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Peaches with edible pits?

Thomas Dean

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When I was a teen, I used to enjoy looking at the seed catalogs that came in the mail and dream about the cool stuff I could grow. Now I'm an adult, and have the opportunity to plant what I want on the farm...
I remember seeing in a seed catalog that there was a peach-like tree that had edible pits. But now I can't find any reference to this tree online. I am wondering if it was actually a apricot, as I see that some places indicate eating small amounts of apricot pits is OK.

Is my childhood memory faulty? Anyone know anything about some sort of stone-fruit with edible seeds?

On a related, but side not, my family makes "peach seed jam" where we boil the pits, skins, and all the left-over parts after canning peaches, and use that to make a jam/jelly. I was concerned about it at first, knowing that there is cyanide in the pits... but it's a "historical" recipe and the amount of jam/jelly one should eat in a sitting is low enough that even if there is cyanide in the preserve, the dose will be pretty low.

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Anne Miller

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While I have never heard of a peach being marketed as having edible pits, they are edible.

Pits of all fruits are edible though a person might not want to eat them as they might be bitter and contain cyanide.

Have you seen this thread?

https://permies.com/t/60345/Plum-Nuts

Here are a couple of articles that you or others might find interesting:

https://food52.com/blog/10809-how-to-use-stone-fruit-pits

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a20705824/are-stone-fruit-seeds-poisonous/

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John Indaburgh

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I once made 5 gallons of wine out of almonds. The fruit with the pits. I didn't know about the cyanide and drank all of the wine, except for what I might have shared. This post is evidence that you might take the cyanide scare with a grain of sand. When, years later, I found out about the cyanide I did some research. Seems that some opinions are that you would have to eat huge quantities of peaches or almonds to have a problem. Had I drunk the 5 gallons at once I might have tested this; but I'm guessing I might have passed out before I reached the point where the cyanide was my problem.

John F Dean

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I used to eat them all the time as a kid.

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Joseph Lofthouse

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Peaches and almonds are fertile with each other. Therefore, it would be possible to breed a variety that had traits for both luscious fruit, and low-cyanide edible pits.

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Jay Angler

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I recall reading that "bitter" nuts have a chemical (I believe amygdalin) which turns into cyanide in human stomachs. I think that crushing and soaking the nuts in water, and then rinsing them in more water, is supposed to remove enough of the amygdalin to make them safe.

The problem is that I've never seen info that explained the process - time, size of bits etc - to the point that I was comfortable trying it. I think Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions recommends soaking a lot of seeds and nuts and the presence of cyanide precursors was part of that. Doing what is done with acorns to remove the tannins, is probably along the correct lines.

Joseph Lofthouse's idea of working on a hybrid between peaches and almonds might save a lot of work in the long term! Unfortunately, I'm on the border where peaches will even grow, so I'm not going to try that as much as I adore both peaches and almonds!

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Greg Martin

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Location: Maine, zone 5

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I planted two peach/almond hybrids next to each other so that I can easily cross them and line out the seedlings to see what results. But one downside is that I have no idea what the parent trees of these hybrids were. I went that route as I haven't yet gotten my hands on almonds that survive here, though there are options I need to keep trying to source. Starting with known parent trees seems wise, but we'll see what happens with the hybrid offspring. The hybrids I'm currently trying to work with are Hall's hardy almond and Reliable almond. The Hall's is older and has been fruiting well for a while. I later added the Reliable which isn't yet fruiting, but I'm expecting it to at least flower for me next year. Fingers crossed.

Hall-s-Hardy-Almonds.jpg

Bowl of Hall's Hardy almonds, a peach almond hybrid

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Faye Streiff

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20 or so years ago a friend here in the Appalachian mountains gave me a white Cherokee peach. She said it was from the original strain the Cherokees once grew here. One day I was in the orchard and noticed the squirrels had been breaking open the pits and eating the seeds. I tried one and it was good, not as sweet as almonds but similar. The fruit however left much to be desired. The tree eventually died and I never replaced it. Some pits did take root and came up, but deer pressure is high here and they ate the little trees and eradicated all of them.

