Our Great Peach Tree

Our peaches this year were glorious! My grandma has like eight peach trees. I really like peaches, but I have to say, more than two or three peach trees is probably too many. However, in my grandma’s defense, there are only one or two of each variety. There are early peaches, one white peach tree, some regular free-stone orange peaches, and some cling-stone peach trees. The cling-stone trees are worthless to me. They are the last to ripen and the hardest to use. I hate to even give them away, at least not to friends; they might not stay my friends. 

There is however, one peach tree that stands above the rest in terms of the fruit it produces. Here is a picture:

Aren’t those peaches beautiful? 

Last year this tree got hit by a May hail storm and the peaches ended up being a bit deformed and small. I didn’t know what to expect this year. I took extra care to prune it and when the blossoms set I thinned it well. We ended up with huge beautiful peaches. 

These are the kind of peaches that complete strangers would stop and ask about.  This peach tree is the close to the road so people can almost reach it from the sidewalk. If peaches fall off the tree they sometimes roll to the sidewalk. Some years my grandma picks them early because she is worried that some stranger is going to walk by and steal them. (Which is not an entirely unfounded fear) 

This year, that was not really an issue. Turns out I could have thinned it more. We were forced into picking the peaches earlier than we would have liked because one of the biggest branches broke! It was so tragic. I had tried so hard to shorten up all the branches so that wouldn’t happen. I had even thinned the fruit substantially. But it was still too heavy for the poor tree. 

There have been some really bad pruning cuts made on this tree in its life. Honestly, some times I am surprised that it is still producing such good fruit. It just goes to show, even if you don’t know what you are doing, it is most likely that your tree will survive it. I will share the things I know about pruning so will hopefully be more confident in pruning your own trees. It really is important. Your trees will thank you for it.

Luckily, we were still able to use the peaches we picked early. We also gave a lot to friends and family, which is fun. In some ways, it was nice to have them a little on the hard side for bottling. I will write a separate post about how to bottle peaches.