nectarine

Plant the nectarine against a sheltered, sunny south-facing wall and cover the root zone thickly with leaves, straw or brushwood; also wrap young trunks loosely in hessian or fleece. Most critical is late frost during the early blossom in March/April: when night frost is forecast, cover the crown with frost fleece and take it off again during the day so that bees can pollinate. Container nectarines you keep bright, cool and frost-free (conservatory, bright garage).

Nectarines are propagated almost exclusively by grafting onto a suitable rootstock, as this is the only way the variety is preserved. Stones do not come true to the cultivar; a nectarine stone can even produce a peach tree, because the nectarine is a bud mutation of the peach. The most proven method in the home and allotment garden is budding (bud grafting): in summer (July to August, and on peach rootstocks September as well), cut fresh, one-year summer scions from a healthy mother tree. Choose long shoots with well-formed buds. Peach seedlings are the best rootstock; plum rootstocks such as St. Julien are an alternative. With plum rootstocks you should start somewhat earlier in July, as the bark there lifts for a shorter time. Make a T-shaped cut in the bark of the rootstock at a height of about 15 to 20 cm, slide in the bud and bind it airtight with grafting tape. When the bud shoots in spring, cut off the rootstock just above the new shoot. Scion grafting (whip-and-tongue grafting, cleft grafting) in early spring is in principle also possible, but with peach and nectarine it has much lower success rates and requires more practice as well as cool-stored scions from the previous year; budding is therefore clearly the first choice. Cuttings of stone fruit root only very unreliably and are not a practicable home garden method.