Peach Progress 2017

Our little orchard now contains five peach trees: a Bonanza (dwarf), Babcock (white peach), Mid-pride, Desert Gold, and Eva's Pride. We've enjoyed watching them bud, bloom, and fruit this season, and we're eagerly anticipating the harvest.

Here are some of the trees in early February:

 Mid-pride--our oldest and largest peach tree

Desert Gold  (just over a year old--it booms the earliest)

Cute baby with bare, pruned branch of Mid-pride

We had such a mild winter that the Bonanza and Babcock bloomed late. Jeremy thinks our peach crop will be less because the trees didn't get enough chill hours.

Here's the big Mid-pride tree in full bloom around my birthday (third week of February):

At the same time, the Babcock was just starting to push out little leaves (last year they bloomed at the same time):

Here's the Bonanza in full bloom on March 8th:

And the Babcock is finally blooming:

The Mid-pride is just about done with blooms on March 8th and making good progress leafing out:

By March 21st, we had lots of baby peaches on the Mid-pride!

And the Babcock was in its flowering glory:

Here's our most recent picture--the Mid-pride peaches at the very beginning of May:

I'll have to get some more pictures of the Babcock, Bonanza, and Desert Gold. Jeremy paper-bagged the three Desert Gold peaches a week ago, since they were turning color and we didn't want to risk attracting birds. He picked two of them today--they're semi-cling and came easily away from the pit, were a lovely orangey-red inside, and tasted pretty good except for the fact that he sprayed them with Neem oil only yesterday, and that definitely didn't taste good. We're glad the Desert Gold ripens about a month or more before the Mid-pride--having it extends our peach season.

The Mid-pride won't be ready to pick til June--probably mid-June. Perhaps the Bonanza and Babcock will wait till late June or July this year. Last year I think we picked peaches from the Bonanza before the Mid-pride.

I don't have any pictures of the front yard peach tree--the Eva's Pride. Whoops! I don't believe it has any fruit on it, though. It's just had one full year in our yard, and Jeremy thinks the one peach it produced dropped. Ah well.