If you are someone that has always had an interest in growing your own produce, then you may have wondered if you are able to grow some kinds of fruit trees indoors, maybe one such as the Peach Tree?
You will be happy to learn, that Peach Trees can indeed be grown indoors – they may even thrive inside with the right care and attention!
Whether you are someone who has experience with tending to your own plants indoors, be it with something like tomatoes or growing your own indoor herb garden, or someone who is attempting a task like this for the first time – this article should have everything you need to get started.
Required Space
An aspect you have most likely already considered would be the amount of space needed in order to grow.
When it comes to growing indoors, the biggest limitation to what you can produce is nearly always going to be how much space you have available to you.
When growing outside, the sky is the limit (quite literally), but when growing indoors there is a lot more to consider.
Not only will you have to have enough flat surface area to use, but also you have the ceiling to contend with.
Typically, you will find yourself with around 7ft of height to work with when indoors, most ceilings are going to around this height, and so it would make sense to work with a plant just below this – at around 6ft maximum height for instance.
Obviously, if you have ceilings that will allow for a larger tree, then you can go ahead and find one that can grow a little taller, but for the sake of managing your tree, it may just be easier to stick with one at around 6ft tall.
The Right Variety
Choosing the right variety of peach trees will make all the difference in what you can get out of your time tending to it.
As you may have seen outside, an average peach tree is going to be fair too big to have growing inside your home.
It might be fine outside, but within the walls of your home, you would quickly find it ill-suited.
Dwarf Peach Trees
What will be perfect for growing inside the home, however, is a dwarf peach tree.
These will come in many different varieties themselves, including some with interesting names such as:
- Honey Babe
- Golden Glory
Growing up to around the readily maintainable height of 6ft, or just below, a dwarf peach tree will provide you with the ability to grow full-size peaches, whilst using up a fraction of the space.
Good Enough: These trees will not bear as many fruits as a normal peach tree but will still produce a fair amount.
Pollination
You may also want to consider whether you would prefer a tree that can cross-pollinate or one that is self-pollinating.
This decision will mostly come down to how many trees you intend to have.
If you are only planning on having one tree, then a self-pollination peach tree.
This would make sure that your tree can keep on being pollinated and provide you with fruit for years to come.
Should you feel you have the space to keep more than one dwarf peach tree, then you can choose a variety that can cross-pollinate.
Although, you may just want to stick with self-pollinating, just to keep things easy.
Sunlight & Climate
In order to grow a healthy plant, you will need to take into account both the amount of sunlight the plant needs, as well as how well suited the plant is to your surroundings – especially the climate.
Whilst the climate will play a fairly minimal part in the growth of an indoor peach tree, in comparison to one grown outdoors, it is still something you will want to take into account.
Peach trees can require upwards of 450 chill hours, although can go as low as around 300. So, you will want to go for a variety of tree that is in the lower range for the hotter climates.
If you live somewhere that tends to be a bit on the colder side, then you may be better off choosing a variety that is a bit higher on the chill hours.
Sunlight also plays a huge role in the growth of all plants, with peach trees being no exception. Ideally, in order to be the best it can be, your peach tree should be seeing around 6 hours of sunlight a day.
You can dip a little below this but in an ideal world, you would want to keep this level of 6 hours of sunlight.
If you know that the area you live in is prone to low levels of sunlight, then you can at least make sure that your peach tree is situated in a position that has it ready to absorb as much of the sunlight available as it can.
This could be next to a large window with a lot of potentials to let in vast amounts of sunlight.
Housing and Nutrients
The type of container you use to grow your peach tree in is going to be one of the better ways in which you can control the size and overall need for maintenance of your peach tree.
The size of the container will directly correlate to the overall size of the tree.
This is due to the fact that your tree will only have so much room to form its root system and therefore limit the overall nutrients it can intake, which will put a cap on its overall growth.
For a dwarf peach tree at around the height of 6ft or below, you will want to be looking for a container of around 5 gallons in volume.
If you are looking to try and grow a tree that is smaller still, then all you would need to do is to reduce the container size further:
- Using soil that is loam-based is also a great way to increase to overall nutrient intake of your tree. This is because this kind of soil will simply hold more nutrients than other varieties.
- You will also need to make sure that you are watering the soil in your container more than you might for one planted outdoors.
This is because the soil will tend to dry out quicker than the soil of an outdoor tree.
As well as this you will want to fertilize your indoor tree more than you would for one that is outside, this is because it won’t be in contact with natural fertilizers that occur in nature.
Always Good Idea: Making sure to use a fertilizer that encourages the growth of flowers and fruit will also be beneficial.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, growing peach trees indoors is not as difficult as it may seem at first.
As long as your plant is the right size, is getting enough sunlight, and is able to absorb enough nutrients, then you should be looking at a prosperous and beautiful peach tree.
Hopefully, this article has been helpful in showcasing you some great ways to make sure that you are growing the best peach tree you can be, and enjoying some of the best fruit you will have ever tasted.