My guess is germination of Lovell peach seed is like most other peach seed.
Lovell isn’t used as a canning peach anymore, so any Lovell seed must be grown, just for the pits.
A distant family member has a peach orchard south of me by about 200 miles. He bought a bunch of Lovell seed somewhere and planted the pits and nothing came up. So be careful where you buy your seed from. I can’t remember where he got his seed.
VanWell nursery (they sell over 1 mil trees/year) uses random pits for seedling peach rootstock, according to a rep I spoke with years ago.
I grow all my peach rootstocks from random peach drops. The literature says later season peaches have better germination, so I try to use later season drops for peach seed. I’ve not seen any difference in purchased peach trees with named peach seedling rootstocks (Lovell, Halford, Bailey, Guardian, Tenn Nat. Red Leaf) vs. just my random seedling rootstocks.
But I’m not in a super cold climate where a lot of winter hardiness of the rootstock is required. Nor do we have issues with parasitic nematodes.
Why is this? Lovell for canned peach halves is exactly my plan. A tree ripe canned lovell peach has to be better than those tasteless rubbery peach impersonation things that come in jars from the store.
I am grafting for the first time this year and this exact question of temperature has been the most confounding factor.
I ordered an apricot scion and a St Julian rootstock and did a whip and tongue graft on the rootstock and have it inside now where the temperature only varies from 65-70 degrees. Today I did two Z grafts on an outdoor myrobalan 29C rootstock where the temperatures are totally unpredictable and somewhat unmeasurable.
I was initially planning to wait until June when our temperatures regularly hit 70 F, but after seeing that other people were grafting earlier I decided to try. I set up a min/max thermometer near my grafts and I’m going to check it every day for a few weeks to see if it at least reaches 70F.
As soon as I put the thermometer out the sun was on it and it immediately went to 82F. It’s stabilized around 75F after about an hour of intermittent sun. According to our forecast it is currently either 50F or 55F and cloudy depending on which one you check. It’s actually 60F and partly cloudy, though.
Thanks for the data there, this shows why you don’t need 70F air if it’s sunny. Even partly sunny does better than you might expect it sounds like.
… Once upon a time I found a graph of peach callus rates, I can’t find it now but here is a similar one. Just subtract about 10F from this and you will get what the peach callous temps look like. You can see that when it gets too cold (at the graft, not the air) you get no callus. Too hot is also just as bad, above 85F gets too hot for peaches.
I’ve been grafting potted St. Julian rootstocks with dormant peach scions indoors in the spring. My house is only in the mid 60s, but I place them in a sunny window. They take with very high success. I’ve had much better luck grafting peach to plum rootstocks than to peach rootstock, even indoors.
Correct. The peaches in the stores around here are mostly inedible.
Lovell originated in 1882. It’s not used as a canning peach anymore because like all peaches created over time, there have been advancements in breeding.
There are not a lot of peaches left from that era. Heath Cling, Old Mixon Free, Elberta, Belle of Georgia and probably a few others. Peach breeding was in it’s infancy then (sort of).
I say “sort of” because peaches have been bred for 1000s of years, but there have been a lot of advancements in the last 150 years.
Beware that Lovell peaches may disappoint you. I believe I’ve read of someone who let a Lovell rootstock produce and was really disappointed.
In addition, there is at least two Lovell strains (probably more). Here is a thread on it.
There are probably more than two Lovell strains because it’s very likely that some nurseries along the way planted Lovell peach pits, let the tree grow, then started harvesting “Lovell” peach pits from the Lovell seedling. It happens, and more likely to happen when the fruit isn’t even used for eating anymore.
If you want a canning peach, I’d recommend Babygold #5. I’ve grown it before. It’s a very high quality canning peach.
It’s not like a canning peach your typical home canner might think of though. True canning peaches (the kind they send to canneries) are very firm and rubbery in texture. They are also clingstone.
The reason they are rubbery is because they want the peach to have some texture after the canning process. The heat in canning breaks down the flesh quite a bit so that a normal peach gets really soft. In some cases, very very soft.
