Photo: File:Illustration Prunus persica0.jpg: PLEASE COMPLETE AUTHOR INFORMATION derivative work: Kenraiz — Public domain · source
Survives zone 5 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
The fruit is prized fresh for its juicy, aromatic, sweet flesh — yellow or white depending on cultivar — and is also canned, dried, and used widely in baking, preserves, and desserts. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- July–Aug
- Mature size
- Small tree 4–6 m; genetic dwarf forms are containerable
- Light
- Full sun (obligate)
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native to northwestern China, where it was domesticated thousands of years ago before spreading along early trade routes through Persia and the Mediterranean and eventually worldwide
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast — young trees often grow 30–60 cm/year, slowing to about 30 cm/year after 4 years
- Spacing
- 550 cm (217 in) apart — about 30 m² (326 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Lanceolate to elliptical, up to 18 cm long, finely serrated margins, dark glossy green.
- Root system
- Shallow, forming a root plate near the soil surface; prone to suckering if roots are damaged.
- Fruit description
- Round to slightly oblong drupe, typically 5–8 cm across, with velvety (smooth in nectarines) skin blushed yellow to red over yellow or white flesh, surrounding a large, deeply pitted, inedible stone.
- Propagation
- Cultivars are propagated by T-budding or chip-budding onto seedling or clonal peach/plum rootstock; seed-grown trees do not come true to type and require cold stratification to germinate.
- Pollination
- SELF-FERTILE
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Apply a nitrogen-rich fertilizer in spring (roughly 60–113 g per young tree, kept away from the trunk and never mixed directly into the planting hole); mature trees are typically given about 1 lb of nitrogen annually in spring, with feeding stopped by mid-summer so growth can harden off before dormancy.
Growing tips. Needs about 700–1,000 chill hours below 45°F (7°C) to break dormancy and bloom well; blossoms open early and are vulnerable to spring frost; highly susceptible to brown rot (Monilinia fructicola/M. laxa), managed by thinning fruit, pruning for airflow, and removing mummified fruit; trained to an open-center form with 3–4 scaffold limbs and pruned annually since it fruits on one-year-old wood.
Companion planting. Wild chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) is the main reservoir of X-disease phytoplasma, a leafhopper-vectored pathogen that can devastate peach; extension guidance recommends removing wild chokecherry within about 150 m (500 ft) of a peach orchard.
Grow journal
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