Peaches

In a previous posting I talked about pruning my trees. I have an old peach tree that was planted by my father in law more than twenty years ago. It was over grown and densely limbed. Two years ago I pruned all the dead wood and about one third of the lower limbs. Last winter I pruned inner branches to open up the spaces between branches. Peach trees do best with an "open" shape. They need lots of light.

Last summer I had the first crop of peaches in many years, though there weren't many. I think I picked maybe 15 tennis ball sized peaches. They were tasty, very tasty actually, but bug damaged. After two years of severe pruning I got the first heavy crop of peaches. This year they were between tennis ball and baseball sized, juicy, and delicious. Bugs are still a problem, because I don't spray insecticides. 

Above is one large pot of peaches from this year's crop.  I picked about three times this amount over a three week period. I do have a squirrel problem and of course birds love fresh fruit too. But I got enough for some fresh eating and some pastries.

This winter I will do one more hard pruning to remove the higher branches that I cannot reach anyway. That will have reduced the number of branches the tree has to support by at least 60% and open up the remaining branches to more light and air flow. I am hoping for fewer but larger fruits next summer.