When should I give up?

Read about frogandtoad's red haven peach. This year the Reliance peach I planted last year (replacement for one that didn't make it the previous year) is dead. Ditto the two walnut trees I bought last year which did well all last summer but seem to be just sticks now. At the same time I moved two small almond trees, one seems to be dead but the other has green under the bark. Seems like it should be leafing out by now, but it isn't.

When do I give up? I figure the nursery (Stark) I got the peach from won't replace it a second time, but the one I got the walnuts from (Van Well) probably will replace them. Only I don't want to plant replacements this late, fall might be better.

Anybody have experience with this sort of thing? I don't blame the nurseries, I blame my @#$% rocky, limey, clay, dry soil, although I worked really hard at preparing the places I planted them.

It is an uphill battle to grow anything here. The two filberts are okay. My apple, plum, & apricot trees, and cherry bushes, are healthy but due to the erratic spring weather, I will have no fruit at all this year. Again.

I gave up on Stark's several years ago. One peach tree arrived with a broken trunk and the replacement had almost no roots and died shortly after being planted. No response from Stark's when I reported the problem.

I've lost several peaches, a nectarine and two plums. Fruiting is erratic here because of low winter chill, but the short life span is a puzzle. I have two young apple trees hanging on, but struggling. Citrus and figs are producing abundantly. Soil is black clay, slightly alkaline but fertile.

I would like to find local gardeners who have mature stone/pome fruit trees and beg an opportunity to airlayer offspring starts. I have a hunch mature trees that are acclimated to this area would offer better odds of growing out cuttings.

Yuska

AZgrammie, You mentioned that your soil is "rocky, limey, clay, dry soil" How deep is the soil before you get down to bedrock? And how close is it to the ideal soil for walnuts described here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=fqUUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=soil+requirements+for+walnut+trees&source=bl&ots=g6PJZTGqtg&sig=SKtaWzFp1LWuJ_CAxJB1OaNjh3M&hl=en&ei=EwcRSo63LYGstgem2IGJCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
The current recommendations for planting individual plants is to place them in the native soil without amending. Otherwise you create a bathtub effect. If the plant requires rich humus, mulch with compost after you plant the trees. If the native soils are very shallow, consider creating berms or use raised beds. Are you aware of the toxin, juglone, produced by walnut trees which kills most competing plants? Did you water your new trees on a regular basis throughout the year, including winter?

Have you asked your local Cooperative Extension agent for the average number of chill hours your location is subject to? I'm still struggling to get the right balance of chill hours and blooming times for my peach trees. When I got the information from our local agent, he also advised me to buy trees that require at least 100 chill hours less than the average. I now think I should have been more conservative and gone with low chill trees even though the average chill hours for my area is 600. That number is dropping because the new plant hardiness map has my area in zone 9a instead of 8b. The other thing I didn't consider was when my peach trees bloomed. Unfortunately that information is difficult to find and while the trees still get the chill hours they require, late hard freezes have killed either blooms or tiny fruit three years in a row.

I quite buying from Stark when I received tiny Fuyu, Chocolate and Hachiya persimmon whips instead of the larger ones the prices seemed to imply. The Chocolate persimmons was the only one that survived. The replacements for the two others didn't make it either.

As for the almond trees, if I were you I would ask my Coop agent if almonds are recommended for my area. Almond trees are among the first fruit trees to bloom. The All-in-One and Garden Prince almond trees I had back in San Jose, CA bloomed in February. It didn't affect the nuts because the temperatures seldom go below 30º - 32ºF. In your area, the trees may survive, but the blooms and nuts may not. Before you get any more replacements, consult your Cooperative Extension Agent about the chill hours for your area. Also find out when the last frost date is on average. Then try to find how late those frosts can be. This information should help you decide which cultivars to buy. If you can try for late blooming trees or trees whose flowers and fruit can survive late frosts.

