Quite impressive! Is your "little backyard orchard" organic or conventional?

Windberry, I assume you are referring to sprays and things like that. I mostly use organic, bee friendly sprays as much as possible, but I'm not particularly anal about it per se. I rented a beehive this year for the first time to see what impact this might have on cherry production. Last year my area of San Jose, got about 575 chill hours, and this year about 550, which is enough chill hours for all the cherries, except technically for the Rainiers. Last year, I hand pollinated the Rainier cherry tree to see how this would affect production (knowing that my area did not get 700 chill hrs), and sure enough, production increased significantly. My cherry trees are mostly on Colt rootstock because of the loamy clay soil and I keep them pruned to about 9' to 10', which is low enough for me to reach almost all the blossoms. So we'll see what this year brings with the bees, but I'm reasonably convinced cherry production is not soley a chill hour problem, but a pollination issue. Lastly, I know we need more rain here, but I'm hoping the rain holds off in earnest until after cherry bloom and set are done near the end of March. :)

It is not only many species of bees that pollinate flowers. Wasps, flies, ants, mosquitoes, butterflies and moths, beetles, small birds, small mammals, lizards, all help with pollination. I can see in my garden that the better the flowers get pollinated, the better is quantity and quality of fruit.

That's a lot of peaches! I normally grow 2-3 peach trees at a time and usually have plenty to can, make jam out of and eat fresh. Are you selling them? I suppose if not you won't have any issues giving them away. At least I never do. Mine sometimes get shared with the elderly in my neighborhood.

Looking good. Figs, Pomegranates, Persimmons and Feijoa all do great in Santa Clara and they ripen in the fall to extend your fresh fruit season.

Hi VHD. Where did you buy your Cal Red and Baby Crawford Peach trees? You have enough chill there for Baby Crawford? I have a Red Baron, which I love for the showy red blossoms as well as the fruit. The Cal Red and Baby Crawford are very tempting though! What colors are the blossoms?

Here’s my Red Baron currently.

I had wonderful experiences with a California native flower that REALLY attracts bees as well as other pollinators (especially beneficial bugs). It’s called Lacey Phacelia, or Phacelia Tanacetifolia. It grows easily from seed, required no additional water from me last year (besides what I gave the plants around it), looks great, and adds organic matter to the ground when cut back at the end of a season. It’s also a good source of nitrogen, so it’s great in the compost pile. But I just chop it down once it’s done, lay it on the ground where I want it to reseed, them cover it with mulch so it doesn’t look too messy. It grows high here, about 4-5 feet. But it’s really wonderful for pollinators.

Here is a photo of some of mine from last April.

It’s easily growing now from reseeding. I’m looking forward to it blooming and attracting beneficial bugs and pollinators again this year.

Hi Cori,

Thanks for the tip on the pollinator. I usually get somewhere between 500-600 chill hours in S. San Jose, sometimes more depending on the year. I've never had any troubles getting my Baby Crawford peach trees to produce fruit in my backyard, even though the stated chill hour requirement is 800 hrs. I'm sure having the other peach varieties helps with pollination quite a bit. With respect to chill hours, the only fruit variety which I think really DOES need the rated chill hours (or more) are cherries. Most of the other stone fruits, like peaches, apricots, plums, etc, if you're in the ballpark of the necessary chill hours, they'll produce fruit. My experience is the chill hour requirement is a rough gauge, not a hard and fast rule, but others may have experienced something different. The BC blossoms are pinkish-white, definitely not the deep red of Red Baron. You can get easily get BC from a lot of places - Peaceful Valley Farm, Bay Laurel, etc. I have loamy clay soil in my backyard and Citation tends to do well for me with this soil, which is the predominant peach rootstock I have (some are on Nemaguard). Baby Crawford does naturally tend to produce a somewhat smaller tree, so if I had to do it over again, I would have gotten the BC peach trees on Nemaguard, but I'm happy with what I have.

Getting the Cal Red peach tree is another matter all together. I've been trying to get a Cal Red peach tree for at least the last 5-6 years. To my knowledge, it's only grown by Burchell Nursery and has historically only been available to commercial orchards. The Cal Red is listed on Tomorrow's Harvest website, which I believe is the retail arm of Burchell, but the tree is not in stock - they did not produce any trees last year, and may not produce any for the foreseeable future (I've inquired and I keep checking every year - lol).

https://www.tomorrowsharvest.com/store/fruit-trees/peach-freestone.html

Great information! Thank you so much. You may have inspired me to get another peach, maybe even a Baby Crawford. Are you considering an O’Henry if you can’t get the Cal Red?