I see on places like etsy that honey babe peach tree seeds are for sale. I know most trees are grafted so I am wondering if this is a scam or if you can legit grow them from a seed. Does anyone know a place that even sales them in the spring or summertime for mail shipment or in the Colorado area.
Are you going to keep this thing inside or a greenhouse?
We can grow some pretty amazing peach varieties but you gotta stick to the high chill cold hardy kinds i would recommend Contender, Redhaven, Intrepid, Elberta, Veteran, Polly…
I plan to stick it inside my garage during winter.
Peaches, generally speaking, do not come true from seeds due to their genetic diversity. However, they are peach seedlings that produce edible, sometimes good peaches.
I do not think Honey Babe seeds will come true but if you are lucky, those seedlings may produce decent fruit.
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No, but you might grow a child of it.
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If you have time, energy and space, you can plants seeds of any peaches you want. Some people like that kind of mystery. I prefer grafting a variety I want or buy a tree to save myself time.
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400 chill hours is rough even as a parent for us. Personally i would go with something else and if you want something to bring in and out of garages you can do cold hardy citrus, mulberries and figs. You can get places to order that for you but you wont get any guarantees other than it will not make it and will have to argue with them to get them to order it for you is my assumption.
However if that is what you want it is worth a shot but you should probably get say 10 seedlings to try so you get a good one
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Do you know any places that would order it for you? Everywhere I have called they only sale pix zee and say I need to order it myself.
Based on your previous posts it seems like you really want a dwarf peach, but can’t find any bare roots at this point in the year. Just in case you are willing to make a drive in the metro area, and are willing to pay a higher price, local nurseries such as Nick’s Garden Center have some you can find. There were probably 25-30 Pix Zee’s there when I visited a few weeks ago. I’ve grown it just as you mentioned - in a pot and bringing it into the garage during the winters.
If you’re set on the seedling route, I have a Pix Zee seeding sitting in a 3" pot (threw a pit in the potting soil of my tree when I squirrel ate one) that’s all yours if you want. As mentioned above, it probably won’t grow like it’s parent, but it’s yours if you want to try.
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I am looking for a honey babe as I hear they are the best tasting. According to a taste rating system pix zee is just rated as good. I can go to Echters which is a few minutes away from me and they have pix zees. That is the challenge I am facing. Everyone only sells pix zee for some reason.
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https://www.phillyorchards.org/2015/07/07/growing-peaches-from-seed/
Peaches and apricots tend to come fairly true to seed, meaning a seedling tree will generally be very similar to the parent tree and bear similar fruit.
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You sure about that? I haven’t found it to be so?
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I had several seedlings from Honey Babe. They stayed quite small, flower pot size. That was over about a 4 year period. I think they need a very vigorous rootstock to grow even to bush size. I never tried grafting them. In comparison, I have a seedling from Oregon Curl Free that was producing peaches in three or four years and now, at about 5 or 6 years, must be 25 feet tall. Those tiny genetic dwarf seedlings bloomed but no fruit happened.
I suspect that if you put a genetic dwarf scion on something like Lovell, it is more likely to grow faster and get you something to taste in a few years.
That is speculation on my part. I wound up giving away my genetic dwarf peach seedlings.
I have read that peaches are more likely to produce offspring similar to their parent, compared to some other fruits. I think most older peaches are self pollinated, from multiple generations of self pollinated trees. My dad and my grandfather both had seedling grown peach trees, and those were great. On the other hand, with modern hybridization and breeding techniques, emasculation, embryo rescue, and hand pollination, that old “rule of thumb” probably no longer applies.
My seedling from Oregon Curl Free did come out curl free, better than its parent. The peaches are very good, much better than anything from the local grocery store. I think the peaches are similar to the parent, but that original tree died of canker so I have no direct comparison.
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Sounds like it could be worth just waiting until September to order a grafted variety if none of your varieties fruited. I saw a post from you on another forum about genetic peaches and I think you commented on my other post about genetic dwarfs. You mentioned they taste better than super market varieties so I figured give honey babe a shot whenever I can get it because on a website it ranked honey babe as excellent tasting opposed to fair, good or very good tasting for other varieties. Drew51 said I should be able to easily overwinter them in the garage. It is a question of when can I get them as the only sellers I am seeing of honey babe are not even selling on preorder until next fall
@elivings1, I think you are right they are hard to find.
Last winter I kept mine covered with garbage cans. The original plan was to construct a shelter, but things don’t always go according to plan. When I uncovered them a couple of weeks ago, my El Dorado, the smaller one, had a lot of dead moldy branches. I pruned off the dead ones, but it’s not looking good. The Garden Gold, which is quite a bit bigger, was already blooming and had an inch of growth. I guess the garbage cans kept them too warm. The early growth was very pale of course. I don’t know what will happen with that.
Yeah like I mentioned on this post a lot of my local nursery are carrying pix zee but the others are not seeming to be sold. My guess is because the patent and that we only have 1 Dave Wilson Nursery retailer here in Colorado. My garage luckily does not have the issue of overheating. Though it is certainly not the coldest either. I have kept a bucket in my garage all this winter and there has only been one time it froze. I have been overwintering my thimbleberries and my mulberry plants all winter in there and my thimbleberries already have leaves on them as well. My leaf nodes on my Girardi mulberry are already showing green as well. The only things I have left to break dormancy is my Chelsea and black beauty mulberries and even those do look like they are swelling slightly.
Sadly you could probably get oasis to order it for you next year but usually they need to order by fall for the spring orders and the way things are going dwn might not have had enough to fill orders as it was.
Definitely good luck on finding a honey babe and maybe it is so dwarfing that you would want it on Lovell anyways like bear said. what’s it normally on?
Good luck and please let us know how it does or tastes when you get one!
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Bay laurel nursery has it on a Nemagaurd rootstock. Though they do state even on nemagaurd it will be a 5 foot tree. It may just be 5 feet opposed to 8 or 9 feet. A 5 foot tree will be nice because you won’t have to prune it thus extending the life of the tree. From my understanding the reason peach trees have such a short lifespan is because how much we prune them according to some videos I have watched. Bear has mentioned they are better than super market. I won’t be able to update for a few years because it sounds like I am going to have to wait until next year to get one and then it will likely be another year or two to get fruit off of it because it is still a tree.
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It would definitely be a fun and cute little tree to have. Many times you need to do renewal pruning to keep peaches high yielding and peaches here live much longer than those other guys areas.
No matter what kind you get it will be far far above supermarket peaches!