Indian Free peach needs a pollinator to produce fruit

A: With only a few exceptions, peach trees are self-pollinating, which means you only need one peach tree to set fruit. Two of the big exceptions are Indian Free and a variety called J.H. Hale.

Any peach other than Indian Free will pollinate it, as long as the flowers open at the same time as Indian Free.

If you have a neighbor with a peach variety other than Indian Free, yours will probably set fruit just fine. You only need about 5 percent of the flowers to set fruit to have a full crop of peaches that will still require thinning or fruit removal to allow the remaining fruit to get bigger.

I never used to worry about pollination too much at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Orchard in North Las Vegas because we had so many different varieties growing there pollination was never a concern.

Fruit pollination and fruit set can vary with different types of fruit trees as well as among varieties. Fruit set and pollination can vary from no fruit set to partial fruit set (a few fruits on the tree) without a pollinator. By having another variety of the same type of fruit close by, fruit set can go from light to heavy.

Another option you have with Indian Free peach is, if you have a small yard, to plant more than one peach tree in the same hole. You can pick another of your favorite peaches that produces fruit at a different time of year and be picking peaches at two different times. Indian Free peach is not a late peach, but it is not early either. It produces fruit around the end of July here.

You could put an early peach in the same hole as the Indian Free, and it will act as a pollinator for the Indian Free and also produce peaches earlier in the season. Any of the early peaches, such as Earlitreat, May Pride or Flordaprince, will work just fine. You would plant them in the same hole about 18 inches apart. One peach tree would be planted on the east side of the hole and the other on the west side of the hole.

You don’t want to plant them with one on the south and the other on the north, unless you know that the less vigorous of the two is planted on the south side. In other words, if there is a big difference in how robust or vigorous they grow, always put the most vigorous variety on the north side, where it will receive less direct sunlight.

Peaches or any fruit trees that are planted in the same hole will require that you control their growth like a totalitarian regime; each of the fruit trees will have its own space, and neither of them will be allowed to encroach or invade the other’s space.

Once two trees are planted in the same hole, each of them is only allowed half of the allotted space for one tree. The tree on the east can occupy only the east side, and the tree on the west only the west side. Any growth from the east tree that is growing to the west or even northwest or southwest is eliminated. Any growth from the west tree that is growing to the east or even the northeast or southeast is eliminated.

Food for thought. You are not limited to growing only one or two fruit trees in a single hole. I have grown as many as four in a single hole, and I have seen as many as eight demonstrated. Good luck with your Indian Free peach. It is a wonderful peach to grow in the desert.

Q: As a kid growing up in Portland, Ore., we had a couple of filbert trees. Will they grow in Las Vegas?

A: Filbert is a type of a hazelnut and will have a tough time here. I have seen them growing in the Caucasus Mountains where it is cooler than the lower, hot elevations of Armenia.

There is a variety of filbert called Willamette, which tells you a little bit about what kind of conditions it prefers, Willamette Valley of Oregon.

I tried two filberts, male and female, at the orchard several years ago. They were given to me, reluctantly, by Dave Wilson Nursery to try after I pleaded several times to obtain them for testing. They warned me that they would not work.

I pulled them from the orchard after the first season because of a lack of vigor. But the trees were not in good shape when I planted them, and they really struggled for one season. They demonstrated leaf scorch and some really bad stress, even though they were in the middle of the orchard and the soil was composted and mulched.

I would have liked to try them again with some trees that were in better condition from the beginning. This time I would put some shade cloth over them for the first season until they got established and demonstrated some strong growth. Then I would remove the shade cloth in the fall, when it is cooler, and let them acclimate through the fall and following spring.

The next season, if they appear to be healthy, I would not put shade cloth on them unless they looked like they lost some vigor. After the second season, it is “sink or swim” and no shade cloth would be used.

Bob Morris is a horticulture expert living in Las Vegas; he is on special assignment in the Balkh Province, Afghanistan, for the University of California, Davis. Visit his blog at xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com.