summer to the neighbors. My trees also get pilfered a lot lol. I wish I could post tons of pics at a time I would love to show ya’ll my pink tinted white flesh peaches (one of the casualties of the 2003 blizzard unfortunately), when I would make a peach pie it would be pink or the ice cream I would make would be tinted pink. =)

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Heres another one from yesterday

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Alan the tree is not grafted, it grew naturally by itself (every year we throw about 50 lbs of peach pits from all the trees into a single hole in the corner of my yard and I get unlimited seedlings out of there and that is how this tree started life) and has never been cut or pruned in 40 years lol

Edit: ALL the trees from the entire 80 yer existence of the peach orchard in my yard came from a SINGLE clingstone yellow flesh tree that was in the yard when my grandparents moved in back in the 1930s. Later when my grandmother got older she started planting seedlings all over the yard and by the time I came along the little mini orchard was quite big and all I knew was peaches by the age of 3 lol

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So the tree is a true family heirloom- maybe you should name it after your grandmother and try to keep the variety going so your great grandchildren can share a part of family history deeper than a simple story. You may even end up spreading it around the world.

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Wow!!! If you have seeds (you can’t send me scion wood as I am in Canada)… I would love to grow some… Let me know!

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