Spring Blooming Trees From Seed

 

 

The first photo is regular ol' peach, grown from a pit. Peach trees are worth growing merely for the blooms, and anyone can have one cheaply and quickly by planting a pit. It is not worth it to me to buy a tree and nurse it along to provide deer and worm food. I don't care to spray and nurse fruit trees along just to be disappointed by a small amount of wormy hard knots. But the blooms! So easy and beautiful! If a deer wipes mine out by wiping his antlers on the bark, no worry. Just plant a few more pits. Mine are the old timey white fruited variety, and they often produce a few small fruits worth nibbling under the tree, if I can get there before the deer. These are clear seeded and Mother used to break them open and dry them in the hot Alabama sun. This is a good use of those old abandoned cars you see in people's yards. It gets as hot in there as in my attic, and is easier to access. They will make wonderful dried fruit pies in the winter.
The second picture is of a slow plum and I also grew it from seed collected in the wild. The fruit which comes in the fall (slow plum) is beautiful on the tree, ripening in a succession of yellow, orange, and red. It is not suitable to eat, at least to me, due to it's smallness, large seed, and sour taste. (It might make good jelly.) The flowers are the reason I grow this small tree. The picture shows the reason I leave my Christmas balls on it the year round. (Well, one of the reasons-the tree has thorns and can poke your eye out if you are not careful). It looks like snow to me, something we don't see that much of in east central Alabama.