Hey guys, I’ve lived here for a year now and haven’t seen much in the way of more traditional temperate fruits, however it seems a lot of houses in my neighborhood have a persimmon or fig tree. However I was curious how doable apples, peaches and plums are in this area? Is the spray regimen just not worth the hassle? I love fresh peaches and plums and would love to have some trees when I finally settle on some property. I don’t mind doing sprays but there is obviously a time sink to reward ratio that is probably different for everyone. Just looking for opinions on this! Thanks all!
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Contact Dave Vernon at Century Farm Orchards about apples or pears ( if interested in pears) for that area. He is in NC and a great source of information. I have bought most of my trees from him over the years.
https://www.centuryfarmorchards.com/
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Tom Brown, David Vernon, and Jason Bowen are all located in your region. Jason is charged in managing the Horne Creek Farm/southern heritage apple orchard.
I’d start by contacting one or all of them.
A few anecdotes. I used to work next to a peach orchard in Johnston County (my side of the road had mulberries instead!). Knew the owner on a first name basis. He sprayed and had to worry about the usual issues to some degree, but the biggest problem was late frosts. Beyond that, they seem to work fairly well, and my reading suggests they’re not so susceptible to plum curculio as numerous other stonefruits.
As for apples, just don’t. That’s what I tell everyone. I tried apples just to the right of the Triangle about 10 years ago, and it was like opening Pandora’s box. Didn’t matter that they were “southern” varieties or anything. It was Japanese beetles, it was deer, it was Gynosporangium, it was insects I’ve never IDed again since, and on and on. A few years after getting rid of them, it’s like the box closed. Japanese beetles are gone (trapped only *5* all year; saw some on roses less than 1 km away, but that was about it), deer are back to browsing more widely, fungal problems (especially Gynosporangium) totally disappeared from my red junipers (and other trees), haven’t seen a plum curculio, and have not even needed to spray so much as neem this year. The difference is just insane. Skip the plague trees (all of tribe Maleae). Grow what grows like a weed.
One more story. Just visited a friend in Alamance County last week. In addition to persimmons, mulberries, etc, they have a large apple tree. The fruits were the size of cherries, though decently edible. While the tree definitely could use some pruning, it is riddled with disease, covered in fungus, has trouble holding its leaves, and is just generally a magnet for every kind of problem—even affecting nearby trees that are not closely related to it. So while apples, pears, etc can technically grow in such a hot, humid climate, it takes a *lot* of work—and that is saying something for a tree that is already kind of famous for taking a lot of work (and equally famous for people telling you with a straight face that it *doesn’t* take a lot of work). Apples are from a cool dry Kazakh climate, and you can even kind of make it work in a cool wet climate (like NC mountains—pretty solid apple orchards there) or a hot dry climate (US SW has orchards that use winter drought to induce dormancy, not chill!). But trying a hot wet climate is just asking for trouble.
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I’m in NC on the coast and my stone fruit does wonderfully but they tend to like our sand. I’d imagine you’re dealing with a good amount of clay there so whatever you plant I’d say plant it on a good mound above soil grade and that would likely make life much easier long term. If you intend to grow apples I’d say look for disease resistant more so than anything else. I have one multi graft apple but it’s only been in ground about 7 months but I didn’t have any issues with it being diseased yet, also plucked off all the fruit so next year will be a better test, however I have it on a mound also. I think that’s a lot of people issues with ground borne diseases on trees, them being too wet to be strong enough to fight off the disease. But go ahead with the stone fruits. My uncle has a peach orchard about halfway the distance between you and I and of course he sprays and like was mentioned the biggest issue he has is a late frost.
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I’m slightly west of the NC Triangle in Gibsonville and about 10 minutes from David Vernon.
More spray is required than I expected on Peaches and especially on Apples
I found Peaches to be easier than Apples. Insects are easier to control than rots. Brown rot on Peaches and Bitter Rot on Apples.
Apples before Gala avoid most of the rot. Lots of BR on fall Apples in a wet year even with regular fungicide.
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We tried about 30 Apple varieties over 15 years, many heritage varieties from David. Over 1000 dwarf trees.
Not many problems with Blackberries and Rabbiteye Blueberries here.
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I’d say if you are not prepared to take care of your apple trees, then don’t grow them. My neighbors in MA had neglected apple trees that were just spreading coddling moths. Deer are pretty much everywhere. From what I learned from this board is that the high humidity and heat causes problems with fruit rot, so best to go with varieties that are less susceptible. David Vernon suggested to me (northern FL): Summer Banana, Mollies Delicious, Shell, Roxbury Russet, Pome Gris (I had already Yates, Horse, Blacktwig on my list, these should also do well). Hunge is another one that should do well. Micro climate is also important: do you have air drainage, is the soil draining well.
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Hawkeye or Red Delicious, plus Arkansas Black and Dula’s Beauty and Cherryville Black should be some possibilities for apples.
Most any peaches…if you aren’t in a ‘frost pocket’ should be good.
Santa Rosa plum, perhaps.
