I have a Charlotte peach and it has bloomed 4 years or so with no edible fruit. (I have a Frost peach that does just fine.) Anyway after bloom, every fruit is a conjoined twin: two little peaches attached together. They never ripen. I have tried at a very young stage to pull off one half, but no luck. Do i have some sort of genetic mutation? Should i cut it down and plant another peach? Has anyone encountered this before? I'm near Estacada Oregon.
Interesting… to say the least. I’ve little luck or experience with peaches but it’s always a shame to remove an ‘established’ tree. I’ve also little experience with the dormant (or topwork) grafting of peaches, but I suspect it works. They’re so temperamental to grow around here, especially in your neck of the woods, with those late morning clouds of summer piled up against the Cascades.
I’m curious if anyone checks in with experience like yours. Where did you get the tree? With that kind of consistency it does sound as if something’s genetically wrong. I doubt that behavior can be entirely attributed to climate. If you begin grafting it over to something else (another peach variety) you’d be on your way to some production – while giving the tree a few more years in which to reproduce -- or get totally turned into another peach…
Did you get it from One Green World? They are usually really helpful with follwup service on things like this. That is one of the reasons I buy from them.
If people eat lots of yams they have more twins. If peaches eat more........yam compost? No, I don't think that works. I would ask One Green World. Charlotte is one of their favorite peaches.
John S
PDX OR
Fruit twinning is caused by stress on the tree at bloom time. Some varieties are more susceptible to it than others, but it is considered primarily an environmental thing. I had quite a bit of it last year but most years I have little of it and can just thin out all of the twins. It could be that the variety you have combined with the weather you have is a very bad combination; I have never heard of a tree so consistently doubling.
Scott