I saw a post from Drew51 about him being zone 5 and growing spicezee nectaplums. Do you guys think I could actually grow it in zone 5 or do you think I would fail. I am technically zone 5b.
I’m technically in 6a after the change in ratings. You could try grafting it first. My tree has died. But it was from wet feet. We had a rare flood a couple years ago. Happens about once every ten years. The tree took 2 years to die. I now have added a 3 foot raised bed and purchased another tree coming this spring. I lost 3 trees to wet feet. One died immediately and 2 lingered for over a year, but eventually died. I’m only replacing two of them. The other has been in a year already. Spice Zee nectaplum didn’t have any issues with hardiness the 5 or 6 years it fruited for me. It took a few years for the fruit not to be bland. Seems to need time to establish. I don’t care, I love this fruit. Compared to Flavor King pluots and beefsteak tomatoes. SpiceZee at 12 o’clock. Those paste tomatoes are Romeo, biggest pastes ever! A fantastic heirloom!
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We really like our Spice Zee nectaplum! I have it grafted onto a Snow Queen nectarine which itself is on a semi-dwarfing root stock. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Snow Queen has acted like an interstem and the Spice Zee has turned into a monster and was very vigorous last year. While we had a ton of fruit, I’m worried that it’ll shade out the Snow Queen. I did do a decent amount of pruning this winter to bring down it’s height, but I’ll need to do some summer pruning to help manage growth.
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Are you zone 5?
2x5 
If you click on JCT’s name you can see he is in San Diego. My high today is 22F
I bet it’s better there
I’m trying to settle an estate, (long story) and have been up in Cheboygan the last week. It’s about at the finger nail of the middle finger at the top of the glove we call the lower peninsula. The high there is 4F today. Glad to be home!
No, as @Drew51 mentioned, I’m in San Diego 10b. At 10am it’s already a too hot 77F and it’s supposed to get up to 79F. I’m betting it’ll get hotter. While a week of really warm weather isn’t unusual due to the Santa Ana winds we get, we’ve had a series of them, followed by mild weather and then another series of Santa Anas. My Spice Zee bloomed 4 weeks early this year (although it only bloomed for the first time last year.)
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I can’t find out weather from the past two months but we are starting to move upward in weather here too. I heard a few weeks ago we had a -6 and a coworker said up the hill from my work it got to -13. Like I said we are zone 5b so I think the lowest we have around here is -15. This weeks lows are all in the 20s. Here in Colorado our weather is weird. We typically have 2 or 3 false springs and the people not native to here try planting everything then and it fails. We are pretty much in the clear after mothers day and after memorial day we have little to no chance of snow. Once it is May we go from snowy winter conditions to summer heat though. My father left me nothing which is a good and bad thing. I never got a estate to settle which while it would have been a lot of work but would have been very profitable given he was a lawyer winning big cases. At the same time I dodged a lot of lawsuits that fallowed and the lawsuits would have taken up all my time.
Family stuff can be tough. It is my mother in law that passed. It’s a small house and I don’t need the money. Her death was unexpected. It has been painful and saddening to deal with her estate. My wife is a wreak! Seeing all that stuff, and having to let go of her and unneeded belongings has been difficult for my wife, and sad for me to watch. The estate sale ended today. The house goes up for sale tomorrow. She was a super nice, extremely intelligent lady. A quilter who has quilts she made in the MSU folk art museum, other museums also. She was a fantastic artist. I will always miss her. I’m retired and started saving for retirement in my early twenties. Smartest thing I ever did. I worked my ass off for everything I have. Blue collar all the way. I’m 65 years old now. I retired at 64. Put two kids through college too. Now both make more than I ever did! My oldest is 40.
Colorado is a tough grow area. We had a girl from the Denver area on this board and she gave up on stone fruit. So I would probably stick to well known to be hardy trees like Reliance. As far as nectarines, old school eastern types. I do not envy your conditions. Good luck with it. You can find stuff that will work, even work well, but it will take time.
Here 9 out of ten years the winter to spring transition is perfect. The Great Lakes buffer temps. The waters warm the air in the fall and cools the air in the spring. No such thing as a sudden warm up here. Same with sudden freezes. Either can happen about once or twice every ten years. We are very lucky. Pest pressure is moderate most years. A good place to grow organically. Having said all that I have killed a number of trees. At least 7 of them, 5 blueberry plants too! I was lucky enough to figure out what happened. My harvests are excellent now thanks to the school of hard knocks.
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