Well this is a thread where people are offering advice on how to deal with brown rot problems on peaches. Stone fruits can be tough to grow and peaches are probably the toughest of the stone fruits. Scott is able to grow high quality peaches with around 6 sprays a year and he has hot, humid Summers. Some on the forum have better conditions and do fewer sprays. Alan’s schedule calls for 3 sprays and he is successful using that. So it’s not all gloom and doom. If the thread was about root rots or fireblight we would be talking about dying trees rather than rotting fruit which is more serious. It’s certainly not fun to watch a tree die you invested five years of your life nurturing.
Generally the order of difficulty (roughly) for common fruits from easiest to hardest is…
Apples
Pears
Tart cherries
Plums
Peaches/Sweet cherries
Exotic fruits like cornus mas are harder to characterize for a variety of reasons. They’re not grown widely and aren’t really grown commercially so information is hard to come by. And information you can find often is not of high quality.
I would have put peaches as the easiest stone fruit to grow, though it is very much location dependent.
My version of your list:
Pears
Apples
Peaches
Nectarines
Plums (particularly Euro plums with extra PC, brown rot, and black knot)
Cherries (cracking, rot, birds)
I’m not sure where to put tart cherries, as I have gotten very little harvest in the last few years. I’ve been losing most to blossom blight and brown rot, with birds getting any leftovers. Over the last 2-3 years, until this year, my haul has been a literal handful, from about a dozen trees and bushes. With increased spraying, I was able to get all the way (sarcasm…) up to 3 pints. Meanwhile, my brother got 40-50 pounds from 2 bushes I gave him a few years ago. If I could get his productivity, I’d have 300lbs of fruit and would be very tired of picking and pitting.
Apricots might be slightly easier than peaches if you can keep the tree from dying and the flowers from getting zapped by a frost. A lot depends on what issues your location has…
Easiest tree fruits would be jujube, persimmon, mulberry (if you don’t include birds), maybe figs (depending on if you need to protect them each winter).
Yes- I often make computer based mistakes and still haven’t even learned how to post pictures here from my computer. When that happens it’s always with help from my wife.
No, not in this neck of the woods. Peach fuzz has some insect repellent qualities and some fine varieties are fairly brown rot resistant and often require no fungicide, at least for a few years. Nectarines require more protection and are prone to cracking. Same thing applies to most plums.
Peaches and pears are the most likely here to produce useable fruit without spray in my region in S.NY. Pears, on the other hand, can become very difficult once pear psyla enters the picture.
Local condtions do make a difference. Apples and pears are similar in difficulty. But apples are widely adapted with people growing them in all sorts of climate. You can grow them from Alaska to Florida or even in the tropics. There are also a huge number of cultivars and rootstocks that are tailored to these different environments.
However for both apple and pears choosing the right cultivar and the right rootstock makes a big difference in how easy it is to grow. In the beginning, figuring out the disease and insect pressure in your area is tricky since you often have limited information. This especially true if apples aren’t grown commercially in the area. I had to guess and it is easy to guess wrong. If you pick for resistance to scab and fireblight, plant your trees, and then find out your main problems are frogeye leafspot and Summer rots it’s going to seem keeping apples is difficult.
Tart cherries are fairly easy for me. I have cherry leaf spot and the cherry fly but with some spraying you can control them. Brown rot and cracking doesn’t seem to be a major problem here. It does occur but its a minor problem. I do get some hits from plum curculio but again the damage is minor. My neighbors don’t even spray and they harvest a pretty good crop. Ironically, they don’t spray for cherry leaf spot and don’t have problems with it where I have to spray for it.
The cultivar and rootstock can make a big difference in yields. I have a Balaton on mazzard that has produced little over the last ten years but my Montmornecy on Gisela 5 does extremely well so does my English Morello on Gisela 5. The Gisela 5 is precocious and tends to over set fruit which is why it never caught on in commercial sweet cherry production. But for a backyard grower that more concerned with yield than fruit size it works pretty well.
Sweet cherries and peaches are difficult. At least with sweet cherries they ripen quickly and the number of sprays you need is less. But my climate is more difficult than New York or Connecticut. Actually, my conditions are pretty similar to the conditions Olpea and Thecityman experience.
