Hi all,
I've just moved homes and for the first time have a fruit tree - a peach tree. I know very little about gardening, and I'm wondering if i have to protect the fruit from insects, birds, bats etc?
The tree has flowered, and now has many small peaches.
I live in Brisbane, Australia, and it's winter here (not that it gets cold, mind you).
thanks in advance
jack
Jack,
I don't have a clue about what pests you my enounter. But, speaking from recent personal experience if you have a heavy crop you'll need to thin them out. I didn't thin mine - now I have broken limbs.
- Mark
Hi. For local advice try posting to aus.gardens
It's most likely a flowering peach that you have. Enjoy it for its blossom, the fruit will fall off as soon as they form.
The fruit on mine doesn't. The majority stays till they're ripe. They look extremely unpalatable (small and green) but the flesh is devine - white, fragrant, juicy. We discovered they were good to eat when my husband bit into one some years back. I told him they were "flowering peaches" and not for eating, but he convinced me they were good and after I tried one, I couldn't believe I'd let them go to waste for all those years.
And to the OP, cover your tree with bird netting - it can be bought in all sorts of sizes including up to 9M. Use the white bird netting, the black stuff kills birds because they can't see it and get their legs caught in it.
For 20 years I lived in a place with a large flowering peach. Each season I'd watch the hard teeny weeny green fruit fall off and rot. Only now do you disclose that I could have stewed them?? There is no dessert I like more than stewed peaches, and getting every last morsel off a clingstone.
Because flowering peaches flower so early in the season, it's quite likely that the fruit would have been naturally free of fruitfly, too, with no need for any spraying regimen. Alas, I have now moved out of that place so it is too late to carry out a taste test. I shall never forgive you, FarmI!!
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