True canning peaches are rubbery or very chewy in texture right off the tree, but about normal peach texture after canning.
The reason true canning peaches are clingstone is that the pits of freestone peaches will shatter in the processing machinery used in canneries.
I thought Babygold #5 was an excellent flavored peach. And it produced abundantly in average years. But I couldn’t really sell any of the fruit for fresh eating. Customers here are used to melting flesh peaches and didn’t like the texture of Babygold #5.
I didn’t mind the texture. The texture was very close to a TangOs peach.
it seems people are rooting lovell cuttings just fine: https://youtu.be/prex9NgyRSY?t=211 would this suggest that they stool as well? it would probably depend on if lovell suckers or not
this is poorly worded. i meant scion. is this not offered by anyone because of the short window the live wood has?
My success getting takes when grafting Peach/Nectarine has always been quite low.Even waiting for sunny days,doesn’t help too much.
Yesterday,while visiting Ram,we talked about it a little.A thought came to me,that even though the daytime temperatures can be over 70F,at night they drop,sometimes below 50F,here in the PNW.This probably contributes to the low rates.
Ram has a hot pipe setup for some Persimmons in pots and I was thinking,it could be implemented in trees,seeing its flexibility.
I see. I watched the vid. It appears the guy’s method works well for rooting just about any wood, including peach.
In terms of traditional stooling via root suckers, Lovell almost rarely sends up root suckers. When it does sucker, it’s almost suckers right off the trunk below ground, so it really doesn’t make new roots from the sucker.
The guy in the vid took a whole season to root out his Lovell shoots, so he really didn’t save any time vs. planting peach pits. In fact, in one season, peach seedlings from pits would already be several feet tall and ready to graft, so his method would be slower from a commercial perspective.
I think his method would have a nice application if someone wanted peaches on their own roots, and didn’t have rootstocks available to graft.
The beauty of fall budding is that unlike traditional grafting, only a very small portion of the bark is removed, so I think it’s easier for the wound to callus.
Additionally, you don’t have to have good refrigeration storage to ensure the wood is in excellent shape because you cut the wood, and moments later are budding it.
All I carry with me when budding is a cooler with a little bit of water in the bottom, so the budwood doesn’t dry out, and my budding tools. You just want to make sure it’s not too early in the season, or too late in the season. Here Sept. 1st seems about pefect unless projected highs are above 90F (too hot). Then I wait until projected highs are below 90.
this is chicken and egg situation though. you need to purchase or have grown a large enough tree of a variety that you want for live scion. it doesnt seem that you can get or would be viable for someone to get you live scion that you want.
Regardless of the temperature, the best success is when the bud is swelling. You would need a fresh source of scions. My nectarine grafts. Picture was taken yesterday.
Apricots is so-so with me. I rather enjoy nectarines and plums. I have 1 nectarine graft that only have 1 flower bud on top. I pinch it off. There is no other bud, but the scion remain green. It refused to create new branch or leaves after a month.
Around a week ago, I did graft a few apricot scion onto the plum. I got the scion from a cousin and the apricot have already leafed out. So, there is no bud. I don’t like the apricot scions because they are not straight. If they works, then I can have plum, nectarine, and apricot onto one tree.
too late to get scion this year for sure, but my veteran peach got weed whacked last year and died - the root stock (unknown) has grown all up around it. I could graft to those for sure- I’ve been reading up on varieties, still want veteran on it but might have room for two? types
it started growing in the late summer and got pretty good sized already.
when should I look to order scions, and is just keeping them in fridge until it’s nice and toasty outside the best plan? I’m supposing it’ll be next spring for this so by then the shoots should be pretty thick. I’ll cut back to two or three over the summer this year to get them ready I think
Read up in olpea and fall bud grafting. He posted some good videos on spring T bud grafting also. I still think only scion with vegetative buds will have the highest sucess rate. I’m still experimenting though.
