Bringing this old post from Aug back to life.

After offering free fig cuttings recently, I have had several other forum members show interest in cuttings from our peach trees.  I will be trimming these soon and will be glad to give these away in exchange for postage or fig cuttings.

History:
My husband's grandmother had several of these peach trees behind her house.  She ran a country store from 1920's to the 50's and offered these peaches to her customers.  Each year she would put several jars up, dehydrate them and made tons of peach pies.   We went back to the homestead about 20 years after she had last lived there.  We found several peach trees still doing great and decided to try them in Louisiana.  We transplanted several small trees from East Texas to South Louisiana and they did great.  When we moved to Central Texas 10 years ago we also brought with us several of these trees.  They have done great here as well.

So I know they do great in East Texas (Timpson area), Central Louisiana (Hammond) and Central Texas (Kerrville).   The first 2 places have excellent soil, plenty of rain and acidic soil.   Here in Kerrville we have soil in layers separated by thick layers of limestone and have dry hot summers. 

We have never sprayed them and always get a bumper crop.  The trees in the picture are about 8 years old.  For whatever it's worth, they are also drought resistant.  We have had temps hovering around 100 for the past couple of weeks, they have not been watered and still doing fine. 

This peach tree has red leaves, the meat is whitish color and they come off the pit easily.   They are not as sweet or juice as the ones in the stores.  The leaves will turn to a dark green late in the summer but for about 5 months (here) we have beautiful red leaves. 

We have had several questions about the seeds.   We have always had great success in getting the seeds to sprout.  In fact this past year we had a squirrel bury several pits in a big pot and now we have about 10+ 2' trees that came up last spring.  They too have red leaves and look just like the parent trees.  On the original post, I had a gentlement on the East Coast respond, who has the same trees.  He called them a heirloom variety but did not really have a true name that he was aware of. 

If you are interested in getting some trimmings, just let me know.
Of course would be glad to trade for more fig cuttings on varieties that I don't have. 

Cathy


The bloom picture was taken 3/30/10.
The 2 pictures showing the trees and their leaves were taken 5/4/10.
The 2 pictures showing the peaches were taken 8/10/10.

Cathy, you have mail!

The only way to be guaranteed the same fruit is through vegetative reproduction (grafting, or possibly air layering, if that works with peaches). The seedlings will not be genetically identical to the mother tree, so they may, or may not, have good fruit.

Ken-
Are you sure?
I think there are heirloom peach varieties that grow true from seed.
If I am wrong, I have a few seedlings to go throw in the compost pile.

Cathy-
Have you heard of any experience with your variety in Northern climates (zone 5)?

Kyle

Hi Kyle,

Kyle, I'm no expert, so maybe with some peaches there's some exception to the usual rules of sexual reproduction. For example, I've heard that some multi-embryonic mango seeds can produce at least one seedling that is genetically identical to the parent tree. I'm just advising a little caution and investigation before investing the time and effort in raising seedlings up to fruit-producing size. If you google the topic you'll find many opinions that are far more informed than mine, but I expect they'll run in the same direction, as in the following quote:

http://www.plantanswers.com/garden_column/jan05/2.htm
"Before some of you go peach-seed-planting crazy, I must warn you that planting seed is not the best way to propagate peaches. If you plant a seed of a good peach fruit that you have eaten, the resulting tree will not produce the same type of fruit that you desire. The fruit could be much smaller and poorer in quality. Remember that a seed results from the pollination of one peach flower by the pollen of another peach flower, possibly from another tree, so the resulting off-spring will differ from either parent. The surest method of getting what you want is to plant a budded tree. Varieties that are known to produce superior peaches are budded onto roots of already growing trees."

Bumping  ---
will be trimming soon and wanted to make the cuttings available to anyone interested.

Cathy

Hi Cathy,
The tree you have appears to be exactly like the one i have been growing for a number of years with great production when it does not suffer a late frost. Some of the best features of this tree is the root stock it appears to be a true dwarf. This stock can be used to graft other peach cutting unto to maintain a dwarf tree. In my zone 6 it takes until late August to mid September for the peaches to ripen when they are left to hang they become very aromatic and sweet. You asked about the temp. well it survives temps. to -5 tonight i expect the temp to fall below 0 by morning.
Al
Southampton NJ
Z 6

Can you start peach trees from cuttings?

Jason,
You can start peach trees from cuttings.
You treat them the same as any hardwood cutting.

Al
NJ  Z 6

I was thinking this was a Blood-Leaved Peach, which has a pretty cool story behind it... but the Blood-Leaved Peach is clingstone (what you describe above sounds more like a freestone), and the historical description of Blood-Leaved Peach would have the leaves turning a dull green later in the year.

Anyway, here is the story behind Blood-Leaved Peach:

Jason,
Great info.
My peach fits everything however it is a freestone.

Hi Jason,

Ok, now the mystery is ... to figure out which variety it is =)

I think it is probably listed in the 'Cyclopedia.  I'll keep hunting....

To the person that stated that peach needs to cross polinate in order to produce fruits and so the new seed is not the same as the mother.
That is not true.
Peach cross polinate if there is another peach nearly,and self polinate if there is only one tree in the middle of 100 acres farm.
So in the first case the new baby plant is a hybrid,and in the second case is a baby peach identical to mother tree.

One must also wonder .. if there is an orchard of these same trees, or even several within a few feet of one another, they will pollinate each other, thus share the same DNA strains, therefore end up very close to the parent plant.

The chances of a foreign peach being close enough that a pollinator (bee, butterfly, etc.) would actually cross-pollinate it with a different strain of tree ... that's rare.  The more likely circumstance would be they would pollinate amongst themselves, of like DNA, and you would end up with like seeds.

Absolutelly if a whole orchard of peach tree are the same cultivar,the baby peach is the same cultivar.
Yet usually the Orchardist places a couple of good polinators,in the orchard in the belief  that the orchard will produce a better harvest with cross polination.
I am not saying that is not true but in the absence of polinator trees,the peach orchard will still produce good harvest,by self polination,or cross polination between same cultivar trees.

I agree 100% Herman.

I was just re-reading the literature one of my "local" nurseries in Ellijay provided with my plum and cherry trees.  There is a lot of information about peach trees within.  It mentions that all peach trees are self-fertile. 

If self-fertile, the chances of self pollination are much higher than cross-pollination, so I would suspect that you have a much higher chance of "like" offspring.

I have only one Reliance Peach tree and no peach tree ever seen in the area and it was loaded last year and ripened early August. So, I agree that it does not need another pollinator to fruit (though a pollinator may help in some other way probably).