Hi, I am interested in the peach tree. I don't have any of your list but I have a star fruit, pomegranate seedlings, mickey mouse seedling, and desert rose seedlings. If any of these interested you, please let me know. Thank you.

"Real Preserving," (not the crush-fruit-throw-in-some-pectin-stash-in-the-freezer-stuff) is very mindful. May I go so far as to say an art? In time you learn to read the preserves and you'll get a good sense of the various stages of the process, when you're getting close to the jell point. You do have some hard-boiling time, though of course it takes a while to get up to heat and during that time the preserves are still cooking. So yes, you do want boiling for evaporation, which is why a good heavy wide pan is so helpful. Otherwise you're cooking too slow and over-cooking or fighting the tendency to scorch because of all the sugar. The jell point is 8 degrees above boiling (varies by altitude) or another way to think about it is, to reach the jell point a preserve needs to be about 65% sugar concentration (sometimes 68%). That includes the sugar in the fruit and the sugar you add. So if your fruit is riper, you don't need to add as much other sugar. You're boiling the water out to hit that magical 65% point. The sugar concentration at that point is high enough that it attracts the remaining water to itself. That leaves the pectin molecules to bond to each other. They form a "net" or interlocking mesh and then you have, Eureka! a preserve that's set. Enough science. Enjoy the Zen of it. Carol

Our house much prefers canning peaches either in slices or halves over any of the other methods for preserving them. We use Fruit fresh to help keep the color and there are several different levels of sugar syrup you can use to adjust the taste. I think dried peaches loose most of their appeal in both appearance and taste. Frozen are fine but then you have the threat of power loss and the limited storage life to deal with. For other recipes other than just plain peaches then like Nila mentioned - chutneys and Oscar Relish is a personal favorite. If you type 'peaches' into the Harvest forum search bar here you'll find many discussions and recipes for doing them. Check these out: http://search.gardenweb.com/search/nph-ind.cgi?term=peaches&forum=harvest&forum_name=Harvest Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Oscar Relish

No, it's not a problem. You can make preserves from frozen fruit. I'd recommend you measure or weigh out the fruit for the recipe you're using and bag it up with a notation on the outside of the bag. Frozen fruit does tend to have a "dimmer" flavor, which can be compensated for by straining out the solid pieces from the thawed juice and cooking the juice down then adding the pieces back in. Also, 1 tsp. lemon juice added per cup of product helps "brighten" the flavor back up. Carol