Propagating peaches with your own pits

Propagating a peach tree from your own seeds sounds very difficult at first. But that's not it at all. With a little patience you will succeed too.

Apple, cherry and pear seeds are rarely used to grow plants that will later bear beautiful and edible fruit. A professional hand is required here to grow a beautiful and bearing tree from a small shoot. The peach, on the other hand, is not so demanding. It has the decisive advantage for hobby gardeners that it is a self-fertile plant. It is not uncommon for a peach tree to bear fruit that comes from self-pollination. Only the genetic material of the mother plant is passed on. However, pollination by bees only occurs if there is a neighboring peach tree.

Whereas pears, sweet cherries and apples require fertilization by pollination by the pollen of another variety, the peach can be stimulated to fruit much more easily.

Prerequisites for success

If you plant peach stones from supermarket fruit in the soil, there is a high probability that you will only get small plants that always remain a bit puny. If you want to grow a real peach tree, you need so-called seedless varieties. Kernecht means that the characteristics of the mother plant are transferred to the seedling. Genuine varieties are e.g.:

Kernechter vom Vorgebirge (late peach/medium/juicy)
Proskauer (juicy sweet/very frost hardy/self-fertile)
Naundorfer Kernechter (large/juicy/rich yield)

It would be an advantage if you already had a real peach tree in your garden. You could then take the cores from that right away. Otherwise, just ask around in the neighborhood if anyone has a seeded peach tree in their garden and then ask for some fruit.

Propagate peach - Here's how!

In order to grow the seeds into a plant, you first have to stratify them, i.e. subject them to cold treatment. In concrete terms, this means that you have to store the peach stones in a box with damp sand over the winter.Either in the basement or in the garage. It is only important that the temperature does not exceed 7°C. Alternatively, you can also store the cores in a cold frame. This stratification serves to improve the germination of the nuclei.

If spring has come, you can place the seeds in pots with the appropriate potting soil. It is then important that you always keep the soil moist. You can also plant the peach stones two centimeters deep in the loosened garden soil. A slightly shaded spot in the garden is the best location.