That is awesome, I wish I had fruit trees. Looks like a good haul.
That is awesome, I wish I had fruit trees. Looks like a good haul.
Alright - we planted our 'dwarf' peach tree six years ago as a sapling; she is now approx. 14' x 14' - so much or a dwarf and she has been pruned back. Year before last she started to fruit but we were so inexperienced with fruit trees, let alone stone fruit, we weren't certain how to correctly purge the fruit she was bearing (which was way too much). We did what we thought was right, but it wasn't enough, so what fruit remained didn't get very big, and to top that off, we didn't know 'when' to harvest and we pretty much lost the yield to bugs. She skipped last year since she was tapped out - apparently peach trees can bare so much they can actually starve themselves off in one season. We got lucky....
This year, I built some fork braces for limbs too heavy with fruit so branches didn't snap, and she self-purged quite a bit so we helped as much as we could - a success! She still bore a lot of fruit so they weren't really large - largest this year was tennis ball-sized, smallest edible was about golf ball-sized. We have been paying close attention to the weight of limbs in addition to the state of the fruit to ensure we were picked close to ripeness as we could. Over the past two-weeks it's been hit-and-miss for ripeness but today we called it and went out to pick... what this album documents is one effort over three-trips outside to yield a total of 41 pounds of peaches, not including what was given to tour neighbors as we picked.. There's still perhaps another 20 pounds to go but some of these were not ripe enough yet, or are too high (so I will let the bees have 'em).
making jams, peach slices, halves ,and puree for freezing. Our parrots will be happy as well for treats to last the year.
Note: the only 'treatment' we used for bug control is Neem Oil.
And yes, "Peaches" by PUSA played in my head all day.
Alright - we planted our 'dwarf' peach tree six years ago as a sapling; she is now approx. 14' x 14' - so much or a dwarf and she has been pruned back. Year before last she started to fruit but we were so inexperienced with fruit trees, let alone stone fruit, we weren't certain how to correctly purge the fruit she was bearing (which was way too much). We did what we thought was right, but it wasn't enough, so what fruit remained didn't get very big, and to top that off, we didn't know 'when' to harvest and we pretty much lost the yield to bugs. She skipped last year since she was tapped out - apparently peach trees can bare so much they can actually starve themselves off in one season. We got lucky....
This year, I built some fork braces for limbs too heavy with fruit so branches didn't snap, and she self-purged quite a bit so we helped as much as we could - a success! She still bore a lot of fruit so they weren't really large - largest this year was tennis ball-sized, smallest edible was about golf ball-sized. We have been paying close attention to the weight of limbs in addition to the state of the fruit to ensure we were picked close to ripeness as we could. Over the past two-weeks it's been hit-and-miss for ripeness but today we called it and went out to pick... what this album documents is one effort over three-trips outside to yield a total of **41 pounds** of peaches, not including what was given to tour neighbors as we picked.. There's still perhaps another 20 pounds to go but some of these were not ripe enough yet, or are too high (so I will let the bees have 'em).
making jams, peach slices, halves ,and puree for freezing. Our parrots will be happy as well for treats to last the year.
Note: the only 'treatment' we used for bug control is Neem Oil.
And yes, "Peaches" by PUSA played in my head all day.
(post is archived)