Re: Propagating stone fruit

FWIW, there are "heirloom" peaches around that do come fairly true from seed. Peaches are mostly self-pollinating and there are varieties like "Polly" and "Indian Blood" among others, that have been grown from seed enough that seedlings have a strong resemblance to the parent.
There IS difference among the seedlings, but you usually have to grow a number of them side by side to see the variations. I've been growing an heirloom apricot "Mormon Chinese" and have a group of seedlings. All the fruits are similar, but there are definite differences between the trees. Things like productivity, bloom date, disease resistance, etc.
Coincidentally, there has been a discussion on the NAFEX list (North American Fruit Explorers http://www.nafex.org) on growing stone fruit from seed, recently.
-Lon J. Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.
On Sep 10, 2005, at 3:51 PM, Mike Open wrote:

The 'needle in a haystack' remark was to indicate that the peaches hybridise
very easily and the fruit of the children may not be as nice as the fruit of
the parents...
You might also have a go at taking hardwood cuttings... Take pencil-thick
sections of vigorously growing branchlets - about a foot long. Remove all of
the leaves, and the soft growth at the top. Put them in pots of maist sand
until you get to your new house. Then dig a narrow trench about 8" deep. Put
in 2" of sand, then line up the cuttings (make sure you put them in the
right way up), about a foot apart. Firm them in with a friendly boot. Keep
your fingers crossed. Check them in the spring. Leave them in the ground
until next autumn, by which time, if you are lucky, they will have grown
some leaf and a healthy root system. They will then be larger and stronger
than the equivalent seedling, and will be guaranteed to have exactly the
same fruit, which the seedlings won't. If none of them grow, you have been
unlucky, or my method (which I haven't used on peaches) doesn't work. But
you will have the seedlings anyway and you can hope that you will get some
nice, if not identical, peaches from them...

This isn't the 'professional' way to propagate peaches, but it's worth a
try. The professional way is with root-stock and 'chip-budding' - very
fiddly and mainly for specialist growers.

Mike.

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