Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Peaches and Cream

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Sunday, August 23, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Our love began long ago, far away, innocent. A heavily laden peach tree is beautiful. Their flexible branches carry fruit upon new growth. Limbs bend as fruit swells around a distinctive “stone” kernel. Sweet aroma surrounds the trees, windfalls are common, easy for children to grasp. The first bite into a fresh peach captures a heart string forever. Love endures throughout lifetimes and passes from generation to generation, in my case children were kept busy out doors and many hands help harvest. Delicious on the spot, sliced peaches smothered in ice cream are wonderful served after supper. Family and friends celebrate warm August evenings with bowls of fast melting ice cream and peaches today.

Urban gardeners? But don’t peaches, nectarines, pears, apricots and berries require vast orchards and all of the paraphernalia of contemporary agriculture? Aren’t they demanding? Our suspicion is re-enforced by ignorance and supported by consent. Do not hesitate to grow peaches friends. A successful and simple approach works just fine. Grow your own and discover the joy of eating fruit in season without hormones, preservatives for transport, or idealistic colors or forms. There are many varieties of peaches and each has merit. A dwarf peach is what you want. They need sunshine to thrive anywhere including half barrel wood containers. Always elegant, their pink blooms in April become attractive fruits in August. Pruning adds cosmopolitan polish to a naturally branching tree often vulnerable to breakage from snow and heavy loads of peaches. The trees response to nature’s wounds is to quickly replace growth and more abundant crops, the stone kernel surrounded by white to golden flesh is a seed afteral. Work with the trees desire to reproduce and win.

Urban gardeners find themselves in cultural contremp, the garden calendar mimics the markets but does not conform. Frozen, canned, fresh fruits appear in perfect shapes daily for shoppers. The gardener walks a different path, we know harvests march to their own drummer. Ripe peaches do not make appointments for convenience. Love requires compromise. The fruit gently arrives in force. Plenty of baskets are usually needed.

I found a city side lot sunny enough for anything in my old town. An utterly neglected peach tree thoughtfully planted in a community garden a neighborhood away inspired me. It is fun to peruse nursery catalogs and peaches are tempting. Dwarf varieties are simply smaller versions than “standard” and thrive in large pots. I selected an early, mid season and late season variety which arrived as little more than broom sticks. As always, dig a $100 hole for a $10 plant. Lay a burlap bag or tarp next to planting sites, carefully consider solar exposure, wind, traffic, and height. Pile soil on the tarp and replace with lots of compost, bone meal, a handful of dolomite lime, position the transplant at the same soil level evident where trunk and roots separate. Heap enriched soil around the transplant, tamp down, water, drive 3 sturdy stakes on the outside edge of the hole and tie the transplant upright in place. In a couple seasons strong roots will anchor heavy summer foliage during storms. Permanently mulch. Hope and let go.

Be patient. Take the long view, one of a gardeners’ rewards. Within 2 years the peaches produced fruit. Lots of spring bulbs planted into the mulch fill the space with glorious flowers and mature before foliage casts shade around the trees. Hollies do well next to and under trees like mine for the many uses urban gardeners put to limited spaces. The important “hole” allows in ground gardeners to tailor preferences in soil ph, drainage, and fertility. Container gardeners duplicate the process and succeed.

Spray in the winter with dormant oils, vegetable oil and water works fine, copper sulfate preparations mixed with oil and sprayed over the tree are easy to apply during cold weather, I renew once or twice to replace as washed away by rain and melting snow. Molds, fungi and insect eggs need oxygen to survive, the oils quietly smother wind-blown spores and parasites. Your off season efforts are plainly evident during the growing season fruit trees virtually free of infestation. Gardeners tolerate, indeed embrace a spot or two that would never make it to the produce section. I make every effort to remove “mummies” or infested fruit but a few always seem just out of reach. Nature shakes loose weaklings, gardeners must gather courage and thin for larger fruits and lighten the heavily weighted branches. Some will break. Prune back, I duct tape over the worst wounds especially when strips of bark peel back from the break. Taped, they heal.

Vast orchards and labor must provide for most. A couple small trees are more than any urban gardener needs. Visit local growers until you have your own, taste varieties and note favorites. You can grow your own.  Don’t hesitate to buy big, learn to make jams, pies, or that old Yankee favorite, peach cobbler.  Shoppers buy a couple or a pound. Gardeners have bushels. Thrift, labor, patience, imagination are before you, live life’s wide spectrum gently.

Peaches are joyful. Our long time love is uncompromised. It is renewed, a spoonful of ice cream and sliced peaches at a time melting in August heat. Alone is fine, with family and friends, even better. Children will fall in love beside you and carry away more than huge doses of vitamins and minerals. Wherever they end up, there is always a place in the heart for those times when the world is truly divine, a world of peaches and ice cream. 

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.

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