Fruit Trees

Hi all. Just planted a few apple trees and I'm itching to plant sour cherry, pear, and peaches too. But, I live at 6,800 ft (zone 4) and most of the trees are marked zone 5. Still, a neighbor up the road has a gorgeous old apple tree just loaded with fruit this year. How are the rest of you higher altitude folks doing with your fruit trees?

Peaches grow at 7K feet on the western slope. You should try it!

I have a peach tree, but it isn't doing anything but putting out leaves. It's quite healthy, though. I don't know if frost killed the flowers or it needs a cultivator, but I've found peach pits on the ground beneath it.

I'm at 5400 feet.

I'd love to plant an apple tree or two, but I really don't have the room. I've a ton of trees as it is.

That's a mystery you've got there on your peach tree. Have you seen blooms on it in the Spring? We did have a particularly nasty cold/dry/windy winter this last go-round. Maybe that blew up your blooms. How has it fared in years past when spring was more mild/moist? I thought peach trees were self-pollinating so I wouldn't think that would be the problem.

I was thinking the same thing about the western slope. I'm going to have to give it a go. Nothing ventured nothing gained I say. It's always an adventure gardening here isn't it? Thanks for the replies!

If you are finding peach pits on the ground beneath your tree, then there has to have been some fruit, since the pits are at the center of the fruit.
Did you not notice any fruit forming at all or did the squirrels eat the fruit before you had a chance to harvest any?

I live at 7,300 ft. here in New Mexico and have a bearing peach, apricot, 2 pears, various crab apples, and 3 cherries. I have other fruit trees too young to bear -- an apple, a green gage plum, and a quince and yet another pear and another apricot. The ones that are old enough bear most years but once in a while a late frost gets them and I miss a crop. The peaches are fabulous and I don't have a second tree and I know of no other in the neighborhood. The apricots, cherries and pears are fabulous.
WH, peaches need to be pruned each year in the spring to keep bearing. A frost may have nipped yours or it may just need to be pruned. There are books about how to do it. I am not sure if I do it right, but the tree keeps bearing more each year.
My biggest problem with growing fruit trees at 7,300 ft. is deer, not weather. The trees that are not inside the wall around my yard are stripped of leaves and fruit every few months. My husband was visiting across the street from our previous house yesterday, where I planted pear trees that are now mature and had fruit on them. He saw a deer standing on its hind legs to get the pears out of the top of the tree. We assume that that means that the deer liked the ones lower down that he probably ate first. It was a Keiffer if you are into planting deer food. They also love bing cherries as well as lapins.
Next year I plan to study deer proofing.

Aha! I have no idea when my peach tree was last pruned, if ever. The house stood on the market for a year, then I moved in around the first of May this year. The tree didn't have blossoms any of the times I looked at the house, starting in February, so maybe that's why. The husband of the couple who lived here before reportedly was a gardener, but, meaning no disprespect to the dead, I have to wonder how good of a one. (He passed away, and his widow put the house on the market and moved to a smaller place closer to her children.) When I was planting my vegetable garden, I found little pot shaped areas of growing soil amid the moondust that made up the rest of the bed.

So that's another thing on the list. How To Prune A Peach Tree.

I did manage to get all of my live plants in the ground today. Fingers crossed that the pansies make it. They're supposed to be hardy plants, but the last ones flopped over and expired in the heat. Then they joined the moondust.

But my bulbs and rhizomes just keep increasing, and of them all, I only got ONE in the ground today. A dried-up looking Best Bet from Home Depot. Put in crushed oyster shells with it. Then I watered everybody.

This message was edited Oct 2, 2006 12:55 AM

WH,
The perfect end of a gardening day. I, too, have an alarming increase in bulbs in the "waiting to be planted category". And I came home to find a Penny Mac hydrangea waiting in a mail order box for me. The plants are still in my truck. I got home about 9:30 pm tonight and just had to check in with the rest of you before unloading. Theresa and I lined up all of our plants, an embarassing number, in the parking lot of the motel this morning and gave each a drink, then put them in the back portion of the cab of my truck. We had to use my mirrors to drive because I had a jungle in the rear view mirror. It was really fun to look back and see our jungle.
We also stopped on the way home at the Kagawa nursery in Centennial right next to Aurora, we noticed. Their bulbs were nice, but way more expensive than at the bulb sale. However, I managed to purchase some anyhow. I also bought a winter-hardy-to-zone-5 deep burgandy hibiscus. It made my southern heart warm.
You probably already know this nursery since it is near you, but even if you don't need anything, go over to see the "Endless Summer" Blue Hydrange growing outside, in the soil, according to the man I talked to. I know you prefer white, but it is heart warming to see a nursery confidently planting a hydrangea outdoors in the Denver area. If nothing else, this should reassure you about planting a White Hydrangea in your yard. They had many others for sale indoors but they did not have named varieties or hardiness on their tags. I would suggest something like Big Dipper Farms where I ordered mine. They tell you variety and zone hardiness.
It was so nice to meet you and all the other Rocky Mt. DGers. I do hope we can repeat the gathering for the spring bulb sale.

KLR and WH, I have a peach placed predominately in the middle of my back yard along the fence. While it leafs quite well, I am still uncertain of its health(the previous owners didn't water ANYTHING for 3 years!), as it shows signs of much stress. Last year, towards end of season, I did see a single peach-rather stunned me. In talking to a nurseryman at Nicks,(I'm looking for another tree to plant closer to the house to shade it from the west, or I'm going to kill my a/c unit) he said that his trees bloomed in February, but a freeze killed them off. Said that is quite common around here, as peaches tend to flower early. I do know that the people behind me have an apple and a pear tree, and both years they have had fruit, making the squirrels happy. Oh, I read somewhere recently that peaches grow on year old wood. Not sure about that, but...

You are right that peaches bloom on year old wood. That is why you prune them rather a lot each year in the early spring. ( Obviously you don't want to take off all the year old wood.) The pruning promotes the growth of new wood from which the next year's crop will come. I have a book called The Pruning Manual by Edwin F Steffek who says that the amature rarely prunes peaches enough. I suggest you checkout a pruning book from the local library or buy one that covers pruning. One that is often available these days at nurseries that has extensive information on pruning is The Fruit Expert by Dr. D. G. Hessayon. Dr. Hessayon is British and I find his selection of favorite fruit tree varieties more slanted to the UK, but his pruning sections are very good.

I lived for many years in Santa Fe, NM, only about 35 miles from where I live now. People there only got peaches and apricots once every so many years. Here in Los Alamos peaches and apricots almost every year. Both towns are at the same altitude. Apparently, what saves Los Alamos is the Rio Grande Valley way below us. The cold air all settles there. Santa Fe has the misfortune of not having a valley a thousand or so feet beneath it for the cold air to sink into. It is all very complicated where there is frost and where there isn't. Denver ( and I include Aurora) also have no canyon to receive all that cold air that comes down on it from the mountains. I do remember some wonderful crops of pie cherries in the yard next to my grandmother's in South Denver. I can't guess why cherries would produce better than peaches though.