john im afraid i dont have any helpful info for you but i second john's comment- with 2 acres, you have room to plant several hundred very nice sized trees. for example, I believe harry's property is in the 2 acre range and i believe he has about 300 trees on his property, many of which are huge. am i citing your situation more or less accurately, harry?

Something along those lines, Gerry. My current fruit tree/plant roster checks in at 314 on my excel spreadsheet. Not all are large trees. I count smaller potted plants like dragonfruit and plants awaiting planting in my total. The vast majority are planted out tree/plants. As far as low chill peaches, U. of Florida has been deveoping them for quite while...with chill requirements down to 100 hours or even possibly less. I forget the names, but they are something like Flordahome, Flordaprince....you get the idea. There are many nurseries selling them.

Harry

Tropic snow and Tropic bueaty are both amazing. I have both and they produce more fruit than me, my family, my neighbors, and the birds can eat. Mine have only been in the ground for 2 years. They grow like weeds. The only care I give them is thinning the fruit to keep branches from snapping.

I have heard that the UFO peach from UF is supposed to be really good as well. The three that I mentioned are all free stone which makes things easy when you are dealing with so many fruit.

Harry, have you tried any of the ultra low chill peaches in your yard?

John:

I have tried various peaches and nectarines in my yard. While they do bloom and set fruit, they have not thrived and eventually died for some reason. Probably flooding is the major hindrance to their success in my yard. But when they fruit, the fruit has been of excellent quality...perhaps somewhat small in size, but absolutely declicious.

Harry

harry- it seems to me that some sort of raised platform is called for- then you could grow stone fruit in mammoth containers without worrying about flooding

Well, through more internet research, I found out that one doesn't have to buy a dwarf peach, the trees are just pruned to limit size. Yes, there is 2 acres, but 3 buildings, a coop, and a metal shed are on it, and I am trying to leave lots of open ground on which to grow vegetable crops needing full sun. Therefore, smaller trees only. Another factor is that we are getting up in years, don't want to have to deal with trying to pick fruit 15-20 ft. up in the air. 3rd factor: dwarf and semi-dwarf produce fruit quicker, at earlier age, or so I hear. Thanks all!

Agreed...Tropic Beauty and Snow are excellent choices....I forgot about those. They have also come and sadly gone at my house. Out my way, peaches seem to be best replanted every few years. Even at my neighbors which does not flood as badly as my property, their gorgeous peach tree that bore a tremendous crop for two years, went into decline and died inside of 5 years. So, I think our issue is more complex than just flooding.

Harry

You might be right Harry. Maybe the heat and lack of cooling makes them more prone to disease. Either way it might be worth planting one and just replacing it every 5 years or so since they grow so fast and make so many fruit.

On PIN's website they speak of the low-chill plums developed by UF as having short lives of 5 to 8 years so perhaps low-chill peaches have the same problem but not as pronounced.

I think peach trees in general are considered short lived trees, but 5 years is definitely excessively short.

Just thought of something, jimigunne. Have you checked out information from Texas A&M concerning growing peach trees with recommendations of varieties for your area? I don't recall the exact website, but I know it's an excellent resource. (I lived in the DFW Metroplex for 5 years--2007-2011.)

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/homefruit/stone/stone.html

Thanks to this lively discussion, I've just ordered a Tropic Snow Peach for my orchard.......sheesh......

MD

You won't be sorry, Gary.....superb tasting peach! And, like most peach trees even a nice ornamental when in bloom. Good luck with it.

Harry

So many happy endings here. I love it.

I have a Tropic Sweet - this will be its first year fruiting. But so far, the tree is excellent. Robust and healthy (unlike my first one, a Flordabelle, which was a weak and unhealthy variety). If you get a good variety, they do grow fast. Here's my Tropic Sweet last spring:
{{gwi:1304174}}

and here it is in the fall:

This is as large as I will allow it to be. I will keep it this size by pruning. It is around 12' tall.

Hello all! Well, I searched further. Tropic Snow is a great one for my area south of San Antonio. But I found a site which rated the fruit of Red Baron a bit higher even than Tropic Snow (10 vs. 9) and its very low-chill, too---needs only about 250 chill hours. In addition, nothing beats the spring-time show of flowers, Red Baron has double-blooms. Check it out! I ordered mine from Willis.