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my clingstone peach tree suffered a terrible tragedy, resulting in a premature harvest and an abundance of potential peachy goodness for all.
last year, the first the tree bloomed, we had about two dozen peaches that never fully ripened and eventually went to the squirrels. when the peaches first started coming on the tree this year we realized we were going to suffer an overabundance. by my estimation, the 15 foot high self-pollinating varietal had likely close to 600 peaches on them, most of them about the same size as a raquetball. smallish but beautifully blushy, rosy and gorgeous all over this tree, weighing the branches.
which in part led to a dilemma. big storms through the area, heavy winds. this past wednesday I looked out to see that two of the three main branches, one of them the leader of the trunk, sheared straight off. the two most peach-burdened limbs lay on the rain-soaked ground. my heart just cried! all those lovely peaches and my tree coddled through two years snapped in half. the trunk was nearly four inches around where the shear occurred.
unfortunately, the fruit once sampled revealed that the sugars were nowhere near developed enough to pick despite the purply peachy skins. they could have used another month on the tree to sweeten up. most were still smallish. I decided to leave the limbs where they were and let the fruit hang until it started to drop, so that it would get as ripe as possible before being forced to pick them.
yesterday morning they started to drop so we sawed the branches off and laid the cut portions on the trampoline. armed the minihorde with bags and baskets and set them to work plucking the fruit. sweaty and peach-fuzz scratching, the twinkies pulled and collected all the ruby blushed fruit they could. boy wonder picked up all the dropped fruit around the perimeter. when we were done, the poor maimed tree looked insufficiently limbed to even survive this. fully a quarter of the fruit is still on the living limbs with hopes they'll continue to grow/ripen.
god knows I couldn't have picked all the fruit so I'm glad for this last part. as it is, I have three bushels worth of peaches in my kitchen right now.
sad, spindly tree. I hope she'll recover. then the conundrum: how to find a use for all these peaches.
which in part led to a dilemma. big storms through the area, heavy winds. this past wednesday I looked out to see that two of the three main branches, one of them the leader of the trunk, sheared straight off. the two most peach-burdened limbs lay on the rain-soaked ground. my heart just cried! all those lovely peaches and my tree coddled through two years snapped in half. the trunk was nearly four inches around where the shear occurred.
unfortunately, the fruit once sampled revealed that the sugars were nowhere near developed enough to pick despite the purply peachy skins. they could have used another month on the tree to sweeten up. most were still smallish. I decided to leave the limbs where they were and let the fruit hang until it started to drop, so that it would get as ripe as possible before being forced to pick them.
yesterday morning they started to drop so we sawed the branches off and laid the cut portions on the trampoline. armed the minihorde with bags and baskets and set them to work plucking the fruit. sweaty and peach-fuzz scratching, the twinkies pulled and collected all the ruby blushed fruit they could. boy wonder picked up all the dropped fruit around the perimeter. when we were done, the poor maimed tree looked insufficiently limbed to even survive this. fully a quarter of the fruit is still on the living limbs with hopes they'll continue to grow/ripen.
god knows I couldn't have picked all the fruit so I'm glad for this last part. as it is, I have three bushels worth of peaches in my kitchen right now.
sad, spindly tree. I hope she'll recover. then the conundrum: how to find a use for all these peaches.
