Ok, so I know peaches aren’t the easiest fruit to grow, but if you were going to pick one peach that required the least intervention to keep it going, what would it be and why?
What rootstock produces the best dwarfing and disease resistance?
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Ooh ooh, I think I know the “official” vaguely consensus answers! Assuming you are asking as a homeowner and not for orchard planning (they are going to want a lot more details for orchard planning), you’re likely to be told that peaches are not easy to control via JUST rootstock size, so you should pick the rootstock that handles your environment well, plan to prune for size control. You will probably want a later peach with high chill requirements, and may want to consider varieties from the North Carolina breeding program, such as the Contender. Winblo has been recommended around here as well.
Yes, this would be for a single tree in a backyard. I have a variety of other fruit but no peaches.
What about Baby Crawford? I have read that its flavor is well regarded. Is it a practical tree to grow?
Yes, I don’t know too much about it, but sure, you could grow any peach.
I would check this thread out first before you decide.
Unlike apples, cherries, pears, and even compared to plums, peaches are not big trees, even when grown on standard root stock. You can maintain them at easy harvesting height. They will also naturally bear earlier than other fruits on standard stock. Dwarf stock tends to reduce the longevity of trees, and peaches are already relatively short lived fruit trees. So, unless you have a compelling reason to use dwarf root stock, such as intending to grow them in a container, you might have better long-term results going with standard sized peach stock.
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Excellent advice! Agree 100%. Use Bailey, Guardian or Lovell, and others are good too.
Peach is the one fruit where you are usually OK with the standard seedling stock. If you have bad nematodes you may want Nemaguard - generally thats only a problem in sandy soils.
The difference in difficulty of various peaches is not super great - they are all difficult for the backyard grower. The main thing is get a variety more resistant to bacterial spot and brown rot. Baby Crawford is highly susceptible to bacterial spot so I would not recommend it. There are still a very large number of varieties to choose from, too many really as each nursery can have very different ones. Find some varieties that sound good and look up their disease resistance with Google, or ask here.
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I asked a similar question last month and got a lot of good info.
Scott,
It’s my understanding Guardian is generally considered superior to Nemaguard in the nematode category and was developed as a replacement to Nemaguard. Guardian has the resistance of Nemaguard to Rootknot nematode, plus resistance to Ring nematode.
I think Nemaguard is still used some in TX and CA. My guess is Nemaguard is still used there because it provides some slight dwarfing.