This is a really interesting list to me and I’m glad @BobVance offered his version and I’d love for others to do the same. Like almost all other things related to fruit growing, I’m sure location is what makes the difference. Here on the TN/KY line, here is my list of easiest to hardest fruits to grow:
Asian Persimmons
Apples
Paw paws
Sour cherries
Figs
Grapes
Japanese Plums
Pears (Rust- especially PCPR- is a MAJOR problem in my orchard and very hard to control)
European plums
Yellow peaches
Yellow nectarines
White peaches
White nectarines
Mine only included the few that mroot had listed. A more inclusive list:
Fruit
Problems
Least Problems
Quality if you do get it (at best)
Total
Jujube
needs sunny spot or little set, thorns
10
9
19
Goji
thorns and not tasty
10
2
12
American persimmons
risk of picking when still astringent
10
3
13
Gooseberry
thorns, only moderately tasty except a few varieties which keep dying
9
5
14
Paw Paw
not that tasty & possible parkinsons
9
4
13
Raspberries & blackberries
SWD
9
7
16
Black currants
some birds, a bit of rot, not tasty fresh
8
5
13
Hardy Kiwi
Sprawls and needs a lot of pruning
8
6.5
14.5
Muscadine grapes
Winter cold, low production
7
6
13
Figs
Winter cold and yellow jackets
7
7
14
Honeyberries
Birds, only moderately tasty
6
4
10
Blueberries
Birds, SWD
6
6
12
Mulberries
Birds
6
6
12
Goumi
Birds, not much flesh around pit
6
4
10
White currants
some birds, not that tasty
6
3
9
Red currants
birds, still not that tasty (slightly better than white currants)
6
4
10
Elderberries
birds, not for fresh
6
5
11
Asian persimmons
Winter cold
5
7
12
Asian pears
Bugs, Yellow Jackets
5
8
13
Apples
Bugs
5
7.5
12.5
Euro pears
Bugs, some rots, sometimes hard to know when to pick
5
7
12
Grapes
Black rot, yellow jackets
5
6
11
Sour cherries
Brown rot/blossom blight and birds
5
4
9
Juneberries
Birds, fungus, not that tasty (bland)
5
3
8
Asian plums
Rot, bugs, and black knot
4
7
11
Peaches
Rot & bugs
4
7.5
11.5
Apricots
Keeping the trees alive, rot and bugs
3.5
9
12.5
Nectarines
Rot & bugs (some crack too)
3
8
11
Euro plums
Rot, PC, black knot, slow to bear
2
10
12
Sweet cherries
Birds, rots, cracking
1
6
7
I have mixed feelings on the chart- it seems very arbitrary based on location (winter cold, humidity, etc) and personal preference (willing to spray non-organic? tart fruit? processing?). Even for my preferences, in my location, I have trouble deciding on numbers. I might give a fruit a low score, until I remember that one time it was really good. Should 1 cultivar bumps the entire variety (Oscar mulberries)? Or a fig which is great, but particularly hard to grow? I’m not sure that what I created is useful, but I’ve put enough time into it that I’m going to post it anyway
Some varieties are tasty right off the bush, but they don’t tend to be rust resistant. Black currants are probably the healthiest fruit you can grow and one of the most flavorful for culinary use and to flavor drinks. Try a cup with a quart of fresh apple juice run through a strainer- nectar of the gods!
This season I finally took the time to net a stand I have and my wife is ecstatic- they are her favorite kitchen fruit and she rewarded me by making a batch of black currant gelato. OMG!
Just took a couple minutes to protect the fruit with a woven net. No chipmunks this year.
I think our palates are a bit different on this one. I’ve tried roughly 10 varieties and haven’t found any I liked fresh. But, they do make great jam and I make a batch each year. I bought the juice a long time ago and thought it wasn’t bad, but I think they added some sugar to it. And I’m not sure if it was cooked as part of the preparation.
I still get a decent amount without netting, but have some losses. Does netting allow you to wait long enough that you can pick everything in one go? I find picking them to be pretty tedious, taking about 45 minutes per quart.
It’s funny, but the first year I had a heavy crop of black currants they all ripened about the same time and could be raked off the plants in one picking. I don’t know how long the berries will hold on the plants if not picked but certainly netting reduces the need to pick ripe fruit right away and therefore is more efficient. I suspect that one reason it takes you so long is that the birds are reducing the number of ripe fruit as they do on my property- especially cat birds.
Black currants are like concentrated fruit, high sugar, high acid, and high levels of anti-oxidants (if that is attractive to you.) The disease resistant varieties tend to be too strong and tart for most palates, but some un-resistant varieties are pretty good off the plant. Lee Reich gave me a Russian variety that is particularly sweet. The difference in our palates my mostly be that your sweet tooth is more influential than mine. What tart fruits do you like? Sour cherries?
Germans and eastern Europeans are often almost religious in their devotion to black currants, and if you were raised in such a culture there would likely be some recipes involving black currants that you’d love.
