At least in our area, stone fruits can be very problematic because they succumb to the fungal disease brown rot.  In addition, many of them tend to lose flowers during frosts that come behind spring thaws, so you may spend several years watching a beautifully trained peach tree bloom without harvesting any fruits.  Assuming you don't have just the right microclimate to keep them happy (early morning sun to dry the dew, low humidity in the summer, and a full-sun site that's shaded during the winter), you're once again stuck choosing varieties that will handle your conditions without the necessity of chemical intervention.

Sour cherries are perhaps the most disease-resistant of the stone fruits, especially if you select a variety like English Morello or Meteor.  I've also read about Mongolian-cross bush cherries (Valentine, Carmine Jewel, Romeo, Juliette, Rose, and Crimson Passion), which are reputed to have big fruits with lots of sugar, to be tolerant of clay soil, and to fruit by the fifth year.  Unfortunately, the sweet cherries I adore are very prone to getting frost-bitten, to losing their fruits to brown rot, and to perishing in clay.  (We ripped out our dwarf sweet cherry after the Japanese beetles ate all the leaves multiple years in a row and the few fruits rotted away.)  If you live in a damp climate like ours and have had good luck with a sweet cherry, I'd love to hear about it.

Peaches are more tolerant of wet feet than cherries, but are very prone to lose fruit to bacterial spot and brown rot.  Disease-resistant varieties include:

• Early Redhaven
  
• Ernie's choice --- reputed to taste like a nectarine
• Garnet Beauty
• Harbrite
• Harcrest
• Harrow Beauty
  
• Harrow Diamond
• Glohaven
• Elberta
  
• Madison
• New Haven
• Raritan Rose

Nectarines are simply a hairless peach, but most are especially prone to insect and disease damage (as we found in our own garden).  However Hardired, Mericrest, Midglo, and RedGold have at least some disease resistance.

Although the beautiful golden fruits of apricots always tempt me in nursery catalogs, it sounds like I'd be better off keeping my distance if I don't want to baby trees with little reward.  Of all the stone fruits, apricots are most likely to lose their ultra-early flowers to frosts, they have no tolerance for wet feet, and they get all the usual stone fruit diseases.  Selecting late bloomers like Alfred, Goldcot, Harcot, Harglow, Hargrand, Harlayne, Harogen, Jerseycot, Precious, and Sugar Pearls will at least weigh the odds in your favor.

(By the way, in case you're wondering why so many frost- and disease-resistant stone fruits have names starting with "Har", these were developed at the Harrow Research Station in Ontario.)

Finally, we come to the plums, which are really two species --- European plums (Prunus domestica) and Asian plums (Prunus salicina).  The latter are less hardy, with zone 6 being their most northern limit, require light soil, and need warm, dry summers.  European plums are better for most low-key gardeners since they can handle clay and bloom later, so they skip some spring frosts, but they're less likely to be disease resistant (with Seneca and Imperial Epineuse being the only resistant varieties I saw listed).  Disease-resistant Asian plums include:

• AU Roadside
• AU Rosa
  
• Methley (which is what we have, but it's not thriving in our clay)
  
• Satsuma
  

You can also check out the more cold hardy Asian-American crosses, as long as you're willing to work harder to get them pollinated.  Disease-resistant and hardy varieties include Alderman and Superior.

As usual, I'd love to hear about the stone fruits you've grown without chemical intervention.  Be sure to mention your growing zone and general region since many varieties do much better in certain areas than others.  I have a couple of spots that I might be able to cram another tree into, and your tips will help me decide who makes the cut.

Next week, we'll finish up The Holistic Orchard by talking about berries, but in the meantime you might enjoy previous posts about beginning a holistic orchard, techniques for designing a holistic orchard, orchard soil health, managing fungi in the orchard, and disease-resistant pears.  After that, we'll take a week off, then will start reading Joel Salatin's Folks This Ain't Normal, which won the vote by a landslide!