Home grown peaches
Monday, August 31st, 2009
I have a baby in the garden, that is if you could call a peach tree a baby. I have never cared so much for a tree or a plant before as for my beloved peach tree. Peaches you think, in Sweden? The secret is a Lattvian variety called Riga that was planted early spring this year in a big pot on my terrace facing south. It starts flowering early in the season before the bees are awake which means you need to hand pollinate the pretty pink flowers with a brush. You need to cover and protect the tree from frost and cold nights during blossom so it won’t freeze and drop all flowers. And you need to uncover it so it won’t get too warm during warmer days. So that is why I call it a baby, it needs a lot of care. But the reward is so worth it. Succulent, sweet and wonderful peaches far away from store bought. Too tasty to use in baking so we just ate them directly from the tree. This first year we only got 15 peaches, but hopefully there will be more next year. Below are some photos from April when the tree flowered til early August when the peaches were ripe.
Peach tree flowering in April.
April.
Early June.
Early June.
Late July.
Early August. Time to indulge!