Yuska, I'm having some of the same problems you are. Nectarines are not recommended for my area. I have a dwarf nectarine, which bloomed last year, but the flowers fell prey to a late frost so I still don't know whether the fruit will suffer from sun scorch. The grasshoppers killed my three low chill apple trees and are working on my citrus trees. I'm not sure what the problem with my plums is. I had fruit from my Beauty plum, but the tree itself was not very vigorous and to make matters worse, very early last year, a freak wind pushed the tree over at an angle breaking a good portiond of its root system. I'm surprised it leafed out this year. The other plum trees are not producing many flowers although they are recommened for my area. My one Fuyu persimmon tree is a consistent bearer of fruit and that's because persimmons bloom so late in the spring.

Bettydee, thanks for all the suggestions. I haven't checked with the extension agent because every time I call, he (or she) is "in the Valley for meetings". It gets discouraging. It sounds like you are having lots of the same problems I have, too.

Re the almonds, one of my older cousins has a summer place across the canyon (a little one, not the Grand) from me and showed me two large, mature almond trees that were laden with almonds. This was a few years ago, but I figured if they grow for him, they would grow for me. I don't know what varieties he had, the ones I have are All-in-One and Ne Plus Ultra (I think, anyway a French name). The French one came from the local HD, the All-etc from Starks. I have always had a family feeling for Starks, bought my first little apple trees from them way back in 1969 or so, and they were beautiful, had lots of fruit that I never got to eat because all 3 of my boys were jugglers and dropped them a lot. Made pies, though. LOL.

Also, my late husband's parents put in a large fruit tree orchard in New Mexico in about 1945 or so, and I saw it in about 1989, trees still looked great. But lately I have't had such good luck with Starks. They have been good about replacements but then that's another whole year gone by just to see if the new ones live.

Re the walnuts, I am reasonably confident that where I placed these, the soil goes down several feet, and I used the native soil but added some well-aged horse poop. I had tried two walnuts a few years ago in another place that turned out to be just about 2 feet above the limestone shelf, and when they died I figured that is why. The new ones, from Van Well, were much smaller, and yes I did water through the winter. (We didn't get nearly enough precip this year.)

Van Well was highly recommended by Carla Emory, whose wonderful book I picked up at a garage sale not too long ago. They are extremely pleasant to deal with, although I haven't yet told them their trees died! I think we usually have plenty of chill hours, but not this past winter, when it was spring for a week, then snowed, then spring for a week, then snowed, over and over again. A local newspaper columnist mentioned late-blooming "Mormon" apricot trees and I actually found some at Raintree, but haven't ordered one yet -- waiting until Fall. But the columnist did say that even those trees lost their blooms.

Citrus trees won't live here, too dang cold in the winter. But recently I bought two dwarf trees, a Tangelo and a Ruby red grapefruit, both happily living in their 5 gallon pots in my little greenhouse, expecting that by Fall I would have ordered the Twinwall for the new, big greenhouse I want to make from my former horse stable where I can plant them in the ground. Thanks to the stock market plunge, I won't have enough $$ to do that this summer, so am still hoping to do it next year and just hope the little citrus trees don't die meanwhile. If and when, I may plant some dwarf deciduous fruit inside the big greenhouse, too.

I bought two Thomas walnut trees several years ago and planted them in one of our pastures. I must admit, they probably didn't get as much water as they should have since we had to cart the water over in tubs. The tops died, but the black walnut roots sent out new growth. They are slow, slow growers. The soil here is sandy loam and deep. The pH ranges from mildly acidic to slightly alkaline. Live oaks are growing in the alkaline soil and Post Oaks in the acidic soil. The walnuts are probably in alkaline soil. I'm wondering if walnut trees should come local growers. Fresh apricots right off the tree are great, but they are among fruit trees that won't produce here. They either require more chill hours than we have or they bloom too early and I'll lose the fruit every year. Growing decidious fruit in a greenhouse would be interesting. You'd have to keep the winter temperature of the greenhouse between 32 and 45.

Fruit trees are very specific in where they like to grow. Chill hours have to be in range, root stock in some places has to be specific. Etc etc. An example is peach trees where I grow. SC grows all sorts of peaches but I live on the coast and I can't grow any of them and get fruit. I ended up buying peach tree developed by the U of Florida for low chill hours. I also grow citrus which all had to be cold hardy because I'm to cold for many citrus trees. Even pecan trees which grow in the wild here have to be picked out correctly or you may have problems.

It's a little tricky figuring out trees will grow exactly where you live. You need to find someone locally who knows what they are talking about.