Sun Snow Nectarine Tree Prunus persica var. nucipersica Sun Snow

White flesh and a stone that clings: Sun Snow is a nectarine for eating fresh, and a low chill tree that crops where winters stay mild. Traditional nectarines need many hundreds of hours of cold before they flower and fruit well, and after a mild coastal winter they wake late and unevenly and crop poorly. Sun Snow needs far less, which brings home grown nectarines within reach of frost free coastal gardens in the subtropics and warm temperate districts. How chill is counted, and why it decides what crops where, is set out in Growing fruit trees in Australian backyards.

Expect a good sized fruit, pale skinned under a red flush, often a little lopsided with a deep seam down one side. White fleshed nectarines generally taste sweeter and less acidic than yellow ones, which puts them at their peak eaten straight off the tree, and because the flesh holds onto the stone, slice it rather than trying to twist it in half. It sets fruit with its own pollen, so a lone tree in a small yard will crop. If you would rather a yellow nectarine, Sunbob Nectarine Tree has firm yellow flesh and suits the same mild climates.

Frost inland, fungus on the coast

The same low chill requirement that suits it to the coast works against it inland. In a cold district the chill is met early, the tree flowers in the middle of winter, and frost burns the blossom or the tiny fruit that follows. If your garden sits in a frost hollow or up on the tablelands, look through Fruit Trees for a higher chill variety instead. On the coast, give it full sun, soil that drains within a few hours of rain, and a spot where cold air slides away rather than pooling at the foot of a slope.

Wet weather brings the other two problems. Leaf curl blisters and reddens the spring leaves. The reliable home garden sprays are copper or lime sulphur, applied at bud swell before any petals show, which on a low chill tree comes early, often in June or July. Brown rot turns ripening fruit soft and brown under grey tufts of spores, then shrivels it into hard mummies that carry the disease to next season, so pick up every dropped or rotten nectarine and strip any mummies left on the tree. In Queensland fruit fly country, slip fruit fly exclusion bags over the young fruit before they start to colour.

An open bowl for a humid coast

From a young tree, plan on two or three seasons of shaping before a worthwhile crop. On the humid coast the shape that matters is an open one: a bowl of a few well spaced branches with nothing growing through the middle, so the leaves dry quickly after rain and brown rot has less still, damp air to work in. Do the main cut straight after harvest while the weather is dry. Keep the soil evenly moist under a thick mulch through spring, because a dry fortnight followed by a storm is what splits ripening fruit on the tree, and give a potassium rich fruit tree fertiliser when the buds burst and again once the crop is picked. Nectarine kernels are cyanogenic, so clear dropped fruit before a dog finds the stones, and do not leave wilting prunings where horses or goats graze.

Choosing a size

This plant is supplied in one size, 5L, at $129.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot it arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to choosing a tree for a small backyard.