A few months ago I was contacted here at Struan Farm by a lady named Hester who lives in nearby Mahoenui. She'd heard that I was interested in trying to preserve heritage fruit trees in our area, and has a number of old fruit trees on her property. She was interested in seeing if I might be able to propagate them both to preserve the varieties and to share them with others. It was the wrong time of the year to take any scion wood for grafting then, but she told me that the old peach tree beside the house was most likely getting the chop, and that it would be good to see what I might be able to do right then and there.
It was a delicious white peach, and had been gifted to Hester's husband as a seedling tree from an original homestead site in Te Awamutu. She gave me some fruit to sample and to try growing a tree from the stones, although she told me emphatically that no one had ever been able to grow fruit from the stones. I also took some cuttings from the mother tree, hoping that I might get some of those to root. And I promised to return in winter to take scion wood of both the peach and a Golden Delicious apple that had some from a fellow named "Peter the Hermit" who had lived down the road many years now.
Well, good news! I've been able to get one of the stones I planted to grow, and several of the cuttings are now close to budding.
I've also got some scion wood taken in July from the tree to graft onto Golden Queen rootstock, but I've heard that's not easy, and am not optimistic about potential success on that score. So I'm relieved these other two methods seem to have worked, at least so far. May the Peach Gods continue to smile upon us.
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