Special to the OBSERVER
When I was a 5th-grade student in elementary school, our class was given a peach tree to grow. We watered, weeded, loosened the soil and covered the fruits with paper bagsI day-dreamed of having my own peach tree, where I would sit on the branch like a monkey greedily eating the peaches non-stop. For 55 years I lived in a very large city and growing my own peach tree was still just a dream.
Photo by Linna Roemer
Since that time, I have moved out of the city and purchased land where I immediately planted peach trees the very next spring. In three years the tree was producing flowers and a few fruits.
Healthy tree with a few fruits too many!
This year, the tree had a lot of flowers and soon there was a profusion of small peaches on the limbs. I knew that I should thin them. I had read "Cornell's Guide to Growing Fruit at Home". On p. 37, it stated "The proper time to thin fruit is about two to three weeks after bloom, after early fruit drop when fruits are about the size of a quarter. The first step is to remove small and insect- or diseased-fruit." OK. I removed small, insect and diseased fruit. "Then remove all but one fruit where there are several in a single cluster, leaving the largest of the fruit." Oh! No! Just leave one?! This means I would be throwing away four fifths of the fruit! They were healthy and would grow many fruits for me, the greedy one. I didn't have the heart to throw so many future delicious peaches away.
I eagerly watched the peaches swell, thinking about their juicy delicious taste, while the branch slowly bowed. I was concerned, but oh all those peaches! Later, I went out to admire my ripening fruit to find that the branch had broken under the weight of all those peaches! The tree looked so pitiful! It was not upright anymore and it appeared weak; almost to the point that I feared it would fall down. I didn't harvest good quality peaches. What is worse the broken branch had exposed the interior wood where a disease or insect could take hold and cause the tree to die. I was very anxious! I cut the broken branch down with a nice pruning cut and bought a pruning sealant to help keep the tree healthy until it can bounce back.
Linna Roemer, Cornell Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Volunteer