Peach and Apricot Trees in Southern Minnesota?

[JIvers]

I recently bought a house and lot in Johnson County, Iowa. It is just south of Cedar Rapids in southeast Iowa, just a bit over one hundred miles south of the Minnesota border as the crow flies.

I did not know peach or apricot trees would grow as far north as Johnson County, Iowa until I discovered that along with two apple trees, two pear trees, and a plum tree I have one apricot tree and several peach trees--two adult, maybe 15' and 20' high, and two small saplings--behind the house. All survived the winter.

So...I have ground in southeast Minnesota within a couple miles of the Iowa border, including some south-facing open ground with sandy soil. I am guessing whatever types of peach trees I have--the apricot, too--are varieties than can handle some cold weather. If I can produce seedlings from either does anyone know if it is possible to grow peach or apricot trees in (far) southern Minnesota?

(The previous owner of my plot was a very devoted gardener, and I suspect I will have other stuff to ask about in the near future. Among other things, my two apple trees will yield five different varieties of apples thanks to grafting.)

[delcecchi]

Some years ago I discussed this with Keith Stangler who owned Farmer Seed and Nursery in Rochester. There are apparently a couple problems with peaches (like reliance) and apricots like sungold and moongold, that are supposed to be hardy here. One problem is that the tree might be hardy but the flower/fruit buds aren't as hardy so a cold winter will kill the buds that make fruit.

The second problem is that they bloom pretty early, so they can get nipped by a late frost or even a normal frost. (like third week in April)

And as usual, my extension links...

Tree Fruits

http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/yard-garden/fruit/stone-fruit-for-minnesota-gardens/

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[JIvers]

I figured there was a reason I never heard of anyone growing peaches and/or apricots in southern Minnesota.

Six months ago, I had never heard of anyone growing them where I am now, but the peach and apricot trees I have most definitely produce fruit at least some years. (As an aside, we had a neighbor where I grew up in SE Minnesota who grew pears outside, although they required some extra care to get through the winter.)

Having said that, if, and I said if, I can produce enough seedlings with minimal time and effort I may try to plant a couple in Minnesota, just to see if they survive and produce a crop once in a mild winter/spring. If not, I am only out minimal time and effort.

[Dotch]

Not so fast! You haven't heard of the clandestine partnership here in SC MN I belong to that's poised to corner the peach market?

My buddy supplied me with a peach tree about 4 years ago just to see what they'd do. I believe they are the Reliance variety. He got them as little 18" whips. So far they've survived 3 nasty winters with 2 ugly winters in a row with a minimum of TLC. I put tree wrap on mine to protect it from the bunnies and that's about it. It's been a slow spring all the way around but the tree is definitely alive. It's about 6' tall now and has never flowered. Something I did try to do was to put the tree in a spot where it might have the best chance to survive, namely on a south facing slope with protection by the house and other trees from the north. I've heard of some trees in Waseca and Owatonna but have not seen them. There again, in town, sheltered with the right scenario one might pull it off. Out here in the hinterlands, I would say odds are less favorable. We have our peach crates and the semis ready though just in case.

Apricots will do OK occasionally. Dad had some when I was a kid growing up in SE MN and every once in a while he'd get an ice cream pail full from the Sun Gold tree. The jam Mom made from them was heavenly. As del said, they flowered early, maybe even before our plums if I recall. In addition to the blooms and pollinated fruit getting nipped by frost, there was also a potential lack or diminished number of pollinators at that time of the year. There are some apricots around here, primarily in area towns, and reputedly their success is about the same as what we had, kinda hit and miss. The longevity of the trees seems to be questionable too. About 10 - 15 years and they all the sudden kick the bucket without warning. Not sure what diseases they contract but have toyed with the idea of getting a couple apricots myself just to see what makes them tick.

We have 2 pear trees planted a few years ago and we have yet to see any fruit set. I have a Patton and a Parker as recommended in the U's fruit tree guidelines. The initial year they did not flower which was cool, didn't expect them to. 2nd year they were covered with blooms but am pretty sure the frost and lack of pollinating insects meant no fruit set. Last year, no blooms so what del mentioned about flower buds not surviving cold winters may have been a factor. That and a dry late summer and fall probably didn't help despite repeated watering. A friend has two trees as well. His are older but they produce every year, some years more than others. There is at least one pear tree at our farm in SE MN. Not sure on the variety or if there is a pollinator tree of some kind but it too would produce once in a blue moon. The pears were well worth the wait though-delicious! Had to eat them quickly however as they didn't keep.

I'm with you. What do you have to lose other than a little time? Always fun to experiment and live on the edge.

[pushbutton]

^^^^^^^^what he said^^^^^^^

Well......I don't have the attention span to say/type all he said....but can think in my mind rambling pieces to eventually form the same thought.

Bottom line is that If I lived down there would no doubt try the apricots and give up a couple a starbuck's coffees and try some peaches. Along with pears, cherries, or any other marginal fruit type thing.......

