I grew a peach tree from seed. Now what???

I have two peach trees which are different varieties and I saved a pit from one and now have a two year old baby mystery peach. My question is what the heck should I do with it, should I plant it with the others, plant it away from the others, or give it away or sell it and if I did the last two what would you call this peach tree since there is no way of knowing what it is going to do when it goes to fruit, anybody have any thoughts or suggestions about this, my only problem is a dont have a big enough yard to plant everything and just wait and see what happens.

-Planting it with the others would most likely increase the chances of cross-pollination which in turn could increase the diversity of the fruit produced; however, this comes at the cost of strain purity and introduces some variability

-Planting it away from the others would probably decrease the chances of cross-pollination; however, there is still a chance of cross-pollination.

-Selling the mystery peach seedling would keep your trees to the varieties that you have bought and the offspring produced from their interactions

I think it depends on how you would like to affect the relationships between your trees and the fruit made from those interactions. Did you enjoy the peach that you ate?

Funny you should ask if I enjoyed the peach because it was one that fell off the tree and was rotten, and I have had the two peach trees for three years now and I cant seem to get fruit with any meat on them I just get stones with pretty much just the skin, I have tried thinning the fruit by about half so it could put its energy into the rest and I try to keep dead leaves and grass clippings around the trees to improve the clay soil but still no edible peaches any thoughts on that while we are at it ? I guess I should have started with these questions before worrying about the sappling

Dave Burton wrote:-Planting it with the others would most likely increase the chances of cross-pollination which in turn could increase the diversity of the fruit produced...-Selling the mystery peach seedling would keep your trees to the varieties that you have bought and the offspring produced from their interactions.

Dave, I'm not following you here. Adding a third tree will not change the fruit produced by the other two trees, it will only change the trees that result from the seeds within that fruit.

I haven't grown peaches, but my experience with apricots and apples is that you should certainly plant it out near your other peach trees. If they are like many other types of fruit, they need non-identical neighbors to cross pollinate, otherwise they won't set fruit at all. You'll see in books that most fruit from trees grown from seeds is terrible, only fit for grafting onto. But my experience of apricots and apples here, is that when we allow seedlings to grow, most of them are perfectly good. We don't need to sell a named variety or anything, and we enjoy eating them all. None of our apples from seeds are "spitters" and only one apricot is; about 10 or so apples and 20 or so apricots are just fine.

If it eventually produces fruit you hate, you can graft another variety onto it.

In fact, I wish a few more of our seedling apricots were bad enough so that we'd want to cut them off and graft on one of the two named varieties in our region.

John Wolfram wrote:

Dave Burton wrote:-Planting it with the others would most likely increase the chances of cross-pollination which in turn could increase the diversity of the fruit produced...-Selling the mystery peach seedling would keep your trees to the varieties that you have bought and the offspring produced from their interactions.

Dave, I'm not following you here. Adding a third tree will not change the fruit produced by the other two trees, it will only change the trees that result from the seeds within that fruit.

My bad. Sorry for the mistake. Thank you for fixing the error.

Hau, Cameron, You didn't mention the age of your peach trees, except for the seed grown one.


Peach trees normally take seven years to first fruit production. You mention that your primary trees are only three years old, they are not yet mature enough to produce fruit to eat.

Cross pollination is a requirement for really good peach production, it does not change the taste of the tree's fruit, only the genetics of the pit would be affected. This is not always a bad thing.
I would plant the new, seed grown tree near the others and wait for it to begin producing fruit, at that time you will know what the peaches from that cross taste like.

Three peach trees is a good number for a small orchard producing fruit for personal consumption.
On this note, some of the best fruit orchards have a variety of trees such as Apple, peach, plum, cherry, fig, living in close harmony. Think " the more the merrier".

I would change the mulching components to composted manure blended with some standard compost.
Be sure that any mulch is not touching the tree trunks, they need to be able to breathe clear to ground level.
Mulch touching the trunks tends to create problems with bark rot, insects and other nasties you do not want getting into or onto your trees.

This is the perfect opportunity to learn about fruit production from seed grown, cross pollinated fruit trees.
As mentioned before, if nothing else it can become rootstock for any other pitted fruit tree you want to grow in your orchard.

Thank you everyone for the input, just a little more info, when I bought the two peach trees which are to different varieties, they where already over six feet tall yet a little scrawny and I have had them for three years now and are approaching a six inch diameter trunk, so I would think that they are getting close to mature and close by I have two apple trees I planted last year.

Yep, you should begin getting good fruit soon. The fact that they are putting out empty fruit is normal for underage trees. (most nurseries will sell trees that are two to three years old), the size of the container is a good tell on the age of the tree. Anything larger than a five gallon container should produce fruit within two years of planting out.