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Greg Martin

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Faye, now you have me wanting to taste the seeds from every peach tree I can get my hands on!

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Jane Mulberry

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Greg, what do those Hall's Hardy taste like?

I planted an allegedly sweet European almond in my UK garden, but it has dark pink flowers (every sweet almond I've seen before had lighter pink flowers), bears lots of small nuts with very wrinkled shells like a peach pit, and every seed I've tried has been bitter. 10% of almonds can be bitter even on sweet almond trees here, but I think this one was mislabelled and is all bitter, unfortunately. It's a pretty tree, but a waste of space in my tiny garden for food productivity.

I can't grow peaches here in England, but when my peaches ripen next summer in my Bulgarian garden I will taste a pit. I want to try almonds there, too, though it's possibly borderline for almonds due to the colder winter.

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Greg Martin

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Jane Mulberry wrote:Greg, what do those Hall's Hardy taste like?

They have a strong almond flavor, but no bitterness that I can detect. They remind me of almond extract. The first time I tasted them I couldn't wait to make cookies. Online I read that they make wonderful marzipan. Someday I will need to try that with them as well. The biggest struggle is cracking their thick shells. A hammer and towel work well, though I think I'm going to start trying to crack them out with a vise first this year to see if I can get them out whole. Hall's Hardy seems to be self-fertile and the flowers, as I remember them, are white with pink centers.

Edit: I tried the vise and it gets them out whole easily. I also tasted them again for the first time this year and I paid closer attention to the flavor. At first it is like a commercial sweet almond, then the strong almond extract flavor comes in, and then at the end I did notice a small bit of a bitter flavor. I don't mind bitter so that's probably why I hadn't noticed it last year. I should buy some bitter almonds to compare to.

Here are a few articles from a cook working with Hall's Hardy:
Adventures with Almonds part 1
Adventures with Almonds part 2

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Greg Martin

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Found a picture of the blossoms on my tree. Looks like they are very light pink rather than white....or off white to the pink?

Hall-s-Hardy-blooms.jpg

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Jane Mulberry

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Thanks, Greg! Yes, that's the usual sweet almond blossom colour. My alleged sweet almond has bright pink flowers!

I'm only 64! That's not to old to learn to be a permie, right?

Thomas Dean

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Location: Michigan, USA

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Found a thread on Hall's Hardy Almonds:
https://permies.com/t/8781/Hall-Hardy-Almond
Seemed pertinent to this conversation. Someone reported that a neighbor was eating them like peaches, but also that she had them growing with peaches (cross pollination? Would that affect the fruit produced on the tree, or just what grew from the cross-pollinated seeds?)

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Thomas Dean

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Oh, and I think these are what I saw in seed catalogs as a kid: https://www.starkbros.com/products/fruit-trees/apricot-trees/stark-sweetheart-apricot

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Greg Martin

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Thomas Dean wrote:Found a thread on Hall's Hardy Almonds:
https://permies.com/t/8781/Hall-Hardy-Almond
Seemed pertinent to this conversation. Someone reported that a neighbor was eating them like peaches, but also that she had them growing with peaches (cross pollination? Would that affect the fruit produced on the tree, or just what grew from the cross-pollinated seeds?)

Thank you for that link Thomas! My understanding is that cross pollination from a peach would not affect the fruit quality, but can affect the seed quality.
That thread also convinces me that a lot of Hall's Hardy almonds out there are seedlings and not grafted trees. I don't taste any bitterness at all from the seeds on my tree and the husk on mine is not thick and juicy like a peach. Now I want to go out and check my tree to see if there is any obvious graft line, but I'm too lazy to trudge out there in the snow and dig down around the trunk. I'll probably look in the spring. The one post about a Hall's Hardy with peach like fruit is exciting.

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Jane Mulberry

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Hmm, the thread on the Hall's Hardy mentioned boiling the seeds. I wonder if it's worth trying that with my alleged sweet almonds to get them edible. They are spit-it-out bitter straight from the shell.

I'm only 64! That's not to old to learn to be a permie, right?

Carla Burke

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Jane Mulberry wrote:Hmm, the thread on the Hall's Hardy mentioned boiling the seeds. I wonder if it's worth trying that with my alleged sweet almonds to get them edible. They are spit-it-out bitter straight from the shell.

