Thinning the peaches
Everything
I do in the garden at this time of
year is a gamble. Will a late frost negate my efforts?
Or will I get away with pretending summer weather is here to stay and
reap an early harvest?
I've been eying our peach tree for weeks as the ovaries
began to swell
and resemble miniature fruits. If nothing goes wrong, this year
will be our first harvest and I've resolved to thin the fruits even
though thinning is really optional.
On the negative side,
thinning takes time, and if you thin and then get a heavy, late frost,
you will lose a lot of your crop. On the other hand, timely
thinning is supposed to result in fruits that are bigger and sweeter,
and will reduce the chance of limbs breaking under the fruits'
weight. I've read that you get about the same weight of fruit
whether you thin or not; it's your choice whether you want a lot of
small fruits that are mostly pit or fewer big fruits.
As long as you don't
think you'll have any more below freezing weather,
the earlier you thin the better since the tree will now be pumping all
of its energy into the chosen fruits. Extension service websites
tell you to thin peaches to six to eight inches apart, but I couldn't
quite bear to take off so many fruits and instead settled on about four
to five inches between peaches. I still pulled a full quart of
immature fruits off our oldest peach, and a smattering from our younger
peach and nectarine. I'm trying very, very hard not to count my
peaches before they hatch...um, ripen.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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