Sounds like you've given it every chance -- I'd take it back.

Well, Home Depot gives you a year guarantee on plants.
I would first try and find a peach that IS alive and buy that one before taking this one back, because it's still green and it might still surprise you. But if you can find a replacement, then do it ASAP so you can get it planted before the real heat of summer hits

By the way, I have a Donut peach and they are a delicious variety, so its a good choice if you can find one!

Carla in Sac

There are several donut peach varieties- leave it to Home Depot to leave you guessing which one you have. I can never understand why someone would start a 30 year relationship with a fruit tree with something from the likes of HD. It's almost as bad as buying a dog from a shopping mall pet store.

Bare root trees from reputable nurseries aren't that expensive and fruit trees are a lot of work. Put some value on your labor and spring for a few extra bucks, please.

Well, I have to admit I've done the same thing. I bought a "Diamond Princess" peach tree from Lowes, never having grown any peach trees before. It was described as a large yellow freestone peach which is exactly the kind I like.

Georgia is known as "The Peach State", and the young tree was super healthy looking in a 3 gallon pot so how could I loose? That was the extent of my reasoning and I admit there is a lot of trust involved like that it was labeled correctly and not over fertilized, but the name did not matter. I wanted A "good" peach tree. Even reputable nurseries make mistakes.

A newbie (like me) sometimes doesn't even know what questions to ask or what particular issues may come up in my yard. It is easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis and never commit to anything. Sometimes you just go with your gut feeling or a good recommendation.

Don't get me wrong harvestman, I totally respect you and your wealth of experience, but I'm just stating a perspective from the other end of the spectrum.

Logrock, from Home Depot your peach tree is likely to be anything but the variety they said it was. The only fruit tree I would buy from Home Depot is one that was fruiting so I could see with my own eyes that the variety is correct.

Scott

Scott,

I see your point. You and others must have had bad experiences since you are so adamant about it  "anything but" ... ?

I have wondered why the colorful photo tags will say "Arapahoe" or "Apache" on different blackberry plants but the little white ribbon tag tied low on the stem will all say just "blackberry" with the same SKU number.
The nursery rep that was there that day assured me that the big photo tab was accurate and put on at the nursery, but the little white one is just for Lowes inventory control. I realize that most HD or Lowes employees have no idea what they are selling, but the vendors surely had to pass some quality standards and know and care about what they are doing right? Or am I just being totally naive?

TyTy (Aaron's) has been bashed and blackballed so much that I don't think I can hurt them anymore by saying what I think happens there: they just want to fill orders and get paid so if they are out of stock, they'll just send out what they have most of and attach whatever label the customer asked for. Maybe some HD and Lowes suppliers do the same thing because they are afraid of saying no to their best customer. Or if there are short stock, they will buy 1000 questionable plants from another wholesale nursery rather than loose the contract. We need an HD insider to tell us how that works and how mistakes are made.

Ron

As a nurseryman myself, I always stick up for legitimate sources so they continue to flourish and also so that home orchardists don't get discouraged and give up after getting burned. Up here I've seen Home Depot market peaches that were bred to grow in Florida and couldn't possibly perform or probably even survive here.

Johnny,

I think you're watering the tree too much. I've had so many water issues here (too much water). Young peach trees take one of two routes when they have too much water. The either fail to leaf out and slowly die (as you describe) or they leaf out with a flush of growth, then collapse. Generally it's the former, especially with transplants.

The tree could have been dead at the time of purchase. Sometimes nurseries will try to refrigerate trees for an extra season, if they can't sell them all the first season (I've heard of it before). Those trees have a much lower percentage of leaf-out.

Still, it was probably you that killed the tree by over-watering. But don't feel bad, I killed several trees early on by over-watering.

Remember, trees don't use any water before they leaf out (any water loss through the bark is minuscule) so the only water loss is through soil evaporation. The soil only needs to be very slightly moist for the tree to leaf.

I agree the bashing of big box store trees. This spring, several big box stores in the area were selling JH Hale peach trees. Not only is this variety prone to bac. spot (a severe problem around here) but the tree requires a pollinator. Nothing of this was mentioned on the label. This tree is definitely not appropriate for the average homeowner in this area.

Thanks for all your response. I didn't over watering my plant, but the weather did. We did have a lot of rain fall between February and April in San Jose. If this is a small plant, I would cover it with a 2 feet contain, but it's over 5 feet tall. My other almond tree did survive even it started with bare root.

Anyway, I'm going to return the plant this weekend for refund.

Again, thanks for all your helps!

Regards,

Johnny