[Bodger]

I've  a friend in NYS who grows peaches and apricots. He has a number of trees and some years he gets bumper crops. This year is one of those years.
Now the winters in his part of the US are extremely harsh and very long, whilst the summers tend to be very hot and humid.
I've started to see that companies here in the UK are selling peach and apricot trees for growing outdoors. Has anyone had any experience growing these fruits and what success or failure have you had ?

[gobs]

They are damn Hardy as your apple, the problem is 3fold here with them:

- late frosts/when some winter comes here they are already flowering/kills blossom

- too much rain sends blossom to rot

- no warm enough 'summer' to ripen fruit

Tree is fine and trying its best every year.

Rain and frost shelter for spring and generally a sunny position should do it, after all that, the blooming birds played all  of mine away last year before I noticed I had any! :evil:

[Kate and her Ducks]

I have a nectarine in a pot and the problems are as Gobs says. Have had fruit but it never seems to get a chance to ripen :cry:

[Trillium]

I Canada, we get many of our very hardy fruit tree varieties from an experimental station in Manitoba, one of our colder areas here. The idea is that if the trees survive and fruit well in their wretched winters, then they'll survive anywhere. So do check your varieties as to just where and degree of cold your tree will tolerate. Even in UK climate such trees are bred to flower, fruit and ripen within very short periods just like the Russian/Siberian tomatoes do.
What I have to do with my peach trees if a late frost is expected is to throw fleece over top of the tree for the night. Bit of a fiddle but well worth the crop later on.

[Bodger]

Thanks for your replies.

I might very well give it a go.
We have our own micro climate here. We have the warming effect of the sea within a few miles on both sides of the peninsula and the protection that the Snowdonian mountains afford. Some years we quite literally don't get any frost.
Its the summers that have been the problem of course, in the last few years. :cry:  Very wet, windy and none too warm with precious little sun.