Greetings Hopeful Novice,

Growing apples and peaches is certainly possible in Maryland, as long as you are prepared for an investment of time and expect to make lots of mistakes along the way. Although you are a novice now, you have the luxury of time on your side -- it will be several years before you are getting any fruit and for those years you can focus on practicing pruning and training while reading up on how to get the fruit. The biggest problem for me has been bugs, in particular the plum curculio and moths. For these you need either regular sprays or to bag the fruit. The next biggest problem are the bigger critters, namely squirrels and deer. If you have significant numbers of deer in your area you will need to completely protect the trees from them. I have had to become a squirrel hunter to get any peaches. Third are diseases, which will require a few sprays and some vigilence.

Most of your varieties I would call reasonable for the area. I am growing all of them except for the Polish apple and Snow Beauty. Cox is not worth growing, it tends to get mealy in our heat plus it suffers from other problems. Snow Beauty I also would be concerned about, it is a Zeiger selection bred in California and I have generally not had good luck with their fruits. In particular some of their peaches are highly susceptible to bacterial spot. Spitz can be difficult to grow but I have not found it bad for me other than it taking a long time to fruit. Gravenstein I was told would get mealy here but it has been fine for me so far. Ashmead's Kernel is an excellent beginner apple in our climate. Peregrine should also be good. My suggestion is to call up Neil at Trees of Antiquity and see about exchanging some of the harder to grow ones. If they have already set up the order they probably will not do it, but otherwise they may go along.

There are some highly disease-resistant apples, but diseases are relatively manageable compared to the pests so there is not a great deal gained by planting them. I would say the best practice is to make sure to avoid the more disease-prone varieties and leave it at that.

Overall I would say you stand a good chance to succeed if you have time to devote to it which is roughly similar to the time needed to have a small vegetable garden, watch your trees carefully to learn their habits and catch potential problems before they become overwhelming, and persist at it through the inevitable setbacks.

Scott

Look for brown rot resistance in peaches- that will probably be your biggest problem once you select varities resistant other east coast diseases like leaf curl and spot. My experience is that many of the varieties recently bred in this country don't take B R into account. It's assumed BR will be chemically controlled. Up here the earliest ripening peaches (and plums in the case of BR)are less susceptible to brown rot and scab- the two diseases work hand in hand. Scabbed peaches are first to rot. The most B R resistant late peach I have found is Elberta which is a perfect home orchard peach. Like other old time peaches it hasn't been bred with bright red color which makes it less attractive to birds-another advantage.

Older varieties are also more likely to bear over a longer period as commercial growers loose money with multiple pickings. Look for varieties that bear over a long period as does Red Haven.

Japanese plums are easier to grow in your climate than the Europeans which are more susceptible to insect damage (plum curculio) and brown rot. Methely would be a good start. You'll have to spend a lot of time thinning the fruit, however.

I wish there was more information about plum curculio resistant apples. Up here old strain (russetting) yellow delicious is often uninjured by this omnipresent fruit devil. Late, hard varieties tend to be less affected as well such as Gold Rush and even Fuji.