John:

I have experience with lots of seedling apricots, not peaches. Seems earlier that you were wanting easy to grow, pest resistant fruit. I really can't see this being an easy path to your objective. Lovell apparently has good roots and is highly compatible with many stone fruit for budding. But this tells you nothing about the fruit quality or resistance to say bacterial spot of the leaves. On top of that we are talking seedlings of Lovell. They will vary in quality and pest issues.

Maybe someone else will have a different perspective.

This is more related to my love of tinkering... It looks like an interesting opportunity to try out some plants that have been growing/spreading in the area for a long time and appear to be healthy... (I won't call them Varieties.. I have no idea what they are besides "Peach")

I honestly have no idea what sort of "Peach" they are -- I have collected pits from 3 different sites where they are "Feral". I also dug up and replanted a seedling that is now in full bloom...

Probably the best thing would be to wait till summer and try to find a ripe peach at one of the sites that isn't too buggy... but I just can't leave well enough alone...

That is why I was wondering about the experiences of those on the board with such things... I am sure there are plenty of experimenters around.

Thanks

John

John,

I've always heard that Lovell was a standard canning peach. However, I noticed I never see it in catalogs and never hear it mentioned in commercial literature. I searched the Web and the only thing I could find was it was a canning peach in the early 1900s. Once, I voiced my doubt once on this forum, and someone pointed me to a Website of a Dave Wilson retailer who sold Lovell and claimed it was the standard canning peach. After thinking about it, I'm thinking the nursery was simply repeating bad information. It's too strange that I never hear of Lovell as a canning peach anymore, but only as a rootstock. In terms of canning peaches, I read of Babygold. It would seem incredible that a canning peach of the early 1900s has not been replaced after a century.

Anyone have any info on Lovell as a modern canning peach?

1916. Check page 72.

http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6587699M/canning_of_fruits_and_vegetables

I have this sneaking suspicion that "Lovell" and "Halford" and "Bailey" are peach grower secret code speak for "Miscellaneous Cannery peach seed"...

Anyway, I cracked and planted out about 20 pits total from 3 different sites feral peach trees into seed starting mix... These pits sat out all winter under the mama trees -- so they should have sufficient cold chill hours for germination. I am also going to monitor the Mama trees to see what they produce this summer... as I am pretty curious.

Next week, I am going to scout out 3-more sites to see what I can get ahold of...

Thanks

John

Update on this....

2 of my seed peaches have come up. I am planting them out in the yard this week. We will see what they turn out to be... 1 is most likely a Green/white small peach.. Other is TBD.

My own field report on the "Momma Feral Peaches"

1. Ripening time -- Late. The 1st 2 ripened 2 weeks ago. 1 ripened last week, 1 is just now starting to ripen. 3 others are still solid green rocks... "Orchard" peaches were running a week early this year...

2. Bugs and fungus -- Surprisingly bug and fungus free for the most part. I haven't spotted brown rot problems. Plum curcuilio and Codling moth problems are minor... Some fruits are obviously bad, but it is a small percentage -- maybe 5%. Compare this to 90% on an un-tended "Orchard" tree

3. Flavor -- Above average to exceptional in all cases so far. Flavor is rich, sweet with good acid and very pleasing. Great balance of sweet and acid so far. Currently, they compare to a Red Haven picked off of a yard tree when ripe.

4. Ripening habit -- Rock Hard, Bitter/astringent and totally Inedible until fully ripe... This may help with bug problems...

5. Size -- Teeny. About the size of a small apricot.... I am sure much of this is from not being thinned....

6. Type:
1 is a small "Indian Cling" with a blood red streaked white meat.
1 is a Green/White/red semi-freestone peach -- I have never seen a peach with Green meat when ripe... until now....
1 is a small Yellow peach with blood red streaks. Semi-freestone.
1 is a Green/White peach with no red. Small. Free/cling TBD.

Others are TBD.

This experiment makes me SERIOUSLY wonder about Culture, especially late Spring and Summer fertilization and outbreaks of Brown Rot and fungus... as NONE of these peaches showed any more than absolute minimum brown rot attacks..

We canned up 4-quarts of the White/Green/Red + Yellow/Red Semi-cling peaches... Flavor is exceptional on those...

I now have a whole dinner plate full of peach pits to be planted out this year....

I will post more updates on this as the summer progresses...

Thanks

John

John, I grew out a couple seedings by mistake (grafts that I mistook a sprout for the graft on). Both were very small and green-fleshed when ripe like the ones you found. Both of mine were cling and very juicy. The flavor I thought was OK, nothing special, and both have seen been turned back into rootstocks. They also got moths as bad as any peach. No brown rot though. Very fuzzy as well. The two seedlings came from completely different sources but oddly enough they were quite similar. It sounds like you have a better source of seeds than the ones I grew out.

The green when ripe is how nearly all peaches were in early cultivation; only more recently have the white and yellow types come into existence.

Scott

Fuzzy is an understatement....

One I ate was so "Fuzzy" that it irritated my lips pretty bad.... Almost akin to those fuzzy cacti... If I was a bug, I wouldn't want to go after that one either...

The green thing surprised me... When I think of Green peaches -- I think of greenish peel and white interior or a light green/translucent meat like a Plum or an apple...

This was green like an Avocado on the inside... It was delicious, though...

Speaking of a Rootstock growing -- my Baby Crawford died -- but the rootstock lived.... I think I will try to graft something else onto them..

Thanks

John

My wife brought home some seeding peaches from a wild tree near where she works.

The peaches were golf balls and had green flesh. Nothing special, though they were picked a little early. We tossed them into the compost bucket.

I've got some seedlings from named varieties growing out to graft this year.

