First of all Joe, I’d like to thank you for testing all of those tropicals and sharing your results with us. That project has been very interesting and informative.
My peach and nectarine have also been hammered by PLC this year. I sprayed with copper once but it was too late. The peach may be a goner, virtually every leaf is affected and I removed all of the fruit. The new leaves that are pushing out are also infected. I pulled out another DWN peach tree last year when I found heavy gummosis at the graft union. At this point I am not sure that peaches will have much of a future in my orchard.
I agree with others that plums do relatively well in our area. In my orchard this year aphids, earwigs and some other pests are a little out of control but the most prevalent disease is shothole fungus. Most of the fruit is unaffected but there is a lot of leaf damage. Regardless, it appears that I will have my largest plum crop to date.
I confirmed that I had this problem on my Hollywood plum. It looked like fireblight but was actually a population explosion of aphids on the tender new growth. They also seem to favor my Mirabelle De Nancy in a big way. Its interesting how aphids seem to prefer specific cultivars.
I think you have a good point about Citation roots. Of about 12 varieties, we only ended up with one on citation because we couldn’t find it on other roots: Indian Free. It is the only one that got terrible mildew last year and the peaches were terrible. We almost pulled them out but we decided to give them one more year.
All the others are on Lovell. And doing well when we get enough winter chill. We are only about 10 miles from the coast.
After some initial failures, I’ve also stuck with Lovell for peaches, and chosen only PLC-resistant varieties: Indian Free and Indian Blood (Cling), Black Boy, and Peregrine so far. I’m right on the coast as well, and PLC is a big deal here. While I saw a bit of curl during this wet spring, all the peaches are doing well, having shrugged off a late cold snap that killed several apricots and four of my apples as well.
I live in a very good climate for growing fruit tree wood (sound fruit is another issue) here in non-coastal S. NY state, so citation works fine if you want a small tree. However, if a tree faces stress, such as PLC you would naturally want a more vigorous root stock. The greater stored energy would help a tree trying to survive ill-suited weather conditions for this species, which occur in Oakland. Here peaches are never killed by PLC (IME) because conditions that suit it only exist in early spring. Once things heat up with average temps above the mid-70’s, healthy leaves return- often the damage doesn’t even destroy the crop.
The funny thing about coastal CA is that if you just go uphill a few hundred feet above the fog line, conditions become much more accommodating, so at least you can buy high quality nects and peaches at the farmers markets. The best conditions in the world for growing this kind of fruit is so close to you. I can buy good stonefruit at farm markets here but for great I have to grow it myself.
The biggest and best stone fruit I’ve grown have been on Citation. I’m wishing I hadn’t cut those trees down. And none lacked vigor although I’m fine with less vigor than most. Lovell has smaller fruit. K1 fruit is half the size of Citation.
Outdoors in the northeast I have seen no difference at all in fruit size, although I don’t get a lot of comparison with peaches. I certainly don’t need peaches larger than what I get on Lovell and can’t imagine that a more dwarfing rootstock could provide them. Mostly it is only pluots and plums on citation in orchards I manage, and the advantage is not in fruit size but in early bearing of Euro plums. I hate that my Flavor Grenade is on Citation because I’d like a more vigorous tree. DW controls the variety and only sells it on citation.
I think the advantage you speak of may be unique to your situation.
All of our farmers market stone fruit come from the baking hot Central Valley. Very different conditions from around the bay. Not saying their fruit is bad, but the few times I’ve gotten a good peach or apricot harvest in my backyard it blows them away.
Only a tiny handful of local stonefruit growers remain, notably Andy’s Orchard in Morgan Hill, which will probably become condos in the new future.
I’m not a fan of citation either. It does not do well here. With plums and pluots I have not seen any issues, but with peach I have. Of course a few trees and how they act doesn’t tell me anything really. Still, I like how Lovell works here, and sticking with it when possible. I won’t buy a peach on citation, I would a plum or pluot.
Hey Alan my Flavor Grenade is on Myro and I got it from raintree last year. Don’t know if that stock is suitable for NY or if you want to go through the trouble of starting over on a tree but I thought I throw that out there.
Fruit at farmers markets is usually quite under-ripe. In my experience, you can get decent plums and pluots there and they also improve in storage, peaches/nects are too hard, apricots are inedible. My destination for stone fruit is PYO orchards and farm stands in Brentwood. They have good peaches, nects, plums and pluots there. The fruit quality there is not as good as from my own trees but still pretty good (my climate is quite similar to Brentwood, but I thin much more aggressively than commercial farmers, also their peach variety selection is limited).
I’m not familiar with your scene there anymore. I left CA in the '70’s before all the stonefruit growers sold out and production moved inland. Mostly, when I go to CA I hang out in the Eureka area where my sister lives. At the Arcata farmers market there is every manner of excellent stonefruit produced by growers with small commercial orchards nearby in the warmer hills slightly inland. Good thing, cause she can’t even grow a good J. plum on the cool coast there- can’t get up the sugar. We’ve been trying to figure out what E. plums might shine there.
Mostly peaches/nectarines. The pluots also seem much smaller, apricots not so much. However it is hard to separate other factors like fruit load. The K1 trees are much smaller and I may not be thinning enough.
I probably shouldn’t say anything about comparative size of fruit on Lovell and Citation.
What I do know is I had big beautiful sweet fruit from Citation for many yrs. I only had a couple of stunted trees on Citation and that was trees planted after I had severe crown gall pressure. Here if not for crown gall all my trees would be on Citation.
Also in NorCal and I refuse to put any more effort into stone fruits than I do with anything else. If they can’t survive on their own, I just let them die and that’s what most of them eventually do, aside from plums.
That’s about where I’m at. Shiro and Beauty plums are happy here, and a handful of curl-resistant peaches are working so far, but I’ve given up on apricots and other stone fruit now. Apples are my focus, and a better match for my relaxed/lazy, no-spray orchard management style.
Have you tried myrobolan, I also am having no luck with apricots on citation. Have put a few on myrobolan to see if they will live longer. I notice adams county has them on myrobolan, any thoughts