Peaches are all about timing and further south it may get trickier… I don’t know, but Scott seems to think recent grafts can be killed when it gets too hot unless protected with aluminum. I got up to near 100F just as some peach grafts were emerging and, although unprotected, the didn’t suffer at all. I graft them a couple of weeks after they’ve started showing green until a week or two after flowers are gone.
I used to have difficulty with peaches but once I started storing the wood more casually and not binding them up with stretch wrap I get a pretty good percentage of takes… but still only 60-70%. I don’t consider myself an expert grafter, just a fairly efficient one in that I only use splice grafts- the simplest graft there is. Most of my peach grafts are on nursery trees so if I did a lot of digging near a tree and damaged its roots, grafts may not take. Generally established, vigorous trees provide the best results.
However, I always have a great selection of wood, which allows me to match diameters of scion to mother quite well. My wood also has plenty of stored energy coming from vigorous trees- with a wide range of diameters to work with.
This year my Euro plum grafts mysteriously did extremely poorly, which does suck, but through CHAT GPT I learned the proper timing for grafting persimmons and of 8 grafts I did 7 took. My paw paw grafts have also been very successful.
Splice grafts, I’m guessing is a celft graft? If so then that’s my favorite for cherry, I seem to have 100% sucess with cleft on cherry.
I have a lot to learn about peaches in general. I’m just happy they are all still alive. Weather this year has been very wet everysince winter.
I just cleaned out the cattle corral with the tractor. It was amazing the amount of mud that was in there. I moved close to 11 yards of very fertlize soil out of there. Now I have to go hose off the tractor.
This is a basic drawing of it, but I cut mine at sharper angles with an AM Leonard double bladed Italian pruning shear. I hold the pieces together with cheap black vinyl electric tape and wrap the scions with Buddy tape, an expensive version of parafilm also sold by AM Leonard.
I never have to check the peach trees for ripe furit. My wife just came in with the first few ripe red haven peaches that “just fell off in my hand”. Pretty peaches and good sized with no defects. Thanks to all of you
Red haven starting to ripen. I want to thank all of you for bird-doggin’ me twords a spray program that actually works. We got good sized clean and mighty tastey furits so far. Three more later season varieties left to flesh out and ripen.
Tree ripened redhaven peach season is over here. Granddaughters picked every last one off the tree. They were/are absolutely delicious tree ripened. Good clean fruits, even at the end of ripening . I have to admit i’m a little burnt out on redhaven. We’ve eaten Lord knows how many. I liked picking up overnight tree drops first thing in the morning. So tastey to slice up a few to eat in a bowl of homemade granola with milk.
Sadly, I had a late frost that got mine. Last year, I had a glorious peach year. This year, I am enjoying living vicariously through your peach victory!
This spring I got as far as bringing the chainsaw out to the trees, having decided peaches are way too much work for me. I was always too busy to actually cut them down, but they must have gotten scared because I have some of the best looking peaches ever and I have done literally nothing to the trees.
I’m attributing it to an extremely dry May, June, and July. That seems to be what it takes to keep brown rot in check. Lord knows none of the controls I tried had any effect.
For brown rot and other fungi, covers of Indar 2f plus myclobutanil plus speader/sticker is working very well for me. Its been a very wet season so far. I want to believe oil and copper sprays during dormancy were the biggest help though.
my reliance are hard but sizing up- i had a veteran but it died back to the graft line and has a few good branches that grew from that. what are some very early ripe varieties that might work here that i could get to graft on that next spring?
we’re zone 7a but winter is bitter cold, high wind and summer is dry, it’s high desert. we get test years of real cold pretty often. i think the dry is what killed the veteran peach though. the rootstock has 3 good graft sized branches coming out so i could try 3 things i think.
everything i have comes ripe in August through October here, except berries, those are done around early July. something that gets ripe really early, through June and early July, would be best as right now there’s really no fruit ready once the raspberries and mulberries finish.
i personally like white peach but my partner will eat anything. things that are different to the reliance would be good i think.
I’m in zone 7a, corncob southern, IL. I’m going to try June Gold and perhaps havester. i’ve heard some good things about June Gold but mums the word on harvester. The choices are vast for early peach varieties though (primarily clingstone).
I posted these on my local PNW thread but since we seem to be shy of harvests here…
This is Harbelle my first variety to ripen. My wife and i picked these a few days ago. Selling them at the farmers market today.
Its looking like Redhaven will be ready for the weekends U Pick, fingers crossed.
Thanks, these peaches are sold as organic so I normally try to keep up with the weed control with flaming. However once the trees get this loaded down with fruit the heat will fry the lower growth and fruit so in this pic I had had just used a product called Limonene. The whole place smells like lemons afterwards
thanks for encouragement. Harbelle is a recommended variety here.