It is unusual for nurseries in NZ to sell seedling peaches. Kōanga has 40+ years of observing, collecting and growing seedling peaches around Northland, the East Coast and other areas.
Over time we came to realise that many of the older folks who passed plant material to Kōanga knew that their peaches, nectarines, peacherines and apricots, generally grew true to seed year after year, generation after generation. There was evidence of that all around the Kaipara Harbour and the Hokianga Harbours in the 1980’s and 90’s when I lived up North.
There were also stories and experiences of genetic ‘sports’ from these trees as you will occasionally see on any fruit trees seedling or grafted. Occasionally a tree will throw a branch or maybe a seedling that is just different. These different parts or trees are called ‘sports’ In our experience this is very very rare, and Kōanga only sells seedlings that we know from experience are genetically stable, and have a very very high chance of being identical to the parent,
Of all the heritage peaches we have seen and grown we have only ever seen one cultivar that has ever thrown seedlings that were not the same as the parent and that tree is the Arapohue peach. This peach was gifted by an elderly woman who did not want the tree to be lost, and it had been given to her by another elderly Dalmatian gumdigger in the 1970’s, she passed it to us in the 1990’s. She had never seen it throw a ‘sport’ in her time, nor had it in the time of the Gumdigger, and I never did when we lived in Kaiwaka, but since we have been here near Wairoa it has regularly thrown variations and by the look of the fruit on those variations, it is crossing with a Goldmine nectarine, and the ‘sports’ are red leafed smooth skinned gold fleshed nectarines, ripening at varying times.’This is to let you know that if you are lucky enough to have an Arapohue peach there is a very small chance you might get a nectarine. Please count yourself lucky!!
Years ago when the International Permaculture Convergence was held in Kaiwaka, I taught a workshop on our farm in the woolshed, and one of the participants in that workshop was a young man who had come from Nepal to attend. The workshop was held right at the time our RIver Peaches were ripe, and he told us that the peaches we call RIver peaches were the original Nepalese peaches, and that they were exactly the same as the originals back in Nepal still. It would have been at least 200 years since they were brought out of Nepal to travel the shipping routes of the world, and they were still just the same, saved year after year by seed.
These old peaches are genetically stable, and reliably grow true to seed.
We find that seedling peaches are far healthier than grafted trees, and can be grown without any pruning at all, or with pruning, whichever you prefer.
Peach trees are not long lived trees and will usually not live longer than 20 years productively however some do live to 30 or 40. They survived by dropping seed on the ground and beginning again!
