Peach

Family

Rosaceae

Habit

Tree

Height

6.5 m

Spread

6 m

Growth

fast

Lifespan

20 years

First yield

after 4 years

Full yield

after 4 years

Yield per plant

up to 20 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 9 t/ha

Energy yield

350 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 5–10

Shade tolerance

full sun

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

dry – very moist

pH

6 – 7.5

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Depending on cultivar the fruits ripen from late July to late September, and not all at once but in succession — the tree has to be picked over several times. Peaches picked too early do not ripen further and stay flat in flavour; fully ripe they keep only two or three days. That makes them classic home-grower fruit, rarely available in good quality in the shops. Vineyard peaches are smaller than commercial varieties but carry an intense, often faintly almond-like aroma; the flesh may be white, yellow or stained deep red from the stone outwards. They are best raw, and otherwise give jam, jelly, mixed-fruit preserve and spirit. The seeds contain amygdalin, taste bitter and do not belong on the plate.

Medicinal: Leaves and bark are used in folk medicine for stomach complaints, bronchitis and coughs, the root bark for dropsy and jaundice; none of these uses has been clinically tested. In traditional Chinese medicine the seed is regarded as a cough suppressant and laxative. It does, however, contain amygdalin and prunasin, which break down into hydrogen cyanide in aqueous conditions — the margin between an effective and a toxic dose is narrow, and self-medication is not defensible. A bitter taste signals a high amygdalin content; such kernels belong neither in the kitchen nor in infusions. The once-common claim that cyanide from stone-fruit kernels acts against cancer is scientifically disproven.

Other uses: A green dye can be obtained from the plant's leaves, while a yellow dye can also be extracted from them. The fruit produces a dark gray to green dye. The seeds yield a semi-drying oil commonly used in skin creams as a replacement for almond oil. Crushed leaves can eliminate strong odors like garlic or cloves when rubbed in a container post fat removal. The stem's gum serves as an adhesive.

Site: Sheltered, in full sun, in a vine-growing climate; a south- or south-west-facing wall is often the only way to a reliable crop in Central Europe. Frost hollows and wind-exposed positions are out. The soil should be free-draining and rather low in lime. More important than irrigation is low humidity during the growing season — and from this follows the decisive point about siting: peach leaf curl is the species' main problem, damp cool springs encourage it, and a covered position helps more than any treatment. A small, short-lived tree of 3 to 5 metres, self-fertile. Care: For this species pruning is the single most important thing. The peach fruits exclusively on one-year-old long shoots; shoots that have borne must be shortened every year, or the branches go bare from the inside, the fruit gets smaller and the tree ages early. Prune in spring at flowering, when the fruiting shoots can be told apart. Seed-raised vineyard peaches are considered markedly tougher than the named cultivars, including against mildew, winter cold and blossom frost.

Vineyard peaches are traditionally raised from seed, and it works well: stones are taken after ripening, washed and cold-stratified over winter or sown straight into an outdoor bed; germination rates are usually very high. Seedlings come out variable but remain recognisable in type — precisely this produced the great genetic diversity of local strains in the wine districts. They usually fruit in their third or fourth year. Named cultivars, and by now also grafted vineyard peaches, are budded onto seedling rootstocks instead; they give larger fruit but demand the annual pruning of cultivated varieties. Peach seedlings in turn serve as the standard rootstock for almonds.

In mild situations peach flowers as early as March, well ahead of most fruit trees grown in Central Europe. Nectar and pollen yields are high, making the blossom one of the first substantial forage sources of the year for wild bees; around 33 species have been recorded at it, none of them specialists on peach. Overwintering butterflies such as the peacock and the large tortoiseshell also visit the flowers after emerging. As a larval food plant, however, the species matters little here: as an East Asian crop it shares no long common history with the regional insect fauna. Ripening and splitting fruit draws wasps, hornets and fruit-eating birds.

Special features: loves warmth: flowers (early flowering) die at -3°C → protect from cold winds and morning sun → e.g. south-west facing wall (also good as a trellis); plant in well-drained soil with garlic/horseradish: (protection against leaf curl disease); remove false fruit shoots during the annual pruning; (bearing fruit on one-year-old wood);

East Asia: north-western China. The peach originates in north-western China, where it has been cultivated for some four thousand years. By way of western and Asia Minor it reached the Mediterranean, where it has been grown for about a thousand years, and from there the Romans carried it into southern and central Europe. Production today centres on China, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. In Central Europe it is confined to the wine-growing districts — along the Rhine, Moselle and Neckar, in Styria, the Wachau and the Thermenregion south of Vienna, where the seed-propagated vineyard peach was planted in quantity around 1900 after the phylloxera disaster.

In its homeland the peach grows in open woodland and on the slopes of the winter-dry mountain margins of north-western China; genuine wild stands can hardly be delimited any more, since the species has been cultivated for millennia and repeatedly escapes. The site it demands is the same everywhere: warm, sunny, air-moved, with free-draining, rather lime-poor soil and low humidity through the growing season. In Central Europe those conditions occur only in the wine-growing areas — on south-facing slopes, against walls and between the vine rows. Damp, cool springs promote peach leaf curl and make cultivation elsewhere unreliable.