Juicy Delights: Homegrown Peaches

Fredericksburg Farms

Peaches

This morning we picked our first ripe peaches from one of the two peach trees in our garden. There is a short window from when the peaches are hard and not ready to when they are ripe enough to attract those sneaky peach robbers (birds, squirrels, raccoons, and the occasional rat that the barn cats failed to catch.) As I held our first “harvest” of three peaches, I remembered picking peaches from my grandmother’s peach trees. Mamaw would plant the seeds of peaches she found juicy and sweet. It did not matter to her if the seed was from a store-bought peach or one from a fruit stand. If it tasted good to her, she would save the seed, let it dry a bit and plant it in a coffee can and set it out on her back porch. Amazingly, most of the time these grew into trees and got planted to replace older trees that got what she called “canker” or “borers.” She had no idea what variety she planted and never thought about chilling hours. She just had faith that a great tasting peach would yield a peach tree that would also produce great tasting fruit…and most of the time she was right. Who knows, I might save a few seeds myself.



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