I don't plan to let them fruit because I've read so many of the seedlings don't turn out that well.

There's a book written in 1899 called the KS Peach. It documents the accounts of many KS peach growers early in the 20th century. Nearly all of them found that only a small percentage of seedling peaches were marketable. This coincides with the experience of modern peach breeders. I've read that modern peach breeder, Fruit Acres, grew 8000 seedlings to select roughly 10 good peach varieties.

I know this flies in the face of theoretical thinking that self-pollinizing varieties should come true to seed, but regardless of what people claim from anecdotal observations, it doesn't appear to be so.

A friend of mine, has a very nice peach tree in his yard that is very old. He has over the years taken the seeds from that tree and planted several other trees which turned out perfect with very nice peaches. Is this uncommon to get good trees from peach pits?
Kevin

Peaches do often come fairly true from seed. I just think rootstock peaches are often some unpalatable kind. I have some others I grew from seed which produce decent fruits. They weren't roostocks, they were seeds of a variety known to come true. Many of the older varieties come true to seed.

Scott

John,

It's just not worth it to me to let them fruit on the off chance I might get something good. It's not a shortage of seedlings, but that any seedlings you want to save take some space and effort to cultivate. At a minimum you have to mow and mulch them (or pull the grass around them).

My point about the failure of seedling peaches was not directed at what you are doing, rather the common idea that one can "save money" by planting a peach pit instead of buying a tree. As I alluded above, almost all the "cost" in growing fruit is the time, care, land, etc. The actual cost of the tree is almost nothing in comparison.

I would somewhat disagree with your dichotomy of "home grown" and "marketable". I know I may get some howls of protest on a forum like this, but I think what is marketable is largely what the home grower wants.

Certainly there are a few examples of fruit breeders ruining a fruit for the sake of marketability. Red Delicious is probably the clearest example. But there are many more cases where breeders give the public (including backyard growers) exactly what they want in terms of flavor-Fuji, Honeycrisp, Goldrush, etc. (I won't deny there were good apples that fell out of favor because they were ugly or didn't store well. I'm just saying that modern breeders have produced some pretty good stuff for backyard growers.)

Consider your peach for a moment. Heavy fuzz, thick and leathery skin are pretty big negatives for eating quality. Even small size is somewhat of a negative. I'd much rather eat a large sweet juicy peach that I can easily get a mouthful of fruit, rather than expend the effort of peeling several peaches to get a decent amount of fruit (although I admit I peel any fruit I eat because I don't like skin, but most people don't peel).

I'm certain your experience with mealy, non-flavored store-bought peaches has to do with cultural and storage practices not with the varieties. I've been giving out free samples when I sell my peaches (all commercial varieties). It's fun to see people's expression when they try one. It's like they've never had a peach before. Most of the difference is when they are picked. Pick any peach two weeks early and it's going to taste like garbage.

I'm still wondering why so many KS growers complained of low success of seedling peaches. Their standards for appearance must not have been that high in 1899. I can't help but think a large percentage turned out like the peaches my wife brought home. That peach tree almost certainly was a seedling from a cultivated variety since there are no natural peach trees around here. Maybe success with peach seedlings has to do with the variety planted, with some varieties giving better quality seedlings than others.

Update from this weekend....

Feral tree #5 -- Small, white. Complete bust. Fruit are *VERY* bitter, even when full ripe... They have a strange apricot-ey flavor if you can get past the pure bitter.... Might make a good rootstock.

Feral peach tree #6 -- Small, white. Complete bust. Fruit almost 100% loss to brown rot and bugs.

Feral peach tree #4 -- this was the aforementioned Red/White "Indian" cling.... Brix = 16 to 17 depending on which fruits I checked! These have quite an acidy punch -- even at Brix = 17.... Very few bugs and no fungus... I could smell the peaches from 20 ft away.... Peaches are getting reddish on the outside now. I may try to grow out some seeds from this one.

Overall, our friends "Volunteer" trees are much better than these Feral roadside/vacant lot trees.... I am going to actively seek out volunteers from their trees.... but will probably quit with these Feral trees (I am going to give the 1 a chance....)

This will conclude this test... Conclusions:
As Olpea says -- there are benefits of having a good, high quality "Real" tree -- It's Predictable!

2nd conclusion -- if you really want something "Old Fashioned"... Buy a proper "Heirloom" variety....

Thanks

John

Thanks for the report, John. The red ones sound a lot like the "Indian Cling" variety which is supposed to come fairly true from seed. If they are a very firm peach then they are even more likely to be Indian Cling. They are not a great eating peach but they are a great cooking peach.

Scott

LOL... By "Firm when ripe"... do you mean "Ripe, Peachy Rocks"

If so -- this is your peach....

I am thinking these would make *AWESOME* jelly/jam/whatever cooked if you could grow them big enough to that they are worth fooling with..... It would certainly take some sugar -- but they do have a very intense flavor...

The interesting thing is that they don't really seem to rot indoors.... They just kinda dry out... where even good tree ripe "Farmer market" peaches seem to get spotty and rot... These just sit there... Eventually, they shrivel up after a couple weeks on the counter... but you can still cut them open and eat them -- they are just dried out...

Thanks

John

John, that sounds similar to Indian Cling but mine get pretty sweet if left on the tree. It is an excellent cooking peach, in particular for things where you want the peaches to "stay together" after cooked and not turn to mush. I just harvested a bucket off of my tree this morning. It is also a very easy tree to grow. I am having bad brown rot problems in my back orchard where this tree is, but it has been almost free of rot. The bugs (ants, stinkbugs, moths) also don't go after the ripening fruits like the other peaches since they are too hard for them. By the way, historically this was a pickling peach and I am sure they would make some excellent pickles since their texture is about perfect.

Scott