The story of my peach tree

From moving it to fighting peach leaf curl

I have seven fruit trees in my yard. They each have a story, even if some of them are lame.

My favorite “new” tree is the peach tree I planted in the winter of 2012. The tree was already 4 or 5 years old. My father-in-law planted it near his cabin in the low sierras. Perhaps because of the altitude or the snow-filled winters, it never produced for him. Since I have a large yard and wanted some fruiting trees, he brought it over when it was bare root. I figure’d if it did nothing in a year, I’d rip it out and move on.

Moving a tree

Wait until the tree has no leaves. During this time it’s “bare root,” the plant equivalent of hibernating. Then dig it up. I find it helps to get the soil nice and wet. Dig deep and wide so you do as little damage to the root system as possible. You’ll want to re-plant it in the next 48hrs (the sooner the better).

Dig your new tree hole deep. You don’t want any of the old root system to be exposed to the air. You also don’t want to bury what used to be above the soil, so you may need a friend to hold the tree suspended in the air, watch the angle of the trunk, and then pack the soil in. Step on it to get rid of air pockets. Then get it nice and wet. The water helps remove any air gaps and brings the soil close to the roots, which is what you want, so while you don’t want to flood the damn thing, you do want to use more water than you would in a normal watering of the tree.

Voila. You’ve moved a tree.

Peach Leaf Curl

I am particularly fond of peach leaves. Somehow they look exotic to me.

But it became apparent very quickly to me that I had a bad case of peach leaf curl. It is the scourge of peach-dom. If you aren’t sure if your peach leaf tree has “the curl” then it doesn’t. If your tree does have peach leaf curl, you know. There is no mistaking it. It looks like elephantitis of the leaf.

This is caused by a fungus and once you see it on the leaves, it’s too late to fight for that season. There’s not much you can do. It was so bad that first year that my little peach tree shed all of its leaves and re-grew new ones (which still had minor curl to them).

As I saw this process happening I did two things: I helped pull off leaves with the worst curl and I thinned out the baby peaches that were growing. I figure’d the tree was stressed enough and I’d rather it focus on producing a few good peaches than trying to maximize my yield and ending up with a bunch of failed peaches.

I was rewarded. My peaches in 2013 were DELICIOUS. I don’t even like peaches, but I could not get enough of these (and subsequently fell in love with peaches). The juice would drip out and the sweetness was off the charts. It is a white peach, free stone fruit. A work of art.

The only downside, I only had maybe a dozen.

How to beat peach leaf curl

Go to your local nursery and buy copper fungicide spray.

I try to “spray” only as a nuclear option. I’m fine with bugs and spots, etc. But for peach leaf curl, this is really your best bet.

Once all the leaves have fallen off your tree, give it a nice spray. You may want to do this one or two other times in the winter, especially after it rains. And finally — one last time just as the tree is beginning to bud leaves again (but not too late, it has to be before the leaves have fully taken over the look of your tree).

The harvest of 2014

The peach harvest of 2014 was great. It was roughly three-four times the size of last year (I didn’t thin the crop at all and the tree grew) but it also had a downside from last year: The peaches weren’t as sweet. This year the peaches also started to rot earlier. The peaches that fell off the tree weren’t perfect and ready to be devoured, they had already started to bruise and spoil. I would often have to cut out half of the peach itself.

It’s hard to know what to attribute this to. The spraying? that the tree was stressed to support all these peaches? That I picked them too early because I was an eager peach-greedy bastard?

I will say this: The smell alone of peaches is worth having a peach tree.

I had some (but nothing like 2013) peach leaf curl this year and so I will spray again — but for the most part, I think I’m past it and looking forward to 2015's harvest.

We also saved some of the peaches in the freezer and may make jam later in the year.

I realize now that I have failed in taking any real pictures of my peach tree. I’ll see if I can dig something up, but in the meantime the top image is of two types of tomatoes and on the left, of course, a nice juicy peach.