Mid-Missouri zone 6b. I have two peach trees, now 8 and 10 feet tall, that I started from hard wood cuttings. When I prune in the spring, I usually stick a few cuttings in pots. That is how these two got started from my Contender peach tree. They should produce fruit next year.
I have tried that countless times and NEVER got a single peach cutting to root. I’ve used root hormones, willow, water, different soils, etc. Any tricks you can share. I have a peach tree that is on its way to dying of old age and I can’t even get a graft of it to work, so I’d love to get a hard wood cutting to root. Tell me how!
I didn’t know that rooting peaches is a thing, but my next-door neighbor who doesn’t know a lot about fruit trees, created 4 trees from cuttings struck from a friend’s tree.
I’ve grafted a couple of them over to other things.
I use whatever potting soil that I have on hand. Many times I reuse the potting soil I removed from the hanging pots. I think that using straight sand would work fine, but I have mixed it half and half (sand/potting soil) because it stays moist longer. I put the pots on the north side of my shed. Direct sun should never hit the rooting pots; there are no leaves- they can not use sun anyway. I wish that I had a mist system where I could put a 10 second mist every 15 minutes or so during warm weather, but they cost too much.
I would post a picture but cannot figure out how to post on this site.
that’s how i root all my cuttings except i stick them in ground where i want them or in a nursery bed, in ground. i take the cuttings after the trees go dormant. i then cover the cuttings in woodchips. in spring i pull back the mulch a little from the cutting. ive even got 50-60% takes on cherry and blueberry cuttings this way. i dont know how well it would work without snow cover though. going to have to try peach. currants, elder, aronia, autumn olive, cane fruit and seaberry are near 100% success this way. i just scratch to the cambium near the bottom and havent used rooting hormone.
Peaches are cool since they grow relatively true from seed, or at least are more likely to be delicious and a good quality from seed. Variation within the fruit is expected, but our peach tree growing up was seedling peach from a neighbors tree and it was fantastic.
I agree. Peach trees from seed grow bigger and live longer. Both desirable traits IMO. The only problem could be the roots being prone to disease? Or don’t tolerate water logging. The dozen or so seed grown trees I have seen in my area have no problems with root disease, and some of them are really large, and the fruit taste great.
I’m surprised that you are getting so much variation. My main experience with seedling peaches is from a rental property. It had a large peach tree when I bought it, which is exactly like Heath Cling (late season (~Oct 1st), distinctive flavor, white flesh, etc). There was also a young seedling about 8-10 feet away.
After a year or two, the seedling started producing identical fruit. As in, if I put 5 of each on the counter, I can’t tell which group is from which, even when tasting them.
Since then, I’ve planted a few more seedlings from this tree and the fruit from the one which has come into bearing is also identical. Maybe this is a factor of not having any other peaches around that rental property to contribute different genetics.
One row is from the original tree and the other is from the seedling. Some of them are smaller, but I think that is just a factor of me not thinning enough (a consistent problem for me). There is some insect damage, as I haven’t always sprayed at the rental. And now that I think about it, maybe they are both seedlings- if Heath Cling keeps producing clones, there is no telling if I started with an original or a seedling.
I’m curious if this is common for seedling peach trees. I have one seedling peach that produced 12 nice sized tasty semi freestone peaches and probably 50 that grew to no larger than a quarter. The 12 peaches were scattered about the tree, so not on a single limb, same with the 50, scattered about tree.
This just seems really odd to me. What are your experiences?
