Fabulous! Great sucess story! I would say your little peach is a peach! Keep painting the trunk every year, and watch for borers. Some areas of the country have more issues than others, and now you know this is an issue. PLC is easy to treat, follow the directions in your area for several sprayings with copper during the dormant season. Here in my neck of the woods (S. Calif. coastal area) we just remember the 3 holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine's Day. If we can sneak in a 4th late spray if we're having a particularly wet winter and early spring, even better (like this year and last). Even with a good spraying program for PLC, everyone across the country has had some issue with PLC. Just was our lot with the weather. Particularly bad out here on the West coast, but not a fatal issue for your tree like borers can be. Well done!! Patty S.

apricots, cherries, raspberries grandparents used to have several shrub trees that produced the best tangerines ever, with very loose skin that easily came right off, virtually no seeds inside, and very fragrant and flavorful, nothing like the tangerines sold in stores. Imagine the best tasting orange but in a form you could easily snack on and keep popping into your mouth, that's kind of what these tangerines were like. favorite tropical fruit is probably longan (a relative of lychee) a freshly broken open young coconut is also good, but I do not think I would ever want to grow them myself, I'm not a big fan of palms trees in general I love other fruit, but I usually like eating it in processed forms, for example apple sauce or Valencia orange juice, or baked plum deserts, so I think it makes more sense to grow the fruit you like to eat whole fresh off the tree.

Thanks for posting this. I'm glad to see that Madison is considered hardy. The injury on my peach tree that I have now is on the south west side of the trunk. Maybe I'll use a white tree guard on the next tree and it will last longer.

cough: 1. If you have already planted 8 peach trees, and are still looking for more, I invite you to consider the following sincerely offered suggestions: a) Make sure you know what is involved in growing 1-3 peach trees before you plant a lot more. Growing peaches is difficult even for experienced backyard growers. Peaches can have a lot of insect and disease problems, and usually do. Do not believe anyone who tells you they are easy to grow "organically". b) Before planting a lot of any one thing, have a plan for the use of the fruit in the event you actually get some production. 2. I have a pretty good-size backyard orchard here, and currently have 5 peach trees. I could actually get by with three good varieties, one early, one late-midseason, and one good peento (flat) type. This year, 3 of the trees produced heavily, a mature Golden Jubilee, a young Contender, and a young (white) Sugar Giant. The Contender ripened extremely early -- July 7, and, since early peaches are not much good for freezing, we had to hustle to eat or give away the more than 50 peaches this tree produced. They are all ripe within a period of a week. The average person, weighing less than 300 lbs., can eat a maximum of 2 large peaches per day. Next to ripen was Sugar Giant, a sweet peach without a lot of flavor. It suffered badly from bacterial spot, and at least half the peaches were thrown out. This peach, a modern variety from the Zaiger program in California, was a mistake to plant here. 3. Because of the 4-day Easter freeze, the Flat Wonderful peento type had only a dozen peaches, but they were truly fine eating, and early to ripen. They have a firm flesh, but wonderful flavor. Because of their odd shape, peento peaches are difficult to cut up and prepare for freezing. The little pit resides right in the middle of the doughnut, and the peach does not split apart like a large freestone. If this tree produces a full crop next season, we will again be shoveling them in shortly after Contender is gone. I would be cautious about planting any of the white peento varieties, which are likely to be far more sensitive to brown rot and other maladies. 4. Golden Jubilee is a late-midseason peach, and this mature (12 year) tree was an abundant producer this year, with about 125 peaches, of which at least 3 dozen weighed one pound or more. My spouse froze 16 quarts of these peaches, which are firm, easy to prepare, and fine for freezing. But we still have a dozen of these peaches in the refrigerator. They ripened the last few days of August and early September. 5. The bottom line here is: I really don't know what we would do with any more peaches. Once you have figured out how to grow them, and protect them against all their enemies, they can be very abundant. After two early sprays with Imidan against plum curculio, and careful thinning, all my peaches were bagged in try-on "footies", which protected them against insects (mainly oriental fruit moth) for the balance of the season. And very effectively - without any further spraying. Footie installation is, however, tedious, and calls for some acquired skill. 6. If you are going to grow peaches, you should become familiar as soon as possible with diseases such as bacterial spot (on the fruit), bacterial canker (on the limbs), and insects like the plum curculio (early) and oriental fruit moth (all season long). After that, you can get some advice here on how to deal with those problems. You should select the varieties to plant very carefully, based on such factors as their ripening times, and resistance to diseases like bacterial spot. Planting what Home Depot happens to have on hand is not the best way to choose your peach varieties. 7. Without considerable effort to learn the essentials of peach growing, you can plant 100 trees and still not get any decent, usable peaches. On the other hand, two or three carefully chosen peach varieties, with the right care, can produce enough peaches to make your family tired of eating peaches, and the neighbors too. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA