Peach Convert

Four years ago when picking out our "I want an orchard in my front yard" fruit trees, I reluctantly added peaches to the list.  Paul likes peaches.  I kind'a sort'a like peaches, but I prefer nectarines.  I like the insides of the peach, but not so much the skin.  The skin just makes me want to gag.  It's like biting into a small sphere of fuzzy human flesh.

Last year we got a handful of small peaches and they were good....but kind'a weird.  They didn't have the red skins like normal peaches and the insides were almost white.  I thought that they were just underripe, but they were juicy and sweet.  This year we had a pretty darn good peach harvest. Not that it says much, but it was good enough for our second year.  And they still have the pale skins and white insides.  Come to find out there are "white fleshed peaches".  I don't recall if I purposely bought the white flesh variety or if it was just a mix up.

Most of the peaches from our trees (those that haven't been eaten by me
or the squirrels, that is) and a bunch of freebie apples from Mom & Friend.

For the past week I've been eating peaches (and tomatoes) like they're going out of style.  And I LOVE my peaches.  Why do I love peaches now?  Because not only are they firm and sugary, not drippy smooshy like others have to get before they are sweet, but I can actually peel the skins off them when they are ripe!

Now I can indulge in my newly formed peach addiction and it makes for preserving the harvest a snap!  Well, not really a snap as anyone who cans stuff knows.  But it does eliminate having to dunk the peaches in boiling water to get the skins to come off.

So, what kind of peaches are these babies?  I wish I could tell you.  Somewhere, someplace, on a sheet of notebook paper lost in the black hole that is my desk or file drawers or stuffed into a box stored in the basement is the list of varieties of fruit trees we planted.  They have white, juicy, yet firm flesh when ripe, freestone and "skinnable".  Otherwise I have no freaking idea.

How dare I share with you the wonders of my peach trees and not know the name!  You won't be able to run out to your local nursery or flip through the pages of your favorite gardening catalog so you won't be able to enjoy these delectable fruits.  Unless you come on down to my place and seeing as Paul has set up caltrops, rabid guard weasels and a moat full of sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, you're pretty much out of luck.

Or are you?

As I recently found out by reading one of Ohio Farm Gal's posts about her Volunteer Compost Peach Trees, you can grow peaches from the pits!  Yeah, I know, duh.  But I knew that many fruits (especially apples) you buy are hybrids and grown on a different root stock so the seeds of the fruits won't necessarily produce the same fruit you are chomping down on.  But peaches seem to be one of the exceptions, so theoretically the pits from my yummy-licious peaches would produce more of the same peaches!

Now, who wants to try their hand at growing some yummy peach trees from pits?!  (Don't all raise your hands at once, I know, totally exciting, hugh?)

If you'd like me to send you three (or so) pieces of kitchen/compost/trash  of my peach pits, be the first three people to comment on here saying so and you'll be on your way to harvesting your own sweet, white fleshed, peel'able skin peaches.

In like five years or so.  If you're lucky.  If they sprout.  If they're a good match for your climate and soil.  If you do that stratification thing.  If the squirrels or chipmunks or raccoons or blue jays don't eat them all first.  And I'm not in any way, shape or form guaranteeing that you'll actually harvest a single peach.  But it's worth a try, right?

Sure it is.

And if you don't get picked this round, don't worry.  Since realizing that I could keep the pits for seed, I've been saving each and ever one of them for our up & coming Blog Buddy Seed Swap.