That may seriously be one of my all time favorite posts! I love EVERYTHING about your chart. When I made my little quick and dirty one above, I almost put in parenthesis an explanation of why things were rated the way they were. So I love that you actually did that! Never occurred to me to rate the quality of fruit “if you get it” but I love that too. And of course your total column is GREAT too. Thanks for this, Bob. When I have some time I’m going to plagiarize the heck out of this and post my numbers. I also left out a lot of fruit I want to add- like you did. This is neat. I found myself shaking my head in agreement at soooo many of your notes. Apricot trees dying! yes- the only whole trees I ever loose on a fairly regular basis. Sweet cherries being #1 and me having same 3 problems with them. Euro plums-everything you said mirrors my experience. Not liking black currant fresh taste, etc. In fact, my only notable difference with your entire chart is your rating of peaches in the “if you get it (at best)”. Your 7.5 is pretty high but for me when a peach is at its best, it would be one of my only 10’s. That and Saijo persimmon.
Kevin,
Agree with you on Bob’s list. I like Bob’s notes, too.
I don’t have brambles or blueberries. His list is similar to what I have in my mind. I would rank figs even lower because of scales, fig bud mites and fig leaf rust my figs have suffered. It is not easy, care free plants many have said.
I/m glad you said that about figs. I, too, seem to have more fig challenges than most people seem to. My biggest problem is some kind of bug that I’ve never identified and never seen anywhere except on my figs. They only show up about 3 days after my figs start ripening. They are small black bugs and they crawl inside my figs though the open eye (most of my figs have open eye holes) and once inside feed and cause rotting. There will be lots of them in every ripe fig. Since they are inside the fruit I don;t thing spray would help and I’ve never tried it because these bugs only go into the fruit just about the time its ripe enough to pick, so obviously I don’t want to put insecticide over fruit I’d be eating within a day or so. And I couldn’t spray inside anyway. Ever heard of such a bug? I’ll get photos this fall.
Kevin,
I don’t know what those bugs are but I feel bad for you. Myfigs are in potted and ripen at different time so I am able to put organza bags on them to protect against ants and yellow jackets.
I underestimated fig bud mites. This spring the population has exploded. Not only leaves are affected, many fruit near each terminal bud have sustained damage. Figs are not easy fruit for me for sure.
Very possible- that alone might make it worth it to net…
Sour cherries are OK fresh. I’ll eat a handful, but I usually save them for jam. They make very good jam. 2nd only to Black currant (and depending on mood could be #1 sometimes) is a mix of sour cherry and boysenberry. Both are sour fruits that combine very well in jam. Boysenberries are very good fresh if they are dead ripe. Otherwise, into the jam they go.
I got very few boysenberries this year, as I lost patience with the tangle of thorny boysenberries on the ground last year and got rid of a lot of them. The plants are still there, but I’ll only get a crop next year if I don’t get irritated with the tangle of vines (trying to clean them up and organize them seems to take a lot of effort and break most of them anyway…).
I’ve just started getting Ersinger Euro plums. Most are still pretty firm (11-12 brix), so they need a few more days. I had a damaged one this morning which was 16 brix, so they have good potential. I’m also pretty happy with the set. It is the heaviest set of any of my prune type plums. One of my gage-types is eaven heavier (maybe too heavy), but it is only a single branch, grafted on a different variety which has almost nothing.
Most peaches I get aren’t that great. Alan is right that my sweet-tooth is a bit stronger than his. A couple years ago I had some great 20 brix Carnival peaches. I’ve had a few others which were very good (a single Shu Mi Tao with 16 brix and high acid), as well as a few others here and there. But a 12-13 brix peach is OK, but not something that impresses me. That was part of the difficulty I had in scoring the potential quality. Do I bump up all peach, when only a few seem to get that good…
My score of 6 for sweet cherries was a bit like that. Sweet cherries can be fantastic, and may be my favorite fruit. But, only the ones from the grocery store. I’ve never manged to grow or buy any locally which were as good as the WA state ones. Big, crisp, 20+ brix…Those would get an easy 10. The local stuff is more like 12-14 brix, smaller, and softer.
Looks close enough- I think mine are about a week further along than yours.
When I was checking on the Jefferson I noticed a couple Castletons which were softening. One wasn’t that ripe (12 brix), but the other was pretty good (16 brix).
And I can’t be bothered eating many cherries. They have very little flavor to go with that sugar and the pits are annoying. However, if you pick them off there own trees here, they can be perfectly crisp and as sweet as can be, but they probably don’t travel nearly as well as western ones. They were very good here this year and Raniers were better than I can buy from a store… off the tree.
They seem to only need one insecticide app here for protection (the one when last apples have lost petals) and if it doesn’t rain for a few days up to ripening, maybe no fungicide. I grew my apricots with no insecticide this year and had almost no insect problems. Unfortunately, all but Early Blush got terrible bacterial spot for the first time ever, anywhere for me, and destroyed 2/3rds of the crop. Now I have to decide if I should spray copper next year or just see if it was a one-time event. Cots on my nursery trees out in the open were fine, but against the wall may present a problem. Too much shelter from breezes.