Great to hear about peaches and plums! Honestly that is what I’m most happy about, apples are just a bonus but id be just as happy with a couple good pear trees. But fresh tree ripened plums and peaches are my number one goal. Where can I learn about what kind of regimen of sprays to expect for stone fruit? Plums are some of my favorite, can anyone reccomend some varieties that will do well in our area and maybe where to get some bare root trees?
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I believe most plums bloom too early to produce fruit in your area in most years.
We tried multiple plum varieties and never got a single plum.
High chill hour Peaches like Contender should produce fruit about 75% of the time.
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I’m in Bahama (just north of Durham). I have about 3000 apple, peach and Asian pear trees. Early warm temps followed by a hard freeze is a risk with peaches although Contender has fruit in even the most difficult years. Apples require a regular spray schedule as disease pressure is fairly heavy in the area but don’t let anyone tell you can’t grow tasty fruit here. It can be done. My orchard is Many Rivers Farm. You can check it out online and you’re welcome to come visit anytime you’d like.
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I know nothing of your conditions, but I do know that apples often require more spring sprays than stone fruit, but that the latter are more susceptible to stink bugs and (brown) rot, which can require a lot of summer sprays. I also know that pest problems are site specific, at least where I am and you cannot give perfect advice based on a single experience at a single site.
There was a member with rose in his forum title who I believe grew a lot of varieties in your region. Maybe he will pipe in. He has his trees in a relatively sterile suburban environment where pest pressure can be much lower on all fronts. Mowed turf harbors fewer pests than infrequently mowed fields or woodlands. There also tends to be less fungus inspiring dew.
Japanese beetles and deer should never be that much of an obstacle to gowning apples. J beetles can be managed by one or two very ligt sprays on only the growing tips of trees when they appear, and deer can be controlled by 5’ tall fence circles of 10-12’ circumference- at least it controls the herds of white tails we have here. .
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If you read NC State’s Southern Appalachian Apples insect and disease page, it should discourage most from growing apples. It was bad enough doing 14-21 day spray intervals but 7-10 with expensive chemicals to control leaf blights and bitter rot is a lot of work with no guarantee you will still get decent fruit by harvest time.
I did not know that Captan’s effective ingredient is washed out from a single precipitation event. It wasn’t long ago that I was reading elsewhere that Captan was still a good fungicide for peaches as it stayed on the fruit a long time.
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If you read Cornell’s commercial fruit production guidelines you would also be discouraged, but this forum is mostly about home growers who have much less pest pressure because they aren’t doing a monoculture and because they don’t need pristine fruit. University guidelines tend to be entirely based on the needs of commercial production and the pest pressure in very large, mono-species orchards.
I have a customer who wanted to grow a mixed, common fruit orchard but Lee Reich discouraged him because of all the sprays he said were required. He based his info exclusively on what he got from Cornell and this customer is very grateful that I happened to give a peach and a business card to his wife because she was in a deli when I was trading fruit for breakfast.
I will continue to encourage people to grow fruit and ignore commercial production guidelines as far as being the holly grail for home growers.
Captan needs to be used with a systemic like myclobutanil or even Topsin M depending on the fungus you are gunning for- spring or summer. These materials aren’t expensive by everyone’s scale- it depends how big your orchard is and your relative pay scale.
I’m not trying to prove you wrong for no reason. People shouldn’t be discouraged by a single anecdote from someone who has made one attempt at a single site.
Maybe you shouldn’t be discouraged and only need the right info to grow apples there. An experienced home grower knows much more about small orchard production than most university gurus. That is what makes this site so valuable for people trying to grow a few fruit trees for their own use. .
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That’s good information. I agree most university research is too tightly focused.
I mean, U of Minnesota almost eliminated Honeycrisp apples and Frostbite apples because they had cultural problems for the commercial orchardists.
Many other fine experiments have undoubtedly been completely put on the compost bin of many a university.
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One suggestion I have is to try to plant apples that have resistance to Summer rots. This will reduce your headaches and the number of sprays you do a year. Take a look at this thread for some suggestions.
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The pictures of the Apples on your website look great!
Are you on larger trees like MM111?
I saw a lot of water around your orchard and I’m I wondering how you think the water may impact the quality of the Apples or Pears that you are growing.
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I sold about 80 bearing age apple trees (5-6 years of age) to a huge developer in N.C. near Greensboro. He had recently purchased a few thousand acres of farmland and wanted an instant orchard so trucked my trees down there- that was two growing seasons ago.
I just communicated with the manager who arranged the sale. He said the trees, which were a wide range of varieties with only a few old southern types like Winesap and Ark Black, are doing well and had a good crop this year, although he wrote that deer had done most of the harvesting so they put up a deer fence. Maybe they reach higher there than they usually do here. Our forests are pretty lush. However at some sites I manage bucks will get up on their hind legs to browse leaves and eat some fruit.
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You’re right - making sure the trees have adequate water is critically important. As you know, we will get a few weeks in July and August where 90+ temps is common. Under those conditions, the ground dries out pretty quickly and it’s hard keeping enough water on the trees, particularly the peach trees. I have most of my trees on drip irrigation but still augment that will hand watering during the height of summer.
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Most of my apple trees are on dwarf rootstock although I have a few hundred on semi-dwarf or semi-standard.
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