Both Chris and I have peaches in the San Juans. I have the two Frosts that were planted by previous owner and I added Salish Summer recently. They have not been sprayed for at least a couple years. I am about to graft on Avalon Pride to one of the Frosts.
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I have tried the following peaches:
Avalon Pride, Betty, Nanaimo, Frost, Charlotte, Salish Summer, Indian Free, Black Boy, Oregon Curl Free.
Even though they all are listed as peach-leaf-curl resistant, unsprayed they all get 80-90% PLC here on Guemes Island, a fungal paradise. (Others south of me have less of a problem.) A spray schedule of lime sulfur alternated with copper sulfate, every 1 1/2 months from October to March, reduces the incidence to 10%-15% depending on the year.
Part of the reason one might give up on peaches in the PNW is that the disease so disfigures the leaves that an infected tree is noticeable from yards away. Looks like poor husbandry!
Interestingly, the oldest trees (12 years), Avalon and Salish Summer, seem to have outgrown PLC.
Next year Iāll be dipping my toe over to the dark side to use ziram. Could be that ziram in October and February might be all that is needed.
Lovell is the most commonly used rootstock. Lovell is somewhat susceptible to bacterial canker, another issue in our wet springs. Nemaguard, resistant to soil nematodes, is another possibility but is equally susceptible to bacterial canker.
At this point my 12 year old trees provide all the peaches I need for canning, drying, and giving away. The bottom line- if you can spray till well established, youāll have plenty of peaches. I probably donāt need 9 trees!
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No Chris - aka cdamarjian.
Iām in Bellevue. My wife would love a peach tree. After watching the unknown variety planted across the street succumb to PLC over two years we arenāt too interested in giving a peach tree a try ourselves even with something resistant like Frost or Summer Salish.
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The place I bought them from have sold loads of peach trees over the years.
I grew up in Clark County, WA and would not recommend peaches unless someone lived in Yakima Valley.
Also would not recommend any apples or pears on west side of mountains due to maggot quarantine, only on eastern side.
Cherries are highly recommended though!
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are you referring to this maggot quarantine? Quarantine Area Residents | Washington State Department of Agriculture
Iāve found organza bags to be almost perfectly effective for apples and pears. my main pest is codling moth from huge nuisance trees on maybe every 10th property in my neighborhood, including one 80 feet away. I wouldnāt get any clean fruit without management but with the bags I get 95%+
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Yeah, the nylon fruit socks work well for apple maggot too. They have mixed results for codling moth, but folks think they work better for codling moth when coated with kaolin clay.
Where do you get your organza bags?
I have contacted every retail Nursery I can think of and, if the have Peach Trees, they are small.
Small is great. Peaches grow very fast. If you get a bigger one itās less likely to have a balanced root to top ratio.
this amazon item, 5x7, 11 cents each https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07W8GR4JC/
this is the right size for most apples and asian pears but I need to get the next size up for red rome and euro pears this year, they got squeezed. they can be reused at least two years unless they rip
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Are you able to use them more than one season?
yes two seasons at least unless they rip on a branch or something
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Yes, that is the quarantine. It is serious. It was an invasive species brought in from Asia, and now we are banned from selling it outside of our area. Only Eastern WA can grow to sell worldwide apples in our state now. If we were to burn down all the apple and pear trees on the Western WA side, I bet in a few years we could replant again. But that will never happen, because people keep planting in our area, ignorant of the maggot, until they see them.
It wasnāt cool when our governor took some from Olympia, at the Governorās Mansion, to Eastern WA for a photo op trip during their apple harvest. You would think he would have known.
for a home grower the quarantine doesnāt seem like a problem (I just use my fruit at home, no need to ship it across the state), the pest pressure and requirement to manage would be the problem. is the pest pressure too high to make it worth growing apples?
It is miserable. I have seen them making nests in the trees. The fruit looks spotted and misshapen.
If you live here, grow other fruit trees. Cherries are wonderful here. So are flowering cherries and flower plum for ornamental. Grow plums of all kinds, they do well too. Persimmons grow here well, and are still pretty rare, so it is worth the price of the tree.
I went to the eugene propagation thing today. they had a great selection of table grape cuttings from OSU (and a couple from me!) and a bunch of apples and pears. stone fruits were pretty light but all of their rootstocks were $3 and they had k1 and k5 (no peach seedling though). I talked to one of their grafters, he said he runs a business doing 10k bench grafts a year. he used a zenport, regular parafilm, a spritz of water in the union, and a seal was on the end (same as I do!)
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Iām a member of Nextdoor and get their emails.A new one mentioned Hortsense from WSU.It was from a person who is in the Master Gardener program.After going to the site,this was found about fruit growing.Looks like some useful information.
http://hortsense.cahnrs.wsu.edu/Search/MainMenuWithFactSheet.aspx?CategoryId=3
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