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Post by kazedwards on Sept 8, 2014 1:51:18 GMT -5
We just bought some Colorado peaches the other day and I have saved the pits from them. Should I just plant them in the yard and see what happens this close to the first frost or wait until spring? Or should I start them in a pot and keep them inside for the winter? Or maybe something else entirely?
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Post by rowan on Sept 8, 2014 5:40:04 GMT -5
Just put them in a pot outside and ignore them. They will sprout when ready, maybe after 2 years if your winters are mild like mine (I don't know your climate), but they will sprout.
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Post by raymondo on Sept 8, 2014 6:15:51 GMT -5
A chap in Greece just walks around the hills south of Thessaloniki sticking them in the ground in autumn. He's had good results.
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Sept 8, 2014 7:59:25 GMT -5
We just bought some Colorado peaches the other day and I have saved the pits from them. Should I just plant them in the yard and see what happens this close to the first frost or wait until spring? Or should I start them in a pot and keep them inside for the winter? Or maybe something else entirely? Michael Dirr is the god of arbor culture, who writes NYC-phone book sized tomes like Manual of Woody Landscape Plants; talks about the things that inhibit tree seeds from growing. The generic 'cold stratification' for tree seeds is: plant in a wide pot with drainage holes. Cover pot with a plank to keep out visiting critters. remove plank early in the spring. Seedling trees should germinate as spring unfolds. Very occasionaly dried seed will need a second winter in order to germinate. So, don't dry or coddle your seed. Snow frost and short day length are all part of what it takes to get seed ready to grow. Your fridge, or freezer don't supply that. |
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Post by kazedwards on Sept 8, 2014 9:56:07 GMT -5
I think I will put them in a pot then a just see what happens then. I will put a few in the yard as well too. Thanks for the help guys
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Post by glenn10 on Sept 10, 2014 20:12:07 GMT -5
I have had really good luck with any stone fruit by taking fresh pits(never let them dry out) and putting them in a prepped plot just under the soil and placing a board on top to mark the area as well as keep the weeds from growing. Remove the board as soon as the snow melts and up come your seedlings. I have been doing this since 2007 and is ongoing year after year. I have done pits in the fridge with a moist paper towel in a ziplock baggie and the pit begin breaking dormancy a little after Christmas time depending upon parentage if the parent is a lower chill/higher chill variety. This method was not very practical for me as I had like a hundred pots with various peach,plum,apricot and cherry under grow lights in my basement trying to nurse them along till I could plant out in April. After the trans plant they just sat there while the summer/fall direct seeded ones shot up and grew several feet in the one season. So fast forward 7 years later and we have a whole jungle of stone fruit trees with some really awesome tasting hardy to our climate fruits.If you have the luxury as I do with a lot of space you can plant many and let mother nature weed out the weak ones....And the bad tasting ones which get grafted over  Glenn |
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Peach pits
Sept 11, 2014 16:48:08 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by kazedwards on Sept 11, 2014 16:48:08 GMT -5
I was thinking of doing a little of both. A few in pots and a few in the yard. We hope to move in a few years so I hope to be able to take a saplings with.
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Post by glenn10 on Sept 11, 2014 22:24:53 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Sept 11, 2014 23:52:29 GMT -5
Those are lovely peaches.
Peach trees tend to be small and short-lived, so not a big deal if handled for removal, if potted.
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Post by Drahkk on Sept 12, 2014 10:06:29 GMT -5
Zach, how far north are you? Colorado peaches probably need a good number of chill hours to germinate. If your winters are long enough they'll probably do just fine in pots outside, but here in MS I'd put them in the refrigerator in a container of moist soil right now to make sure, then transfer to pots outdoors in February. If they're completely dried out, you'll get better germination if you crack them with a bench vise. If they're still moist, don't bother. Just put them in soil.
Steev, what kind of peaches are you growing? There are trees in my mom-in-law's yard (including the ones I sent cuttings from) that are over 30 years old. A couple have been knocked down by storms, but they just grew back from where they fell. It could just be a climate difference again though, I know.
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Post by steev on Sept 12, 2014 11:04:41 GMT -5
I'm just comparing peaches to apples, walnuts, or figs, which can out-live us all.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 12, 2014 11:13:13 GMT -5
Glenn, is the other fruit in your hand in the picture a tomato or a red plum?
Also, in your opinion about how much "time" does one have between when a pit is removed from a fruit and when it becomes too dried out to be viable? At the moment I am saving the pits from this seasons greengage plums I am buying, with hopes of growing a few trees. I'd kind of like to wait until the greengage season is over before I start planting pits, so I know how many I have to work with (and, hence how much space I need to allot ) But since this is only the first week of the season here, that's at least another 3-4 weeks away. If I keep the pits I have now moist, will they still be OK then, or is this one of those "have to plant as soon as you eat the fruit things"?
I also have some Mirabelle pits (probably Mirabelle Geneva) but since those are by now totally dry (and shelled) they're probably all past saving, and I'll have to wait until next summer's crop before I can get some of those growing.
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Post by Drahkk on Sept 12, 2014 11:25:39 GMT -5
Dried pits are not always dead. I've gotten 30% germination from four year old pits that were stored in a paper bag on top of a refrigerator by simply cracking the outer shell and stratifying in the fridge. Age and drying reduce the germ rate, but do not necessarily kill all seeds. If you're planting this year you should be fine even if they dry a bit, unless you need 100% germination.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 12, 2014 11:51:13 GMT -5
Well if by "this year" you mean "over this winter and in next spring" yes. And I certainly don't need 100%. I have very little space. If 1 seed of each makes a mature tree, I'll be happy because 1 of each is all I really have room for ultimately. In fact, if I didn't suck so bad at grafting, I'd probably cut three or four of those "one of each trees" (there's 2 kinds of Green gages, and besides those and the mirabelles, there's also the peach I already have, and the edible pit apricot) and graft them all on to the remaining one (probably the peach since it's already a well established tree) so as to get maximum diversity into minimum space (I'd just have to hope that the greengage strains were either self fertile or cross fertile with the Mirabelle) Maybe not the apricot since that most definitely does NOT need chill (I've popped pits from fruit into peat pots indoors and they have sprouted readily, I just haven't gotten one that lived long enough indoors to make it outside.)
Actually while I am at it, I can try my hand at a REAL challenge. A few years ago I bought a jar of small (golf ball sized like my peach tree's) pit-in-peaches in brine from Thailand I think I still have one pit left of that. It's probably completely non viable (even if the peaches were pickled at room temperature, the brine probably penetrated the shell and killed the seed. Plus the age thing) But I might as well try.
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Post by Drahkk on Sept 12, 2014 12:52:18 GMT -5
Good luck with the brined one. Can't hurt to try.
Does the mother apricot tree need a lot of chill days in winter to produce fruit? Apricots are one thing I can't seem to keep alive, at least not store bought varieties. If you think they'd produce here I'd like to bum a few to try sprouting myself.
I didn't know greengages weren't all self fertile. I only have the one (my only successful graft from the cuttings Steev sent), which will go in the ground this year as soon as it goes dormant. Steev, was the mother tree self fertile, or should I hunt another?
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