Home garden design > Fruit growing > Peach tree growing regions

Peach tree growing regions

The peach is very susceptible to spring frosts and very partial to those situations where its buds will not start during warm winter days to be killed by sudden freezes or frosts. For this reason it thrives best where it is under the moderating influence of large bodies of water.

In the northern and eastern United States the regions noted for their evenness and mildness of winter temperatures are best for the peach. These are chiefly close to the great lakes and to the sea coast.

Thus we find a great peach belt on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan where the prevailing winds from the water moderate the climate very much. Commercial orchards are extensive along lake Erie and Ontario. Along the Atlantic seaboard, the most noted peach areas are in Connecticut and southward to Maryland's eastern shore. From this middle seaboard region the peach thrives inland to the mountain regions of west Virginia.

Extensive orchards are also found in Georgia and the northern part of Alabama, Eastern Texas, southern parts of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois; and the milder parts of California and Oregon. The peach has its limits in latitude. Northward it does not pay well beyond 44 degrees Fahrenheit and then only in the vicinity of water as in Michigan and Oregon. Southward it is limited by the attacks of a root disease which in our latitude is killed in winter by freezing.

Some varieties of the peach come so, nearly true from seed that they are thus propagated, but it is an uncommon method with commercial varieties. (b) Budding is the common and almost the exclusive method in practice in the North. (c) Grafting the peach is practiced in California and in the South. (d) Peach seed must be stratified over winter. It should be examined before planting in the spring and those pits that are not cracked by frost should be broken by a hammer. Stocks - (a) Seedlings from natural fruit are preferred, i.e., those which have not been worked and from sections where the peach is healthy and free from yellows.

A favorite source of peach stock is in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky where the peach grows in thickets. (b) Plum stocks are sometimes used for the peach where it is grown in heavy moist soil, but is seldom used in commercial peach growing. (c) The peach buds easily. The seedlings should be worked the first season, when they will be 18 to 24 inches high. If the stock is larger, the buds will grow too large the first year.