[delcecchi]

There are three varieties of sour cherries that are said to work here. I had a northstar until some sort of borer got it. It had cherries every year. Unfortunately Robins will eat them greener than I would. It wasn't a very big tree, natural dwarf, so putting net over it was feasible, although a pain in the glutes.

As for the stuff that blooms really early like apricots, I don't know how much cold the flowers and fruits can take. Here is a useful chart to give some data.

http://nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State...tin/2011/13.pdf

The other problem is that in that typical yukky mid April weather, the pollinators like honeybees might not be very enthusiastic.

It is a little like my Granny Smith apple tree, tree does great, but it is a race to have the apples get ripe before they freeze solid. Granny is a very long season apple. On the other hand the apple maggots don't bother it too bad.

I've never had pear trees so no experience there, although some folks a couple blocks away planted some along their llama pasture right next to the street and they actually had fruit last year. This is fairly high elevation in Rochester.

[pushbutton]

I have inherited both some pears and cherries. Pretty sure the cherry is a north star.15 years or so ago, every other year or so would get some. Now it is the ultimate charlie brown cherry tree with a few leaves on top, but never a hint of fruit. The pears, on the other hand can be very prolific. Have no clue what they are, probably some eurasaisian cultivar Fruit is small but really sweet. Problem is the understory is choking it out and only bears on the top branches and not a fan of heights...25 to 30 ft. The mother plant they came from is in town a few miles away and has canopied very nicely at around 15 feet or so. Every once in a while think about taking some more cuttings and nurturing some along, but the thought is often very fleeting.....

[delcecchi]

Yes, fruit trees need to be pruned. Not too much each year but all you need to do is whack it back some.

[pushbutton]

My buckthorn and sumac need the pruning

[delcecchi]

My buckthorn and sumac need the pruning

I prune those with a chainsaw and roundup.

I know what you are talking about. I have a couple of standard Haralson Apple trees trees that are pushing 35 feet tall. Sort of got away from me. Ooopsie.

[JIvers]

Just a little follow-up: when I was whacking weeds out of my garden this week, in the areas right under the adult peach trees I hacked a couple of plants that I think were newly-shooted peach seedlings from the pits that fell there. I didn't notice them coming out of split pits until they were hacked up.

If peaches are that easy to sprout, and bear in mind that I know absolutely nothing about raising peaches, and raising them from pits is fine as opposed to starting trees from grafts, then I will certainly raise a few saplings to plant back in Fillmore County. Like I said, it probably won't produce any Minnesota peaches for me, but what's the harm in trying if that little effort is involved?

To the Internet for "how to raise peach trees from pits".

[delcecchi]

Peaches are probably like apples. If you don't care much about what the fruit is like, seeds work fine.

[Dotch]

Sadly I have to report that our SC MN peach growing dynasty may be in jeopardy. Reports from the western grove indicate total mortality. My grove, er, tree appears to have suffered a partial setback although it is very much alive. It appears we will be consolidating our main offices, time allowing of course.

[JIvers]

I spoke with a local back-yard orchard grower/heirloom plant enthusiast who cooperated with the previous owner of my house and lot on various projects. I was told that the peaches I have are an old type called "snow peaches" that may or may not correspond to any "official" variety of cold-resistant peach tree. This spring seems to have been hard on the blossoms, as I've only found four fruit on my adult peach trees.

I was also told that these peaches should be grown from graft stock, as they are like apples where trees grown from seed may not produce fruit anything like the fruit that produced the seed. That may slow my Minnesota peach experiment.

On the brighter side, I learned that the apricot trees I have (no idea as to what variety or type they are) are more cold-resistant than the peaches. Both of my adult apricot trees are loaded with fruit that are now a little larger than a robin's egg.

Unlike the peach trees, the apricots will produce good fruit on trees grown from seed, and they grow very easily from seed, as do the peaches. I confirmed that the un-tilled parts of my garden have plenty of volunteer peaches and apricots.

So, I don't know when I will try to grow peaches in Fillmore County, but some apricot trees will be going in the ground there this summer. If it is too late for them to adjust to transplanting I will just put more in next spring.

[delcecchi]

I await the reports on the results. I think it is all about the last frost vs when things warm up.

[JIvers]

Figured I would dust off this old thread for an update. 

I planted three peach saplings in Fillmore County this past spring on a gently south-facing slope that gets lots of sun and is sheltered from the north. A couple months ago they were doing fine, but the first real test will be to see if they come back next spring. The real test will be a few years down the road, when hopefully they produce peaches once in a while.

Where peaches fall in my garden I have found they grow pretty much like walnuts do, so I have quite a few seedlings that came up this year. I will be giving some away down here, and planting more in Fillmore County.

I was told apricots are easier to grow than peaches, but none of the apricot pits I planted last fall came up, and I did not have any apricot seedlings come up in my garden. So far then, no apricot seedlings to plant in southeast Minnesota.

Regardless of how the Fillmore County, MN peaches do, my Johnson County, Iowa peaches are doing great. Last year, whether due to the long cold winter or it being an off-year, only one of my five adult peach trees produced much of anything. This year, all five have fruit, and two are pretty much loaded. The pictures below show those two trees.

