Peach | Christina | Seedling
$33.00
We now offer more and more cultivars as seedlings. We are doing this because we believe them to be a superior way to grow our genetically stable heritage varieties. Modern peaches do not grow true in the same way, and so we trial all cultivars before offering them to you. The trees are stronger and more disease resistant, but grow in size to be somewhere in between the smaller Marianna rootstock and the larger peach rootstock. We tip the central leaders in the nursery to produce a low branched tree most suitable for home gardeners.
Out of stock
Description
White flesh, red around stone, green skin, red blush when ripe, similar to River Peach but firmer, sweeter.
Our Christina peach is really a River peach but it is a local Northland variation that is slightly sweeter and later fruiting than the peach we call River, so we name them separately.
It came into our collection from an avid fruit tree collector by the name of Mr Phil Hodges, a well known Paparoa character with a very special orchard himself.
These peaches, known to me since I moved to Kaiwaka as River peaches because they used to grow wild all around the shores of the Kaipara Harbour from 1880’s to the 1980’s. Our forebears cut down the pohutukawa so they could farm every sq inch of ground, and then the wild peaches took over and their pink flowers replaced the pohutukawa flowers, until the aerial spraying and heavy stocking simply killed them out. Very few remain today.
I have had two people come into my life and tell me amazing stories about this peach. The first was a man who came to our place many years ago for the International Permaculture convergence from Nepal. He saw these peaches and told us they were the original peaches from Nepal, and that all the wild peaches in Nepal are just like that! I assume that is why they are so genetically stable, i.e. you can grow your own from seed quite easily, and they grow true, unlike most modern peaches. The second story was from a very recent visitor who had been in Kazakstan recently, and an elderly woman who was helping him buy a bus ticket insisted that he buy some of her peaches. He didn’t want them because they had greenish skins, and he didn’t think they would be good. In the end she gave them to him and he was very surprised when he tasted them and found they were the best peaches he had ever eaten! Again they are white fleshed peaches, with a greenish skin and a red blush when ripe, they are freestone so great for drying or bottling, and they have a red blush around the stone ripe February.
