Does anyone have success growing plums, peaches, or cherries with minimal spraying on the East Coast? I wanna try Methley and Santa Rosa plum.
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Both my Methley and Santa Rosa did very poorly in Cincinnati Ohio on the Teays river bank. High heat high humidity and lots of disease.
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ill let you know. planted a Kristen / Stella cherry in a sheltered s. exposure microclimate last spring. it grew well. buried under 6ft. of snow for the winter. ordered a Reliance peach and a Black ice plum for this spring. these 2 wont have much protection. its pretty wet here but not much hot and muggy. from late June to mid sept. it can be but timely sprays can take care of them for a few months as long as they can take our winters here. i have Montmorency, Juliet, carmine jewel, Romeo and lutowka rose sour cherry and so far no issues by year 4. sprayed in june and oct. with fungicide for leaf spot but nothing else and they have no issues.
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If only sweet cherries performed as good as sour ones! They are selling plums and cherries at Lowes. Not so sure it’ll be worth the trouble.
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Unless you spray for brown rot you are wasting your time. No spray, no crop. I’m in the top of Va. Just guessing, but for 8a you are in Va Beach.
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Stonefruit without spray is very hard. If you are willing to spray I would say grow them but otherwise they are not worth the time or effort. The east coast is going to be very wet which is not good for stonefruit.
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6ft of snow…and I complain about the couple of inches we got in the last few days. 
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Yeah, just north of it. Sounds like I will not be trying them!
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Brown rot is the main thing you need to worry about. I have tons of stone fruit trees. The number is being reduced some, because of all the spraying. A couple trees of spraying will not be all that bad on you. I spent quite a few years of my childhood in Chesapeake. The even climate makes for good growing conditions.
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I guess two plums wouldn’t be that much work even if they fail. Do apples also require a lot of work?
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There is a good chance apples will need sprayed as well. All of the fruit will grow great, it’s insect and disease that makes it difficult. Like stone fruit you will need to spray for insect and most apples suffer from cedar apple rust that will need spray. Not to many fruits are completely no spray. If you search on here you can find reports on different varieties stating issues and taste.
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Yeah that is why I am focusing on berries and easier to manage fruit trees. Temperatures are nice most of the year, but unfortunately disease, humidity, and pests take their toll.
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Persimmons, pawpaws, kiwis, muscadines, berries, jujubes, and hazelnuts are all doing great for me with no spray. That’s about it though, other things either need sprays or are not hardy enough. Stone fruits require a minimum of 6 or so sprays in your climate if you want to get anything.
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Well good news is, I love a lot of the no spray fruits! I’m also doing jujube and figs which I hear is lower maintenance as well.
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I wonder if VA is so much different than NY. I have customers that harvest peaches without any synthetic spray and only using Surround as a protectant- although that’s hardly low spray- it requires at least 3. However, I do know of folks that have harvested peaches without any spray at all- maybe ugly but delicious. It seems some varieties are resistant to brown rot. It helps to have sun from dawn on the fruit.
Does anyone further south have experience of harvesting no-spray peaches? Perhaps a topic specifically addressing no spray peaches on the east coast would draw some response.
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I’m in RIchmond, VA. Apples are horrible, as the very long hanging time means the chance of incidental damage is very high. And once the skin is damages, the fruit is gonna go.
Oddly, I had better results with plums. HOWEVER, I haven’t had brown rot visit yet and both plum circulio and oriental fruit moth are issues. The circ does prefer apples to my actual plums.
My one peach tree failed to set fruit due to some fungal issue and last year everything froze out so I can’t say a lot there yet.
I would not suggest cherries unless you want some really ugly fruit. Apricots are a reasonable option but I had freeze problems and they get hit hard by either circ or OFM or both. My pluot has yet to set fruit despite being one of my oldest trees. I may take it out soon.
I use mostly surround, immunox, and neem. This year I’m going to take specific OFM steps, and also use both lime sulfur early and heavy use of JoeReal’s Italian Dressing spray.
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Oops I left off jujubes! I added it. Figs I have not had consistent reliability due to freeze back. Last summer was the first year in about ten where I had a good crop, too many fig die-backs in the last ten years here. Pomegranates are similar, plus too much rot on them.
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It is similar, I’ve been to New York. It’s just more mild in the winter, a hotter summer, and probably a lot more humid here.
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Great temperatures for those fruits, it’s a shame we have to do all that.
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Thankfully here figs are reliable enough. I’m sure in an especially cold year they could freeze back, but for the most part you can walk through my neighborhood and they are fairly common. I had my pomegranate set fruit last year but it rotted off. It was in a pot and I suspect better potting mix would have improved my results. I’m planting a few more in the yard. I know of one person in my neighborhood with a nice small pomegranate bush.
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