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Prunus persica.
Plants may be grown in 12 - 15 inch pots in a greenhouse, or outside.
Either in pots or the greenhouse border they will produce superb quality fruit, lime is important and a well drained soil is essential.
To prevent peach leaf curl (it only usually occurs out of doors) spray with a liquid copper fungicide at LEAF-FALL, the END of January to MID February. Regular feeding and topping up with lime when needed will help to ward off disease.
Peaches ,Nectarines and Apricots are stone fruit that should have a larger place in our gardens. All peaches ,nectarines and apricots are much hardier than usually admitted. The average Peach has blossom that are as hardy as the Victoria plum and it is a fallacy that these fruit trees will not grow well in the UK.
Peaches and Nectarines can suffer from Peach leaf curl if not treated but this should not be a severe problem. Simple spraying with copper fungicide will usually prevent it if started early in the year-usually January before any Peach buds burst into life. Apricots do not suffer from this.
Peaches Nectarines and Apricots can also be protected with a simple rain cover which will also ensure against frost protection although many young peach fruitlets will survive a frost, and as peach trees flower in succession there are usually enough peach blossoms to come after the frost which will provide more fruit.
Most gardening books tell us that Apricots can only be grown on walls facing south (Peaches and Nectarines also suffer this slanderous fate). Whereas common logic dictates that these trees will be overly protected by a wall and in fact ,this very protection will cause the fruit buds to open even earlier, thus exposing the blossom to even earlier frost.Our stone fruit orchard, containing a full collection of Peaches Nectarines and Apricots , flowers regularly and even in the exposed site its in ,we early on noted that the eastern side of the trees would always have more fruit, especially with the Apricots.
Research done by ourselves and many other more esteemed bodies has shown that a protected site for these fruit trees is not such a good thing. Justin Brooke, a pioneering fruit tree grower had orchards extending to 850 acres in the 1930’s including over 60 acres of Peaches, Nectarines, Apricots and Figs, these were all grown in the open with no walls and the crops of succulent fruit sent to the London markets by train, even in the severe winters of ’47-48 the crops were not lost.
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Nectarine Trees
Peach Trees
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