Criollo Peaches

[johninfla]

An elderly friend of my mother has an old peach that produces small, white fleshed, cling stone peaches with a delicious flavor that make a superb pie. The tree isn't sprayed or fertilized but still produces very well. My wife calls them duraznos criollos or creole peaches and knows them from her country of Peru. I'm guessing that these are a "landrace" type of peach.

Anyway, two years ago I got approximately eighty peaches from her tree and stratified the pits for three months after which I cracked them open and planted the seeds. Last spring we planted twenty of them out in the chicken yard and most have grown very well. The average height now is between 5 and 6 feet (one is about nine feet and on the other extreme one is about two feet). All of them have just leafed out and the two largest actually had one flower each.

I am really just growing them for fun but I am curious if any of you have done anything similar. Additionally I am curious if any of you market gardeners think that people would buy a small peach like this. I think that we (as a culture) are pretty spoiled and like our softball size freestone peaches to the exclusion of any others. My wife and I have this conversation often about how you can go to the market in the third world and buy "ugly" or smaller fruits with particular flavors but here they are no where to be found. She particularly misses the manzanas de jugo or the juice apples which are small (golfball size) and ugly with a particular sour flavor for making juice.

[blueadzuki]

I have one current peach tree, which is a Hiawatha (at least it think it is, I have actually forgotten what the tree was called when I bought it as a tiny seedling 5-6 years ago, but having gone online, "Hiawatha" is the only peach I have seen that shares my peache's dark purple leaves. I've basically just let the tree do as it will (not only have I never sprayed or fetalized it, I've never even pruned it (except for removing actual dead branches) and it has still developed into a 3-4' tree that, even though it is still in a whisky barrel pot (It's getting planted in the ground as soon as we can find space for it.) does in fact make a fair handful of peaches each year. Like your's these are quite small (golf ball sized, usually) white fleshed peaches (oddly despite the tree having such dark purple leaves, the peach skins are not unusually dark; they have the same blush as a normal peach would) I wont claim they are the tastiest peaches in the world and they take a ridiculously long time to ripen (while they reach maximum size by about the end of April, they often don't soften up and become ready for eating until the end of October!) but the fact I get peaches at all astonishes me.
As for "does anyone else do what you did), I do all the time. Besides having saved every pit from every peach from my tree I could find (a few that fell off early were devoured wholly by squirrels, pit and all) I also have ready for planting this year if I should so choose some pits from some really small jarred pickled Thai peaches I found in an asian supermarket (I'm hpoing that 1. the peaches were picked ripe enough to have mature pits (they were rock hard even after being pickled, so they were probably pickled green) 2. the pickling was done at room temperature (so that the peaches were not boiled) and 3. the stone protected the kernels from the brine). we shall have to see. I also this year already loaded a ton of pots with pits from thing like plums (mostly english greengages, probably, but hopefully one or two kernels from the wild plums I collected back in colledge). Ume plums (Prunus mume the fuzzy asian one that make plum blossoms and the fruit used for things like umeboshi and Chinese dried Mei plums. some bright orange donut peaches. etc.

[traab]

Great peach project. You may need to educate people by perhaps offering samples of fruit you have processed or serve raw. Each tree may be a little different and people need to learn to enjoy it. Chefs explore foods and niche products can find a place in peoples shopping. The local peach with a story is already interesting to me. You have a few years to develop ideas.

You may have to develop the market and niche yourselves and perhaps become the peach source for that type peach or product.

A berry our family grows and uses is obscure and can not be bought. People I have shared prepared food items using the berry, really like it. But they would not have the preparation ideas that pass through the family to enjoy it if just given the fruit. So it is a use and a fruit that might be presented in a welcoming presentation.

It is great you are saving this fruit!

Look for wild seedling apples as they vary from fantastic to giving a stomach ache. We gave up on popular cider apples of centuries ago. Specialty collectors still have these.

[johninfla]

What berry is it that your family grows? I'm always looking for new things to grow and try.

I have a kind of fuzzy dream that when my girls are teenagers they can grow and sell some of our fruit and vegetables for spending money. Where we live there are not many jobs especially for teenagers. I'd love them to be able to have something of there own. That is my justification of having my plants and animals.....the truth is it is just fun to do!

Blue Adzuki,
the two rootstocks for FL peaches (Flordagard, and Nemared) both have purplish red leaves. I wonder if your peach might be one of them or closely related?

[blueadzuki]

Feb 28, 2012 12:15:17 GMT -5 johninfla said:

o do!

Blue Adzuki,
the two rootstocks for FL peaches (Flordagard, and Nemared) both have purplish red leaves. I wonder if your peach might be one of them or closely related?

Nemared I suppose is theoretically possible (though I'm reasonably sure that when I bought the tree s was described as an "heirloom", and Nemared would definitely not be classified as that). Though I'm a little dubios that a peach that is promoted as an ideal rootstock for Florida and low to no chill peaches would be doing so well up her in my super chill area (I'm in the lower middle of New York, so we are very firmly in "high chill peach territory). I can't seem to find a picture of a full grown nemared tree so I can't comment further there. I DID find a picture of a full grown Flordagard, and I can defintively say mine ISN'T that. Flordigards leaves are both much purpler and much wider (mine are strappy to willow leaf) More importatly as i said, on my peach tree, the darkened shade does NOT extend to the skin of the fruit, they look normal. I found a picture of a fruiting Flordagard, and the fruit is basically black (in fact it looks a bit like a rounder version of a black velvet apricot.) No longer quite sure it's a hiawatha either anymore, the skin on those is too dark as well. Hiawatha is known for being a precoios flowerer (my tree was flowering 2 years after I planted it) and being highly self fertile (remember I only have 1 tree, and none of my neigbors have ANY, so the fact I get peaches indicates that the tree pollinates itself. And while I nomarally only end up with 4 peaches at the end ( between weather, spontaneous abortions animal damage etc.) almost every flower (around 40-50 each year, usually) develops the beginning of a fruit.) So my guess is a Hiawatha cousin, similar but with lighter colored fruit. As the article I found says, red leaves are actually a pretty common trait chosen in rootstock peaches, since it makes identifying and removing rootstock suckers a lot easier.