I think for peaches, it is what ever we have in our garden. I must have weeded out 20 yesterday that were several inches tall.

We are in Ca, I have a fairly sandy clay that has been heavily amended with compost etc. They seem to like to sprout in more partial shade areas.

Do the seeds themselves need some chill hours to successfully grow later? Brady

I'm not sure apricot is much different. I'm thinking its either not good enough light or the soil type. I get them to sprout like crazy than put in soil mix.

I might put some non sprouted into the soil mix before they sprout and see if that helps .

You can pour boiling water over the pot with the soil and steralize it. It should kill off some bacteria/fungus etc.

Matt,

Is your climate too cold to simply plant the peach seeds outside?

I've not had any trouble planting peach seeds during the summer and marking the row. They have good germination the following spring.

Some peach varieties of peach seed won't germinate readily. Linked below is a thread which discusses peach seed germination. In it, another forum member and I got into a discussion about the difficulty (or lack thereof) of germinating peach seed outside. He indicated he could not successfully germinate peach seed outside.

This is still a puzzle to me, as they come up with no assistance at all in my climate. I've even planted them along a fence row with a small hand shovel before, by simply sticking the shovel in the sod and wiggling it back and forth to make a space for the seed, then jamming the pit in the crack. Even without breaking the sod, the pits sprouted the following spring.

I would think if your climate is suitable enough to grow peaches outside, you should be able to sprout them outside.

Here is a link that might be useful: Peach pits sprouting now

Yes it's to cold for peaches in Alberta. I have some neat little patio peach trees that are genetic dwarf trees that don't get bigger than 3-4' tall and produce very nice full sized fruits. I harvested about 35 seeds from them last year and most are sprouting now in spagum moss in my basement.

The problem is once they establish lots of roots and small tree I move into soil they shorty die after. Yesterday I moved all the non sprouted seeds into straight soil in hopes that its not transplant shock that's making them die when I move them.

I've got dozens of plums and plum cots sprouting some are 12" trees already just waiting to go outside ......plums are very intolerant of being moved into the soil medium I'm giving them. They grow like weeds with no problems. It's just the fuzzy delicate fruit ie peach apricots that are not growing easy for me indoors.

I did put many apricot seeds outside last winter also we will see what pops up this summer.