One of the peach trees that did not produce a single fruit last year is loaded this year, and only a couple weeks ago I realized I have two different types of peach trees. Four of them are the white "snow peaches" I described last year, while the fifth is a more red or orange peach. The fruit on that tree (both types shown side by side below, along with a tennis ball for perspective) are smaller, more red on the outside and inside, and have a different flavor. Now I have to see if the red peaches will grow from seed so I can plant some of them in Minnesota, too.

 

 

[delcecchi]

Do peaches reproduce true to variety from seed?  Or are they like apples where it is a gamble what you get, and if you want true to variety you have to graft. 

Here in Rochester, an experienced guy Keith Stangler had apricots -- sungold and moonsomething that were supposed to be hardy here.  He said the big problem was late frosts killing the blooms most years.  Apparently they break dormancy and bloom quite early, then along comes a May frost and there go the blossoms. 

It will be interesting to see if the peaches make it. 

[JIvers]

Everything I've read and been told* says peaches are like apples, and to ensure you get the fruit you want you should grow new trees from graft stock.

Having said that, I've also been told that the previous owner of my little fruit orchard grew all his peaches from pits. He also gave away seedlings that came up in the garden to people around town. Some of those trees produced nice fruit, and some did not. He would cut down the bad trees, and keep the good ones. Given that the seedlings are free and grow very easily, it does not seem like a bad strategy.

The nurseries down here sell peach trees, and if I were to have no luck replacing my adult trees here with seedlings from my garden I would buy replacement stock without hesitation. However, for my Fillmore County experiment I am not going to spend $70+ per sapling when they might not survive their first winter, or ever produce fruit if they do. Planting lots of seedlings that cost me nothing except the time to dig them up in Iowa and put them in the ground in Minnesota seems like the better option.

*I should note some of the information I've gotten from the locals here in town regarding my fruit trees has been proven wrong, or is likely wrong. In my OP, two weeks after I bought this place, I mentioned having two adult peach trees. The neighbor who told me I had two peach trees also told me I had several plum and apricot trees. By last fall I knew that I had not two adult peach trees, but five. I also found I had just one apricot tree, and one plum tree.

A different neighbor told me that apricot pits grow easily when they hit tilled soil, easier than peaches, but as of now I have not had a single apricot seedling show itself, including some pits I planted on purpose. The peaches pop up everywhere.

[delcecchi]

This is an interesting topic, growing peaches an apricots near the edge of their hardiness limit.  Plums will grow in MN for sure. 

Edited September 9, 2015 by delcecchi

[Dotch]

Interesting for sure. Our peach tree did not make it after 3 years of watching it grow, die back a little then make another run at it. The brutal winter two years ago was its final undoing and by mid-summer 2014 it was toast. I'm with you jivers. Getting peaches to survive let alone produce in MN is not a slam dunk. Indeed apricots will do OK here and there are probably some better varieties now than the old Sun Gold and Moon Gold varieties my Dad once grew. The pear trees did not bloom for the 2nd year in a row so am wondering what's up with that after flowering like mad their 2nd year in the ground. Got a taste of our 1st Mt. Royal plums the other day. Almost forgot about them until I noticed I'd run over some of the ground falls with the lawnmower. Using the wild plums adjacent to it as pollinators apparently worked just fine. The Mt. Royal plums were excellent, sweet and flavorful. The wild plums while tart, would make a wicked jam if we ever got enough of them to do it. Competing with the birds, squirrels and probably chipmunks it probably ain't gonna happen. 

[JIvers]

This has the potential to be a long-running thread.

I probably won't have anything new to add until next summer when I will know if the peach trees I planted in Fillmore County this past spring survived their first (far southern) Minnesota winter.

The peach trees I have now here in Iowa thrive just over one hundred miles south of the Minnesota border as the crow flies at its closest point, per my GPS. The Fillmore County trees are very close to the Iowa border, and the SE corner of Minnesota has the mildest winters in the state. We do not quite see the temperature extremes that counties straight west of us on the flat ground get. If peach trees are going to endure anywhere in Minnesota this would be the place.

I do plan on putting several more peach seedlings in the ground up there next spring. If all goes well in a few years I may have my own little peach grove up there.

[pushbutton]

That's pretty cool Jivers! Not a good enough reason to move to Iowa, but sure wish I could have a peach tree. Don't think you ever said yet....... how do they taste ?

[JIvers]

My backyard peaches are very tasty.

The larger white peaches are more fibrous, and have a milder flavor than the red peaches. The red peaches taste pretty much like the red "Missouri peaches" sold in late summer around here. Given that my trees are only about seventy or eighty miles as the crow files from Missouri, that is what I would expect.

[JIvers]

Waking up this thread for the upcoming year.

In a couple months I will be checking my peach transplants in Fillmore County to see if they made it through their first Minnesota winter.

[delcecchi]

6 minutes ago, JIvers said:

Waking up this thread for the upcoming year.

In a couple months I will be checking my peach transplants in Fillmore County to see if they made it through their first Minnesota winter.

Not much of a winter for extreme cold, right?