You could probably try a cold water leaching, like it's done with acorns, as a starting place. I *think* that would possibly give more options for using them afterward.

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Anne Miller

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I have really enjoyed this thread, especially Joseph's suggestion of crossing a peach with an almond.

And learning of Greg's Hall's Hardy almonds, a peach almond hybrid.

What I like best was that Thomas found the Sweetheart Apricot which is both a fruit and a nut. Yummy!

Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
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Patrik Schumann

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Traveling through Hunza Valley in the Karakoram mountains of NW Frontier province of Pakistan summer 1987 I learned the apricot tree was a staple cropper there, each side valley & village had numerous varieties, up to 10,000'/ 3,000m elevation on the terminal moraine of a glacier where it might freeze any night of the year.

That village's roofs were covered with golden-red fruit drying in the sun, and the next day for the rough journey ahead into Chinese-occupied East Turkestan a villager gave me a large burlap sack with what I found to be the roasted seed stuffed back into the dried fruit. Delicious & sustaining across the Taklamakan desert ('he who enters shall not exit')!

Luckily a decade later when I started developing my own nursery/ homestead/ orchards in the high desert Southwest USA, I discovered a USDA plant explorer had collected along most of my route a year or two after & I was able to assemble my own collection of over 100 vars from high & dry regions of the world with perhaps half from that area & a good fraction with edible (sweet) seed including the one from that village.

Afghanistan is also known as a fruit basket & apricot hotspot so look in Middle Eastern & Persian shops for dried not toasted apricot seed which if fresh enough might just still be induced to sprout.

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C. Letellier

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They called it a sweet pit apricot. It was in both Gurney's and Henry Field's catalogs from at least the mid 80's thru about the early 2000's(maybe later). It was rated zone 4 which is why it was remembered here. Grew one for 5 or 6 years before a pump failure took it out.

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C. Letellier

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PS you might want to read this thread too.

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Anthony Powell

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Location: NW England

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Jane Mulberry wrote:Greg, what do those Hall's Hardy taste like?

I planted an allegedly sweet European almond in my UK garden, but it has dark pink flowers (every sweet almond I've seen before had lighter pink flowers), bears lots of small nuts with very wrinkled shells like a peach pit, and every seed I've tried has been bitter. 10% of almonds can be bitter even on sweet almond trees here, but I think this one was mislabelled and is all bitter, unfortunately. It's a pretty tree, but a waste of space in my tiny garden for food productivity.

I can't grow peaches here in England, but when my peaches ripen next summer in my Bulgarian garden I will taste a pit. I want to try almonds there, too, though it's possibly borderline for almonds due to the colder winter.

We've got decorative almonds planted near us, in the wetter side of England. This year's crop has been amazing, but the nuts are famously hard to crack:
"Perhaps easier, and less messy, mole grips. We've got decorative almonds planted near us, and their nuts are enough to break your average nutcrackers. But mole grips are made for the job. Helps though to attack the nut edge-on, and not at the widest part but a shade towards the pointed end - it seems weaker there. Adjust the mole grips for the size of nut, so your hand works more efficiently.
I need to wash the nuts before cracking - any that float in the water are generally bad, not worth cracking."
Many varieties are prone to peach leaf curl, and I've seen trees die as a result. So choose your plants for resistance, in the UK.

Jane Mulberry

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My almond gets a bit of peach leaf curl, worse some years than others, but shrugs it off with no problems. As we're not in an orchard area and no one nearby is growing almonds or peaches, I don't try to prevent it. A foliar spray with seaweed liquid seems to support the tree. It's a wonderful tree in every way but one - the bitter nuts!

Thanks for the tip to use mole grips - an excellent idea.

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kevin cates

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I remember seeing an ad in a seed catalog about edible peach seeds too! I was late 80s.

Anthony Powell

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Location: NW England

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The kernel of every almond, or peach, or apricot, will be the result of pollination - half mum, half dad. If you can't control who the dad is, you can't control the sweetness. Ensure every surrounding tree is sweet. Amygdalin production is probably a dominant gene.

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