Fruitscaping with Peach, Plum, and Nectarine Trees

Each season provides its own kind of beauty with peaches, plums and nectarines. Spring brings billows of fragrant pink to red flowers like cotton candy clouds, followed by months of beautiful fruit changing from green to yellow, gold, peachy red or purple. In fall, leaves turn bright yellow. Standard-sized trees can be used as small shade trees or as part of a fruitful border. When full grown, the willowy trees are 12-18 feet tall. Mix peaches, plums and nectarines with smaller fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, figs and pomegranates. Group them along a pathway so you can enjoy them close up!

Recommended Fertilizers for Planting and Maintenance

• Starter Fertilizer:  Plant with Espoma Organic Bio-tone® Starter Plus.  This will increase root mass and help avoid transplant loss in difficult planting conditions.
• Fertilizer to Maintain:  Our varieties of Plum Trees work great with Espoma Organic Citrus-tone Fertilizer.

Growing Guide

Click here to find our Full Plum Trees Planting and Growing Guide

Additional Information

Where Should I plant Them? Peaches, plums and nectarines prefer well-drained soils and part to full sun.

Root Stock: Peaches, plums and nectarines are highly susceptible to nematodes in the Deep South, especially in sandy soils. Nemagard or Guardian are the preferred rootstocks as they offer resistance to the pesky little worms. Our trees for Zone 8 are grafted on Nemaguard while the tropical plums are grafted onto Guardian. All plums require a pollinator.

Fertilizer These guys are ferocious feeders so it really pays to do a light application of manure and hay in the spring. Then side dress with a balanced fertilizer high in trace elements in February (Or after the last freeze in your area), May, and late July.

Plums are very well adapted to our Florida climate. Many areas of North Florida still have old thickets of plums growing in the wild. The ones we offer here are large, high quality fruits like you’ll find in your finest fruit markets.

Plums come in a wild array of flavors, shapes, sizes and colors. In the South, by carefully choosing varieties that ripen at different times, it’s possible to have ripe homegrown plums all summer long. We’re also adding some ornamental plums for folks that want the flowers and foliage, but not the fruit.

Plums need good cross-pollination. Even plums that are considered self-pollinating will bear larger and more consistent fruit crops with a pollinator. Remember that who pollinates who depends on your chill hours. If you are uncertain about your chill hours, contact your County Cooperative Extension Agent or local Department of Agriculture.  You may also click here to view the USDA zone Map and see which match your growing zone.

Shipping Restrictions

We’re so sorry… but due to agricultural restrictions we cannot ship any plants outside of the United States, or to the states of California, Hawaii and Alaska. Also, citrus trees cannot be shipped outside of the state of Florida.

Here are some important things to know about your shipments

Unpacking Your Plants Guide:  Prior to receiving our plants, please click this link to read our Unpacking Your Plants Guide to get to know the steps to keeping your plant healthy after receiving it.

We do NOT ship bare root:  Our trees are shipped in the same exact containers they are grown in, for the most healthy transition. The plants are watered well before they are packed and wrapped in a shipping bag to ensure they stay moist during transit.  It’s as if you came and picked them up right from our nursery yourself!

Why do we not offer free shipping? At Just Fruits, we price all of our plants online exactly as we do in the nursery. Therefore, the shipping cost is simply what it costs for us to get your order from the nursery to you. Many competitors may increase the plants’ prices in order to hide shipping costs… we do not do that. We want our customers to see exactly what the plant costs are, separate from what the shipping costs are. That way if you decided to come visit the nursery to pick up your plants instead, you would know how much you save in shipping.

Weather Watching:  We now ship all year round! However, we do watch for extreme weather. If there is extremely cold or hot weather expected around your shipment date and on your path of shipment, we will contact you and notify you that we plan to hold the shipment for the next possible shipping date with better conditions. If you ask us to still ship it, through the conditions, we will not be responsible for any damage caused to the plant & UPS will not refund any claims. We love our plants, and do not want to see them die, so we would rather wait until it’s the right time to ship it, than risk losing a plant in transit.

Click here for more details on our shipping process.