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I am from southern NH, my neighbor in the next neighborhood has a tree with both pears and apples. I have heard of this but never thought it was practical. I have a peach tree that is less than half alive, but still yields fruit on a small portion (or at least it did last year). I was planning on taking it down this year so I thought I could do an experiment.

Do I stand a chance at combining my combining my peach tree with probably an apple tree or anything else? Does anyone have any experience with this? I have been trying to research possibilities but I mostly get led to people trying to sell me combination trees.

I am going to put a 50 pt bounty on this as soon as I am allowed so take your time in answering. I am most concerned with the different factors of success and failures of tree grafting because I would like to pursue this whether my peach tree is suitable or not. I am not only interested in any documented successes but willing to try where others have failed if anyone has any innovative suggestions or insights.

Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
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Four_lo
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1 Answers1

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You will be able to graft any peach, nectarine, or almond to that tree. It's also possible that a graft from another Prunus species would take.

The first choice would be above, but you could also try plums or cherries or apricots.

I have seen plum/peach combos sold commercially as fruit cocktail trees, so it must be possible.

Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
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Grady Player
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  • almond? even in New Hampshire? if you have any other knowledge on this subject please don't hold back. I need some trees this year so I might just go to town. – Four_lo Mar 18 '13 at 15:02
  • well NH has a lot of different hardiness zones... there are some zone 5 almonds, it would probably have to be one of those... the problem with almonds in new hampshire would probably be sun... In my (albeit limited) exposure to the area, it seemed like everything was planted fairly densely. – Grady Player Mar 18 '13 at 16:08
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    the problem with grafts is twofold. Incompatibility between the types and one type being more vigorous. It only takes a few years of unattended growth before a tree of several types is down to one. Optimum conditions and attentive pruning are a must. – kevinskio Mar 18 '13 at 22:06
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    @kevinsky absolutely... in this case, sounds like they already have some asymmetry – Grady Player Mar 18 '13 at 22:24
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    Do you think it is possible to do some sort of ratio. like two parts walnut to one part peach to compensate this inbalance? – Four_lo Mar 20 '13 at 15:25
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    walnut is not closely related and will not work... @kevinsky just means if you graft a plum and an apricot on to the existing tree the apricot may try to grow twice as fast, and require more pruning – Grady Player Mar 20 '13 at 16:43
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    @Four_lo unfortunately not - the more vigorous part will always grow faster than the others and eventually the others will fail. As the previous comment mentioned walnut would not work at all. – George of all trades Feb 07 '17 at 14:52